Post #7: Travel Day to Amsterdam

With each consecutive experience on this trip being very new for us, joy and excitement spring up from around every corner without our searching for the nuance in the familiar. For instance, our train ride to Amsterdam is our first train ride, and as we enter the station we realize that our exprience will be entirely different from the metro that we have gotten used to. The huge departure board in the middle of the throughway and the people bustling to and fro remind me of something out of an old movie; the only thing missing are the smokestacks on the trains.

However, the magic is quickly dissipated when we landed on the other side. We stood expectantly at the doors, waiting for them to open, and as they opened our smiles were frozen to our faces. Literally. It is about 45 in Amsterdam right now. Add that to the fact that nearly everyone had warned us that Amsterdam Centraal is a pickpocketing madhouse, and what you have are two frozen, paranoid tourists. We shivered our way around the station for nearly an hour and a half as we tried to figure out the metro system (nothing like the one in Paris), until we finally stumbled on to the correct tram. I'm not sure if it was the vicious stink-eye that I was giving everyone within a ten foot radius, or if people just lie about Amsterdam Central, but no one even came close to us or our pockets.

We checked in to our bed and breakfast and met our host, Jan. Jan is 79 in three weeks, and just tickled pink that we have chosen his B&B. He keeps a very beautiful and comfortable establishment in the ground floor of an apartment building that is just a few minutes outside of the downtown area. Jan is great to talk to (in three languages, no less), and he makes us feel right at home with a grand tour of the place and a cup of coffee. 

After visiting with Jan for a bit, we head back out to search for jackets (otherwise we might have stayed inside for three days). Unfortunately, spring line-ups mean that most clothing stores don't have jackets anymore (except for Armani...but we could each upgrade to business class on the return flight for the cost of their clothes!), which means that the frozen tourist scavenger hunt is on!

It stinks that our first night in the city is spent in outlet mall-like stores, but we finally find jackets at H&M, and promptly turned our attention to food. Wait, did I mention that the train food was awful? Probably not, as we tried to make ourselves forget that it ever happened. Imagine the worst cafeteria food that you may have ever been served, then imagine that your puppy ate it and threw it back up. Now you understand why we were STARVING at the end of the day (we hadn't eaten all day, for those just joining us).

This, however, means that we are not objective critics of our dinner. There was something fried. There was soup. They gave us a salad at one point. The beer was decent. It was delicious! At the end of the day, we are headed back to the room to plan our day tomorrow and get a lot of sleep. Also, we will take many more pictures tomorrow as well.

Drew and Nicole