On Monday the Tour de France had a sprtint stage ending in Gent. There were thousands of people lining the last several miles of the path. The finish line was right in the middle of the city but I decided to walk down a little further to about the 600 meter mark to watch. It was amazing watching all the riders fly by. About an hour and a half before the cyclists showed up, the caravan came through. The caravan is pretty much an hour long parade. They were tossing out everything from laundry detergent to key chains ;) to packaged meat. There were alot of cool looking floats and cars. It only took about 5 min for all the cyclists to ride by but I have to say it was one of those things that you are glad you stood for 5 hours to see.

As soon as the last biker passed, we headed for the train station to catch a train to Amsterdam. With the tour going on, we did not have a place to stay in Gent so Kevin and I decided it would be a good opportunity to take a short trip to Amsterdam. We arrived there about 11pm and finally found our hostel. We dropped our bags and took off for the Red Light District, one of the most famous parts of Europe. It was pretty crazy there, girls were just standing in front of glass doors on display. It is basically one long strip so we just walked the strip a few times. It was all very entertaining and was definately something unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

We left and went back to our shady-looking hostel to go to sleep. Of course we chose the cheapest hostel so it was no Marriott but it worked. We stayed in a room with 4 Brazilian-Asian guys who were really nice. The next morning we grabbed a couple pieces of bread from the mess room (juice and basically anything else cost money) for breakfast and left. We made our way over the house of Anne Frank. There was a really long line to get in so we decide not to go in but got some pictures of the outside. We were back on a train toward Gent at noon. All in all, it was a good little trip. And in a span of 20 hours I saw the Tour de France, Anne Frank's house, and the Red Light District of Amsterdam.