After her show last night, Sidonie brought us a wonderful dinner of three different delish kinds of pizza. We also were finally able to have our long-awaited beer tasting of the four beers we bought in Brussels. The chocolate beer was the winner by far. We joked about our boy’s night with the pizza and beer, but we did actually put the pizza on plates (real ones, not paper ones!) and the beer in glasses. That’s the difference between men and women, we guess. We enjoyed our last evening together and went to bed late. We had to catch the train to Amsterdam this morning at 10ish so we woke up sort of early so that we could get all of our things packed and straighten up a little bit.
We hopped on the train and it was packed! We ended up sharing a little double-seat like on a bus… with each other and our backpacks. It wasn’t too bad because we just propped our feet on our bags but it was a little tight. After about an hour or so, a man vacated the four seats he was occupying by himself and so we scooted over and spread out. When we got to Amsterdam, we decided to go ahead and book our train to Paris tomorrow so that we could take the train that gets us there at the same time as Dan. That’s right, Mr. Daniel Dansby is FINALLY getting his tush over the pond and joining our adventure! We couldn’t be more excited!
Well, getting the train booked was a little fiasco. They had this system where you are assigned a number and they call you like at the DMV. Only, apparently there was a little lapse in communication because we were assigned the number B725 and they hadn’t called a single B-number. The only ones they were calling begin with C. We finally realized this after waiting for about an hour and a half. We were told originally that the C numbers were priority and that’s why they were called first. Guess that’s true, because they didn’t call a single B number all day! Once we got all that straightened out, we got our train booked and took a cab to the hostel. This place is huge! It’s like a really big hotel except for there are 3 sets of bunk beds in each room instead of a king-size or two double beds.
After dropping our packs off at the hostel (which, by the way, aren’t as heavy as they used to be!) we walked to the Van Gogh Museum. Rachael said the experience there upped this day to the top 5 best days of her life. We got to see a lot of paintings we’ve always talked about in school and it was really neat to be that close to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Irises and multiple self-portraits. We got to the museum around 4:30pm and were all but kicked out when it closed at 6pm.
At this point, we had only had breakfast and that was long gone, so we went in search of food. We heard from the lovely JL and Tee-Rell that we just HAD to try an Indonesian rice table, so we did! It was really neat. We actually shared a single dinner order because we had a feeling it would be more than either of us could eat by ourselves. Turns out, we were right! We were served small portions of about 15 different dishes that were laid out on these little candle heater thingies on our table. It was a really neat experience and it was all really good! Maybe because we had no idea what we were eating…
After dinner, we wanted to see more of the city, so we went a-walkin’. We found a neat city square kind of area with lots of different shops, including several selling all of the things that Amsterdam is often associated with. We now understand why folks say Amsterdam is neat but sketchy. We were both pretty glad to only be staying one night. It seems that the hostel we’re staying in is the cleanest place in the whole city (thank goodness!).
Amsterdam is a very bike friendly town. There are two parts of the sidewalk, one half meant for pedestrians, the other half meant for bikes. They’re everywhere! Where you would see parking lots or garages, there is an ocean of bikes. There is even a traffic signal at each intersection just for bikes. The majority of them are road bikes, but every once in a while, you’ll see an interesting design. Some with what seem to be like wheel barrows on their front ends meant for toting goods or children, some bikes you can pedal by hand… you could basically write a Dr. Seuss book about all of the different bikes you can see around here.
After walking around we decided we needed an Amsterdam dessert. We found a small restaurant in that shopping area and ordered a traditional Dutch dessert called poffertjes. We were served ice cream, dough balls covered in powdered sugar, and topped off with what seemed to be a whole tub of butter. Delicious and nutritious? You bet! It came with some little orange slices so at least we got our fruit for the day.
We plan on heading back to that shopping area tomorrow because we saw lots of cute stores that had already closed for the evening. Tomorrow we rest our heads in PARIS!
XOXO K&R
No comments:
Post a Comment