The trip from Hamburg to Amsterdam turned into a little bit of a faff but was overall ok. I had ascertained that we needed to reserve seats so we went to the counter of the station in the morning to sort it out. The lady at the counter was pretty grumpy, so naturally that makes you want to end the interaction as quickly as possible to stop ruining her day with your stupid questions. So the upshot was I didn't tell her that we wanted to go to Amsterdam Schipol station (airport station) rather than Amsterdam Centraal, and I also didn't mention that we had a first class rail pass. I knew there was supposed to be a train change on the journey but I was surprised when the bit of paper she handed be revealed two changes.... This confused me, but we got the reservations anyway. As we left the info counter I realised we had got second class reservations instead of first class. Oh well.
On the train the first journey was fine but it was embaressing when the ticket checker kindly pointed out that with our railpass we could go and sit in first class if we wanted. We had to explain that our reservation was for second class and he shrugged and smiled. Then we changed at this random little station in the middle of nowhere. A lady was in our seats and when I asked her to move she rolled her eyes and looked at me like I was being really unreasonable. Then a crowd of drunk Germans got on directly behind us and proceeded to talk and laugh loudly for over an hour straight, without pause, I kid you not. I really wasn't in the mood for it! I feel like such a snob saying this but the 1st class carriages are always so peaceful it's really a lot more pleasant....
Then this announcement started coming over regarding the change to Amsterdam Centraal... and that's when I remembered that we wanted to be going to Schipol not Centraal and if we changed we would be ended up at the wrong place. I panicked for a bit until the guard came by, and he reassured me that if we stayed on the train we were on we would get to Schipol... so it was only one change after all. When the change came most of the passengers got off – including the drunk Germans, to my relief. But then this other family came and sat in front of us and this ten year old girl who probably had ADD proceeded to turn around in her chair and stare at me and giggle intermittently pretty much constantly until they got off, one stop before us. So not my favourite train journey (but still tops the next one we took... more on that later).
At Amsterdam, I tried to buy our reservations to Brussels in a few days just to have it sorted. But it turned out the train I wanted to take (the fast train) was sold out for the times we wanted and also hideously expensive to reserve a seat! The lady reassured me that the slower trains left every hour and we wouldn't need a reservation at all, so I decided we would just do that then.
From the station we took a cab to our accommodation as it was awkward to get to via public transport. The driver was Turkish (although born in the Netherlands) but I could have guessed that before he said from his (rather adventurous) driving. So we had some good conversations about where we had been in Turkey and stuff. He was very nice, making sure we had the address right before he drove off – but it was crazy expensive ride!!
Then were at our lovely B+B in Amsterdam. A nice Bulgarian girl greeted us and gave us all the usual information. We had one free meal at a restaurant owned by the B+B owners so we decided to cash that in that night as it got rid of the problem of where to have dinner. Our B+B was quite a ways out of Amsterdam central – I had originally intended us to enjoy nice walks into town through the large park near the B&B but as it turned out the weather while we were there wasn't really conjusive to that! The B+B girl explained to us how we could get to the restaurant via the tram and we nodded, barely understanding her accent, hoping that we were taking it in correctly!
Then we enjoyed a few hours R+R in the rather lovely room.
Revitalised, sort of, after a harrowing day, we headed out to try our hand at the trams and get into Amsterdam centre for tea. We managed successfully but end up in crappy seats where we rode backwards, getting thrown from left to right constantly – which wasn't great for Greg's tummy right before dinner! We got off at the right stop, and thanks to the maps on our phone and the GPS Greg got us to the restaurant but what we thought was one or two blocks turned out to be a bit more than that! The layout of Amsterdam is straightforward but the stretches of streets are deceptively long! Or maybe it just feels like it is taking ages on foot because so many people are whizzing past you one bicycles constantly.
The dinner was fairly amazing, and still fairly expensive even with the free meal! We were going to go for the three course but our main was so enormous that we couldn't bear the thought of anything more even though the dessert menu looked very tempting! The vibe of the restaurant was great and the quality of the food top notch.
Ordered a coffee to finish and got a wee dessert for free!
Stuffed, we waddled back to the tram stop and made it onto the tram just as the rain began to fall. It was also fairly freezing after the recent warm temperatures we'd enjoyed, especially in Berlin!
Walking to the tram on the way home, at 9.30pm, enjoying the blue skies (while they lasted) and the canals.
Near the entrance to the B&B, and average Amsterdam suburban street - FULL of bicycles!
Then it was home to bed!
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