We get up early (we've not much choice - if we don't get their mat and blankets back to them by nine, Cathy doesn't get her passport back). We get some breakfast and swap addresses - and photos - with the Ukrainians. Then we take the tortuous journey into town. We were planning to go to the aquarium by Zoo station, but we discover that it's ten minutes walk away and we're running out of time before the train goes. I go to find out if our train needs a supplement. The 25 minute wait for this item of information causes me to lose all faith in German efficiency.

The train is packed. There are hundreds of people waiting and once we get on, every second seat is reserved. Needless to say, the rest are occupied. We sit down, in the only two seats that are free and discover that one of them is only free because the woman in front decided to take a seat with a table. We then take up all the luggage space storing our belongings.

We arrive in Amsterdam and head to the lockers. They win one of our "Excessive Use of Technology" awards. All the lockers are microprocessor controlled, detecting when you close a locker, locking them and demanding money. When you feed it money, it prints out a ticket with a magnetic strip on the back.

Amsterdam is busy - I wait in line for 20 minutes to change money, which happens at a somewhat disadvantageous rate, while Cathy queues to buy the tickets out of Amsterdam. She comes back later having reached the front of the queue for the queue, and received a ticket for the queue for a ticket. The problem is that the Gay Games are in town, and there are, we later discover, about 10,000 competitors and an estimated 200,000 spectators.

We are approached by a dodgy-looking bloke offering a place to sleep. We use Cathy's queue as an excuse not to make our minds up immediately, and he introduces us to his associate who'll be around for a bit longer. His associate is really dodgy-looking and I decide on the spot that we're making alternative arrangements.

I sneak off to the tourist information while they're not looking, in order to see what they have to say about accommodation. They have a big long queue too, and I wait for ages until someone raises the accommodation question. They have nothing left below 4*, which we don't much want to pay for. The assistant does, however, know of a campsite that hires out tents. She reaches for a map and turns back to find hordes of backpackers gathered around waiting for instructions.

Since there isn't much left to do, I go back to the ticket office, where I confidently expect Cathy to have finished. No such luck - she's still waiting. I tell her the news and we decide to see what the other accommodation place has to offer. I find a hotel at 20 Guilders for a double room, and decide to take it.

While we're waiting for our number to come up, Cathy tells me that Dodgy Bloke came up to her a couple of times, noticed me not being there, and asked where I was. Cathy told him I was looking for a map and the bloke advised her that it would be pointless going to the Tourist Office because it was shut (this is, of course, while I'm queuing in the Tourist Office). This confirms him as more bent than everyone else in town put together.

Cathy's number comes up over an hour after we started. We confuse the sales bod by asking the price difference with or without Interrail. We found that the Eurostar is actually cheaper without the Interrail pass, so we decide to stay for 2 extra days.

Everything sorted, we leave the station for the big tram stop outside. There is a definite carnival atmosphere and an unnecessarily large number of people are milling about with very little to do. This theme continues along the route of our tram. The main street is absolutely packed, people having to walk in the cycle lanes because the pavement isn't big enough.

We leave the tram at Rembrantplein and ask a passing couple the way. The hotel is overlooking the Amstel and pretty nice, although we don't notice much more - we hit the sack fairly soon.