Amsterdam

I THINK I might be in love with Amsterdam just a little bit! I have been here since Sunday night, and this has been one of the best parts of my trip.
I am staying in my friend Fred's apartment, but both he and his roommate are gone, so I have a big 2 bedroom apartment to myself right now in the center of Amsterdam, right off a canal. It's pretty sweet.
I have been hanging out here, cooking, baking, and sleeping a ton during the late evenings and mornings.
I have gotten to play ultimate hte last 2 nights - once with a beginner team and once with the Amsterdam/Utrecht womens team. I also ran a Fury track workout on Monday which was PAINFUL and made me want to get back to SF and start training with my teammates.
The rest of the time I have just been biking around the city, getting incredibly lost, and then suddenly realizing where I am. I don't know what it is about me on a bike in strange cities, but it is a completely different experience than me on foot. On foot, I feel like I have a great sense of direction. Even when I am wandering around in circles, I have a general idea of what part of the city I am in, where I am headed, etc. On bike, I am always SO confident I know where I am going and then suddenly realize I am on the opposite side of the city.
Getting to ultimate practice takes about 20 minutes, so I left last night at 7:00 with a fully mapped out plan of how I was going to get there. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I rolled up for practice, frustrated, sweaty, and incredibly confused about where I had been biking for the last hour. Though I was proud of myself for using the sun as my guide - as it was setting behind me, I realized that I was actually supposed to be going west. Oops.
I went and saw the Botanical Gardens yesterday. It was nice and peaceful and calmed me down after riding around the main part of the city (seriously - i am terrified I am going to have a major biking accident, even though i am going super slow and am ridiculously cautious).
Today is Queen's day - a national holiday in the Netherlands similar to our 4th of July. Last night there were a lot of festivities that I was too tired to catch, but today i plan on going out and seeing free concerts and lots of other fun activities they have set up. So far, every person that I have seen walking on the street has been wearing Orange. It's pretty great. I keep thinking I am going to get motivated any second to go out and join them, but right now I am pretty happy to just hang out, finish yesterday's crossword, and drink more coffee. But Tom will be by in an hour or so to get me and show me the sights, so then I will get off my lazy butt. But now back to the paper and coffee.