Amsterdam

Still Saturday May 28th Day 17 - The Unexpected

Long day. The sun comes up around 4:15 a.m. in Warsaw and after yesterday’s torrential rains it was a beautiful sunny day. After breakfast we took one last walk through the neighbourhood before heading for the airport.

In order to avoid the 6 a.m. flight out of Warsaw we decided to spend the night in Amsterdam. Amsterdam airport is one of the largest and busiest in Europe. Our hotel turned out to be quite a bit further from old town and the canals than we expected but we were told we could take the hotel’s shuttle back to the airport and get on the high-speed train into town. Alrighty then we thought and off we went. Our first challenge was buying tickets from the machine but fortunately there were a lot of helpful staff around who headed us off in the right direction (didn’t want to be heading off high speed away from town).

The central station in Amsterdam is a huge elegant old building right on the canal. We exited into a square with hundreds of people with trolley cars, bikes and cars all seeming to use the same space without any bloodshed. We followed the large crowd across he bridge over the big canal to join thousands more tourists wandering the streets. Oh and the temperature was probably around 30+C. After fighting our way through about 2 blocks of this we considered grabbing dinner and heading back for the train and our hotel as we were not enjoying the huge crowds and cheap tourists’ shops along our route. If it is this crowded in May, it must be a real zoo in the summer.

However, as we walked further from the station the crowds thinned out somewhat and we found ourselves in narrow cobblestone streets with tall think ornate buildings like you see in the pictures and of course, canals with lots of canal boats taking tourists for rides or moored against the walls. We stopped at an Irish Pub enticed by the cold beer and had dinner and then continued wandering the streets over the bridges and along the canals, bicycles winding through the people (nary a bike helmet in sight) and lots of people enjoying a glass of wine or beer at one of the many, many eating and drinking establishments.

As the sun was going down we decided it was time to find our way back to our hotel after a few fun hours in Amsterdam. As much as we have enjoyed our trip, we get to sleep in our own beds tomorrow night. Did we tell you about the neighbor’s cat getting locked into our house while we were gone……that’s another story.