Scandanavia to Amsterdam

Hi everybody! I'm emailing you late tonight from Amsterdam! Now, some of you may not know that I am spending the summer in Europe (mostly studying at Cambridge), but I am! So, while here I want to keep everybody updated and this is really step 1 to organizing that. Therefore, please try to help me out with my limited internet access and time and do the following:

1 - tell me which email address you prefer I use or tell me if I got the wrong one, old one, etc.
2 - tell me that you WANT europe email updates - if you really don't want them then you can just ignore them in your inbox or tell me you want me to stop sending them to you - but they generally come with nice pictures.
3 - send me your home address if you want a postcard (I'm not sure quite how many I will get a chance to send but I left my address book at home)

If you don't send me a quick email (I understand, you're busy too - and I still like you) you'll just keep getting my updates - yay for you! :) But I do enjoy seeing email when I sign in from so faraway. ANYHOW, if you didn't get the first email it will be posted somwhere later.. but basically we spent a day in london, a ferry to denmark, a day in Sweden, and then:

We awoke in Malmo Sweden to find that the shops would be closed, basically the whole city was closed, for the whole weekend. But we walked through the park and saw an old Dutch windmill (our first) AND the oldest castle in all of Scandinavia! and behind the castle within the moat in the middle of a park in Malmo Sweden, do you know what I saw? Four rams! yes, the sheep with the big horns. So cool!!!! Then we left Sweden : ( and went to Copenhagen, Denmark! It was AMAZING! Despite no shops being open the city was alive! We saw the Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid statue in the harbor and another windmill inside the nearby fort (which still functions today). VERY cool. Then we walked around downtown where there were these trucks full of drunk people driving around shouting and frolicking.. still not sure why. We were yelled at by a Royal Guard for sitting on the steps in the royal square and then we had lunch, an amazing, wonderful lunch along a canal where a ton of cafes were set up side by side.

We spent the night outside of Hamburg, Germany and the next day we walked around a beautiful park in downtown Hamburg (saw a rose garden and had cokes in the German beer garden) and then we were off to Amsterdam. There was our first bit of rain and a lot of traffic and then we made the mistake of driving THROUGH Amsterdam. We finally got a hotel outside the city and today we took the train in and toured the city. We walked through the Anne Frank House / Museum. It was incredible! You are allowed to walk through the whole house and right through the secret bookcase door behind which they hid. Very sobering but insightful - and right in the middle of the beautiful canal town. We semi-walked through the red light distict and most of the canal area. We had Heinekins at the Hard Rock along a canal down from the brewery and then hiked and rode back to our hotel.

*whew!* So... pictures will be up LATER because it's very late here and I have to wake up VERY early, but tomorrow is Belgium and maybe a taste of Paris by night. ( *wink* )

PS - did you catch that Portugal - Netherlands game? SO GOOD! but really, GO ENGLAND!

<3 amanda l. berg