January 23

Our first stop on Saturday was to the pancake house for breakfast and poffertjes. They weren't as spectacular the second time around, but that could be because I wasn't starving, I wasn't freezing, and I didn't know what to expect. I also had a very large "banana pancake" which was a crepe with a banana cut up and cooked into it. It was delicious and reminded me of home.

After breakfast we headed to the train station to get to Haarlem, a suburb of Amsterdam. There was a market going on and we got loads of delicious, fresh French fries covered with different sauces. We also went inside the church and it was FREEZING inside, it was huge and colder inside than it was outside. We strolled around to find the windmill and started hurting back to the train station. We just made the train that took us to Rotterdam, the industrialized Amsterdam. It was pretty nice, this city felt more like America. There were large buildings and weirdly shaped houses. The shopping malls were all lit up and were stories high...It was very, very different from Amsterdam. We ate lunch there and did a little tour, with the help of Joanne and her Rick Steve's book.

Once we were back in Amsterdam we took a 15 minute break before heading back out for a small dinner and dessert. We walked through the Red Light District and then we called it a night.