Brussels/Amsterdam. Waffles/Pancakes

Ciao tutti!
Don't have a lot of time, so just a quick overview. We left paris late, so we only had about one hour in Brussels, which so wasn't enough time. We went first to a world famous Belgium chocolate place, then we got waffles (of course). There was also some sort of Army/police graduation thingy going on. we kept asking people, but nobody knew what was going on exactly. but it was in what is called the most beautiful square in Europe, which it was.
ok we got to Amsterdam that night, and we went and walked through the redlight district. Prostitution is legal in Amsterdam, so you walk through and there are these glass windows with girls just sitting waiting for guys to come in. it was an experience. apparently if you take pictures of them they will come out and chase you down in their heels for you to delete the pictures, so thankfully none of us took pictures of them.
the next day we went to the Anne Frank house. She was a young jewish girl of about 13 during WWI, living in hiding with her family, where she kept a diary: "the diary of Anne Frank". it was really interesting. we could see the secret bookcase where they would have to sneak into their annex where they were hiding. it was crazy. Then we walked around for a bit and went back to the hotel and slept before we did a pub crawl that night.
Thursday we got the world famous dutch pancakes, which were amazing! then we had a bike tour of Amsterdam. (there are bikes everywhere! worse than UCSB) it was fun, but some of our group had never ridden a bike before, so we kept having to stop because we lost people. we were an hour late and we didn't even get to some of the stops. but we did get to see the I AMsterdam sign, which was pretty cool. then we went and ate and watched Italy lose and get eliminated (I think I have inherited my dad's lousy luck with my sports teams). anyways I gotta go to dinner, but I loved Brussels and wished we could have spent more time there, and amsterdam had a really cool vibe. I liked it waaay better than Paris. ok ciao!
~Alyson~
:-)