Kevin Runs Europe: Day 6

Distance: 12.3 miles (19.8 km)

Today I learned something. I love cheese. After a morning run following the outer of the four canal-rings surrounding the city center, we went to the Dam Square (I'm not cursing it. That's just what it's called) which is where the royal palace is (The Netherlands has a queen, by the way) and where a whole bunch of street performers spend 20 minutes building up hype for their act and then 20 seconds actually perorming it (in typical street-performer fashion). We were trying to decide what sort of "attraction" we'd spend our money on for the day (I only budgeted $10 per day for attractions on average) and it was between two supposedly must-see art museums (Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum) and a wine and cheese tasting thing. Being with a culinary arts major - and being really hungry - of course it had to be the wine and cheese tasting. If you are ever in Amsterdam, go to the Reypenaer (not sure if I spelled that correctly) cheese shop. For 15 Euros, you get to have 3 glasses of good wine and about as much as you want of about 6 different kinds of cheeses, one of which was voted the best cheese in the world 3 times by whoever is lucky enough to decide what cheese is the best in the world. On our way out of the cheese shop, we met a recent psychology-graduate from California named Erica and we decided we'd hang out the next day. We had only booked two nights in Amsterdam, but we were liking it so much so far, our hostel was good, and we have no specific schedule to follow, so we decided we'd book another night.

I went for another short run, this time heading away from the city center and toward a park by the sea/harbor/very wide river/whatever you would call the body of water that Amsterdam lies next to. We found some food at the grocery store by our hostel (I love .99 cent bagettes!) and later went to a different bar by our hostel for the customary pre-bedtime beer and were pleasantly surprised to see the same Americans we had met the night before!