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Ok, a short blog today because I am very tired!
I started my day by looking out my Castle Stahleck window at the wonderful sunshine hitting the vineyard filled hills on the banks of the Rhine River. Yeah, this is going to be a good day...
I had another great breakfast (by the way, breakfast is included at most hotels, hostels, etc in Europe...). I checked the schedule, and a subset of the 'castle crew' from the night before and I boarded a ship sailing down the Rhine river for a castle-watching tour like none other. There are castles every 2-3 kilometers along this portion of the Rhine river, so the open-topped ship had a great vista for observing the castles on both the port and starboard banks of the river. We saw about 10 castles in a wonderful nautical trip. I knew where the train station was in one town, so I got off in St Goar so I could continue my journey north.... to Amsterdam.
Ok, all I have to say is that Las Vegas has NOTHING on being the Sin City capital like Amsterdam. I'm sure most of you have heard a story or rumor
about Amsterdam. Let me start by saying that I am now sure that all of those stories and rumors are true. If you want it, it's here. Booze, sex, drugs, and just about any variant of each of those. I'm sure I looked like the typical tourist with my mouth open as I walked by the prostitutes in the windows standing with prices clearly posted, the 'coffee shops' with menus of pot, etc.... just like you hear about. Today and mainly tomorrow is a holiday in The Netherlands, so in their main square, they had a HUGE gathering of thousands of people to celebrate the holiday. The Queen was on hand, and (from a distance of about 200 feet), I did get to see her! Very lucky and good timing!
I won't have many pictures of Amsterdam, for obvious reasons :-), but I can now say that I have lived it!
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