Windmills to windmills (8th September)

So it's another travel day today, but because we're at an optional stop, it's a more relaxed start as the bus doesn't pick us up until lunchtime. We take the opportunity to find out more about Belgium chocolate by going to Chocostory - safe in the knowledge that our bags will be looked after in the corner of the pub. We nibble a couple of free samples and wander through the museum, picking up some interesting tidbits of information about the origins of the good stuff. At one point the Spanish church in South America banned people drinking chocolate during mass, however so many people chose chocolate over church that they had to relax their stance to keep attendance up! We then get a demonstration on how pralines are made... and most importantly get to eat the spoils. We're suitably impressed to buy 500g of the milk chocolate buttons, but didn't get into them straight away as we filled up at the frites stall (the one on the left obviously). We make the bus easily and have a pretty uneventful trip up to the capital of the Netherlands -Amsterdam. Our hotel is really close to the drop off spot and we make it there without getting run over by any of the crazy bike riders we come across. This time we aren't staying at the Busabout accommodation because we found a better deal for a private room through hostelbookers.com. It's worth checking them out -as well as hostelworld.com when planning a trip and comparing the prices. Apparently 100,000 of the 700,000 bikes get stolen every year and around 5,000 end up in the canal system! We have pizza for dinner and watch the variety of people walk / bike the streets. We then go to a coffee shop and have some fantastic coffee (possibly the best on our trip so far!) and a muffin before doing some window shopping in the most well known district of the city. Unfortunately we didn't take any photos while we were out because we didn't want to risk the camera ending up in one of the many canals in the area, as apparently happens when people use their cameras there sometimes. "Eye opening" is definitely a good expression to describe Amsterdam.