Amsterdam

We arrive!

Our Easyjet flight to Amsterdam leaves from Gatwick in the afternoon, so we caught the tube to Paddington, then the Gatwick Express.

We had our iris scan done at Gatwick so we could skip the long lines coming back. NB there are no Maccas at Gatwick!

Our flight was delayed by an hour (we were sitting on the plane during that time) coz the catering company hadn't arrived with the food yet ...

Once we'd arrived at Amsterdam, getting out of the airport was quite uneventful, and it was pretty easy getting to Centraal (bought tickets from vending machines at the baggage collection)

It was a bit of a walk from the station to our hotel, Movenpick. It was a pretty cool and modern hotel.

 

We picked up our hire bicycles from the shop downstairs of the hotel (cost around 9EUR a day each) and headed to the square to meet Ben and Liz for dinner. It was starting to pour but luckily we found a place to eat called Roem .

Later that night we decided to make use of the 24 hour sauna at the hotel ... which was pretty good!

Rijksmuseum, Bloemenmarkt

We woke up late ... in the afternoon ...

 

We picked up our bikes and peddled to Rijksmuseum. I think most of the museum was closed for renovation, so we were out after a couple of hours of viewing. We walked around, and found some street markets in the Pijp, and stopped for a light snack of omellete, and sandwich.

 

After that we decided to check out the flower markets and the cat museum, but it was clsoed for the day.

 

We searched high and low for an Indonesian restaurant to have dinner in, but had trouble finding something right ... In the end, we found one called Bojo, but it was packed, so we went to another a few doors down, in a restaurant called Puri Mas. It was ... ok, I guess. The satay wasn't very good (strange sauce drenched on top!), the chendol tasted wierd ...

Kattenkabinet, Anne Frankhuis

We woke up in the afternoon (as usual) and cycled down to the Cat Museum, which contains anything that has anything to do with cats (along with some actual live cats) in it. We bought a Le Chat Noir poster by Steinlen for 5 euros.

 

We walked around town taking in the sights ...

 

We met up with Liz and Ben ... and noticed that the queue for the Anne Frank house was too long, so we decided to have dinner first at return at 8pm. We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant nearby, called De Bolhoed .

 

Anne Frank's House was an interesting museum, but we came out smiling (coz everyone came out looking depressed). After that we headed to a couple of pubs ... first a local pub where everyone was still smoking indoors, and then to an Irish pub ...

 

Vondelpark, Van Gogh museum, hometime!

We had breakfast at the hotel (23EUR pp!) ... the American guests piled heaps of crispy bacon on their plates, while other European guests ate lots of bread (of which there were many varieties to choose from).

We checked out at noon, returned the bikes, dumped our bags into the locker at Centraal, then walked around. We found the Chinatown (unexciting), then walked to Vondelpark. We decided to go to the Van Gogh museum in the last minute -- it was terrific but we had to rush it coz it was time to go ...