Amsterdam Day 3

Continued from Amsterdam Day 2 part 2.

I woke up this late morning after a fitful night of sleep. There was the drunk lady incident, and also people walking up and down stairs in the middle of the night right outside of our door. Lastly, I heard a buzzing in my ear last night, the dreaded buzzing of a mosquito. Sure enough, I woke up with a welt on my right cheek. Fucker!!

Ah HA!!! We pulled the curtains back and the room flooded full of light. RL looked up at the ceiling (which is high and evening standing on the bed its much to high to touch) and saw my nemesis. Motherfucker, you are going down. It was so full from drinking my potent blood that it just sat on our ceiling resting. I got a pillow and throw it right up against it.

Die die die!!!!! It was indeed full of my precious blood. Take that mosquito!!

5 minutes later, I was in the bathroom, and I managed to kill another mosquito!! This one bloodless. Our room, probably the same for most houses here, does not have AC so we all open our windows for the cooler air outside. But, Europeans apparently do not believe in screen windows, so bugs are free to just fly in. With that said, there aren’t too many bugs around, unlike SE Asia.

We saw so much and walked so much the previous two days here, today will be devoted to sitting around and doing nothing. We are Amsterdamed out and excited to head to Ireland tomorrow. We didn’t get out of the door until after 1pm. Nice.

I like classic cars.

Airport express bus recon. Tomorrow, we’ll be boarding this bus to take us to the airport. Lucky for us, it’s about a 3 minutes walk from our hotel front door.

The theater close by our hotel.

Here’s our tram.

Took the tram all the way back to the central station. RL had found a cafe on the water by here that we’d like to try.

So many bikes!

This seemed so out of place. It was completely devoid of people inside…granted, it’s 2pm right now. Still, 3 levels of restaurant, how does this place survive? Does it host giant buses full of Asians?

I’ve seen these bikes around in Austin, but they’ve never had seat belts for children like the ones here in Amsterdam.

Nemo Museum, a science museum.

Our lunch spot is there on the other side of the river.

Bike ramps on stairs.

I wonder how many people have tried to walk on this all the way to the top and fallen down then injured themselves…

Almost there, looks like an awesome spot.

The weather is wonderful for sitting outside right now. There’s a very light breeze, cool, and overcast. It feels wonderful to sit out here enjoying the water view.

Burgers, tasted like they were stuffed with chorizo, yum.

Also saw this go by us, it’s one of those amphibious tour vehicles, much like the Duck Tours in America. This one looks more like a bus in water, where the Duck tour looks more like a boat on land.

We saw this same graffiti couple days ago inside the city. We think it’s done by the same artist, and that all the tables here are painted by different artists.

Blueberry Cheesecake!!! Soooo good, the Dutch do know how to do their cheese well and their baked desserts well! This place has been a superb, made us very relaxed.

Sidenote. In Germany it was tough to find a place that’ll accept credit cards, but here in Amsterdam, almost all places will accept a credit card.

RL acting awkward.

Another micro car, parked with the bikes.

After lunch, we thought briefly about seeing something else in the city, but decided instead to just go back to the hotel to blog and watch Netflix. Sounds good.

Large container elevator tucked between two old buildings for that modern building behind it.

Coffee back at our hotel dining room overlooking the canal. Very nice, very good coffee, and the best part, 3 Euros for both of our coffees, which is like half price of what we would have paid at another cafe elsewhere. Sweet!

Time for dinner. We stayed in the room the whole afternoon, I feel a little under the weather. I am either coming down with something or I’ve got allergies…who knows. The bike lanes make great access for people in electric wheelchairs. Unfortunately, that’s really all they get, because outside of the bike lanes, the city is very handicapped unfriendly – no elevators, no ramps.

Another note about the cyclists here. No one wears a helmet. Then again, they’ve got their dedicated lane, and also everyone watches out for cyclists because there are so many of them.

Dinner spot, right by our hotel.

We sat in the wrong section. Instead of sitting downstairs in the basement, we sat upstairs in the bar section, where there is only bar food. We had already ordered our drinks…so it is what it is. We’ll be having bar grub for dinner.

Nachos with real guacamole and Bitterballen. Bitterballen are fried balls with beef and flour fillings. Not too bad. After dinner, we had a very pleasant chat with our bartender about traveling and food. He’s been to SE Asia before as well. He suggested that we actually try one of the croquettes from one of the fast food vendors. It’s like a bitterballen, but long not round.