Amsterdam!

Hey All,

I know that a post never showed up detailing our day in Amsterdam.  That’s because the place we stayed had very selective internet accessibility.  As in, some internet algorithm decided which pages would load and which wouldn’t.  Gmail? Fine.  Google blogger? No.  Facebook? Fine.  Facebook messenger? No.  Anyway, here’s Amsterdam sub 1.

After getting up especially early on Monday so that we could get breakfast before getting on the train to Amsterdam, we were surprised to learn that Belgian Waffle stands aren’t open at 7:45 for breakfast.  FOR REAL? WHO DOES THAT?!?  So no waffles for us L.  Taking the train to Amsterdam was very easy, and we got there right on time at 10:40.  The metro that would have taken us straight to our hotel was out of order, so instead we took the metro to some random stop somewhere, where we then took a bus to our hotel stop.

We dropped our stuff and headed back to Central Station, to meet up with the hop-on, hop-off bus, which came every 15 minutes (ish).  At the first stop, there was a line about 50 deep to get on, so we were a little worried, but we were able to get on to the second bus.  We rode several stops, and listened to the tour (this used to be the post office, but now it’s the mall… this used to be a crappy place to live, but now even Rembrandt couldn’t afford to live here… etc.).  We got off in an area with a lot of restaurants, grabbed some lunch and walked around for a while (while trying not to get run over by a tram, bus, car, vespa, or bicycle, all of which seemed to have a better sense of the unwritten rights-of-way than we did).  Then, we got back on the bus and listened to most of the rest of the tour.

The next time we got off, it was to go to the flower market, which was crowded, but still managed to smell nice, and not like a sea of sweaty humanity.  I appreciated that.  It was relatively close to Rembrandt Square, so we walked over there after the Flower Market and caught a canal cruise.  The canal cruise was pretty awesome, because the buildings that line the canals are all super pretty, and we even got to go out into the harbor and see all the larger ships and whatnot.

After the cruise, neither of us were starving, but we found a place to stop by Rembrandt Square and got a snack and a few drinks while we debated what to do next.  The hop on-hop off tours had ended at that point, so we decided to head back to the hotel (via the most time consuming tram ever) and get dinner around there.  We both fell asleep within ten minutes of getting back.  An hour and a half later… it was pretty late, so we grabbed dinner at the hotel, and went back to repack, and get ready to head to the cruise ship the next morning.

One day closer to caught up J I’ll do another later.

Catherine