3rd Wheel: sometimes being a 3rd wheel is seen as a bad thing....for me on my 4th day in Europe it was a good thing. Man and his friend Jeremy did not have to attend the spine conference today so we 3 started early ... Well I should say he started early...my adapter must have gone out during the night because the first sound we heard was not my alarm, but Jeremy knocking at the door because it was now after 8h. 5 min later and we were off 3 coffees for J and a ham and cheese croissants for Man and me and we realized rush hour here is much much very much different. Bikes sped passed in designated bike lanes with their own sets of traffic signals that are often neglected. We quickly identified the cyclist with Beats headphones to be among the most dangerous, and the old salty looking cyclists to be the most vocal if you stepped into their lane. Once that navigation was complete we located my new favorite food group, pankoken. Yep hate American pancakes but I adore these lovelies. I had a goat cheese, spinach, garlic oil, with sunflower seeds and it was ridiculously good. The first bite brought on laughter, that doesn't happen often. Then began the second affair, the complete absolute love affair with these canals. Over 1200 bridges cover this little area and every turn was a shutter clicking pleasure. Bikes, canal, houseboats, it is incredible how different this city is from any of the others I have recently seen. We hopped on a canal tour because walking and shooting was proving difficult for me and found ourselves to be 3 of 5 people so in essence we had the boat all to ourselves. Our captain had a worn face, bushy eyebrows, a red wind braking, and looked as if he were born to be behind the wheel of these canal boats. We wandered through Dam square, the Old Church, a market, another market, a handful of cheese, print, and tulip shops and before we knew it, 1 o'clock in the morning was upon us.