Day the Twentieth

Today technically begins with last night....
We met a group of seven English boys in our hostel and bonded over a mutual opinion that Justin Bieber is a prick. When we returned from a rainy evening walk along the canal we got to talking with them again and eventually ended up going to the bars sometime around 1 in the morning. It's Amsterdam though, so that's ok. They are all acting students at some prestigious school in London and, as we learned, are incredibly talented. This first became apparent when they randomly started "The Circle of Life." They also made up a musical about how cold and/or warm it is in Canada. We had a blast and were out until almost 3 with them.
The next morning, or I guess at a more reasonable hour that same morning we got up, grabbed breakfast and set out on an epic adventure. We rented some Dutch bikes from a shop, they're like cruisers kind of, they have one speed and no hand brakes. They also don't come with helmets, sorry Mom and Dad. I haven't seen a bicycle or motorcycle or scooter helmet since arriving in the Netherlands. No worries though, we're all still neurologically intact, or at least as much as we were before the bike trip.
We ended up riding our bikes up to Central Station and taking a ferry across the harbour. Then we spent about an hour getting hopelessly lost and eventually finding the Zaanstad windmills. Of course, they closed exactly three minutes before we arrived so we couldn't go inside but we still walked around them. They were neat, I personally enjoyed the bike adventure out there more than the destination but I did get some pretty pictures. Our ride back was a little more successful, we only took one wrong return and had a small detour. I'd guess that the whole trip was around 20km. Some fun things that happened:
     - we rode up a high bridge, on fixed speed bikes....
     - rode down the hill on the other side with no brakes
     - saw some goats
     - Steph and I highfived whilst pedalling
After we returned the bikes we grabbed a grocery store diner and some beer and headed back to the hostel. We ended up sharing our beer with the Brits and then went for a wander to the Red Light District with them before eventually going to bed.

Things I ate:
     - apple and bacon pannekoeken
     - sausage roll
     - cheese and meat and bread
Highlight of the day:
     - biking through the Dutch countryside. Beautiful.