Day 1 Done! (Well technically Day 2...)

Well folks, we've made it!  ECFH has officially begun to take Holland!! Our flights, although long and tiring, went very smoothly and we made it to our hotel around 2:00 pm Holland time.  The weather is cloudy and much colder than expected but the weather for Friday and Saturday is looking pretty good (for now)!  Our hotel rooms are very different from the hotels in the US; the rooms are smaller, the twin beds are pushed together and in order for the lights and AC/heat to work, our room card has to insert into the wall.  We have experienced many different things already and we have only been in Holland for about 7 hours!  After we took some time to settle into our rooms, we went to downtown Amsterdam and walked around.  One major thing that many of us noticed right away was how many bicyclists there were.  Bicyclists are everywhere. EVERYWHERE.  As a driver, not only do you have to worry about the many pedestrians there are milling about the streets, but the bicyclists as well. We have already had some close calls with several members of our travel party. We will if we can make it through our trip unscathed...

While in downtown Amsterdam, we walked through the red light district which Holland is famous for and boy was that something to experience (we will just leave it at that).  We saw the 3 famous canals of Amsterdam (the names of which we cannot pronounce), and we are lucky enough to be taking a tour through these canals (in boats!) later this week.  We also saw parts of a street performance in a large Plaza, located in downtown Amsterdam. Coach Cosenza told us that these performers are very common and most of the time very entertaining! After our sightseeing adventure, we all had dinner together at a cute little restaurant that is located on the same street as our hotel.  During our first "official" meal together we have already noticed that Dutch food is very different, but in our opinion, it is just as delicious as American food. We are absolutely looking forward to experiencing more traditional Dutch meals!

 We just returned to the hotel from dinner not too long ago, and we're calling it a night as most of us are too tired to think of anything else besides ours beds. We are resting up for big adventures tomorrow where we will be touring famous Dutch Cheese Farms and Windmills---stay tuned folks!!!



As always our team are no strangers to taking loads of pictures...but here are just a few from our travels thus far:

ECFH about to go through security in Boston

One of the famous canals in Amsterdam--isn't the weather spectacular?!

A Large Plaza in Amsterdam

Streets of downtown Amsterdam

One of the options for dinner (Chicken kabob with a peanut butter sauce and side of lettuce with onions - A Dutch traditional meal) 

Love,

Liz Patient and Ashley Reid