Day 2 – First Day in Amsterdam - Friday May 25th

We landed in Amsterdam at about 7:00am and headed for the train station. Once there, we had a little time to go exploring the station and to exchange some money into euros (pronounced “ooh-rows”). We noticed pretty quickly that many of the women in Amsterdam were very attractive people. That trend continued all day.

We made it into Central Station around 10:30 and into our hotel rooms around 11:00. The owner came out and said “Oy,” or hi. Our bedroom weren’t luxurious or anything, but they had everything we needed, so there were no complaints.

Trying to be adventurous, Chris and I headed off to see the Van Gogh museum on foot. The walk took a very long time, but we did see a large variety of locals. There were an astounding number of bikes, more than cars even, and we regretted not renting one once we realized how far the Van Gogh museum actually was from our hotel. The museum was wonderful, though nearly two floors were under renovation. We saw much of Van Gogh’s work, including the work of his contemporaries and influences. After we were there for a while, we headed out, intending to head towards Central Station to look around there. We ended up stopping and visiting the local park named Vondelpark. It was beautiful, and it was nice to see the local people all about, lying out or biking or playing with dogs.

We left, but ended up coming out on the wrong side, so we spent several minutes trying to find our way back. We did so casually and stopped several times to sit down and enjoy the town. One bakery we stopped in had some wonderful bread and cheese that we tried out. We quickly learned how easy it was to talk to locals at the bakery. Most of them understood English very well, and many could speak it fluently with a nice accent that I had never heard before.

We ended up eating dinner at a restaurant on Overtoom. The waitress was exceedingly nice, and she took very good care of us. The food was alright, but nothing extraordinary. We weren’t looking for fine dining this night though. We stayed for a while before we got a cab called. We made it back to our hotel around 9:30 or 10:00 and went to bed since we were so exhausted from the plane ride and a long day of sightseeing.