Amsterdam!

 Hello, Hallo, Hola all!

Well, I'm back for another go at our little travel blog!  

Our first leg of our experience is Amsterdam.  Flew directly from Edmonton to Amsterdam (8.5hrs direct!).  Got here at 10:00am local time (8 hr time difference to home, so it was 2am in our brain still!)  

We are staying at the Hotel Atlanta on the Rembrandt-plein (square).  A quaint little hotel ( https://www.atlantahotelamsterdam.nl/index.php ) with 36 rooms.  It is a great location with easy walking access to old Amsterdam's must see landmarks.  It is an old building, like most things in the "old" parts of Amsterdam and it does not have a lift (elevator)!  We had to lug our three 22 kg bags up three flights of stairs.  Munchie noticed right off the stair dimensions would not pass code in Canada!  Much too small for my size 11s!

We spent our first day exploring on our own.  We did have a mission, get a local brush style blow dryer.  I didn't bring mine to save luggage space and not to worry about using a converter.  Our quest was a success and we found a local salon supply store.  The dryer was reasonably priced (however, the jury is still out on whether or not I like it!).  

My handy dandy Galaxy 4 watch told me we did 8,800 steps our first day!  The jet lag did catch up to us and we ended having a bit of a lay down, just to give the batteries a quick recharge!  The first day ended with a bite to eat at the Irish style restaurant / bar right at our door step, and then the pillow!

Shepards pie and fish n chips!

The view from our room.

The palace at Dam Square

We have been fairly busy here in Amsterdam, there is so much to see!  We took a free guided walking tour of the old city, then took in the royal palace at the Dam Square.  Fun fact, the palace was actually the city hall up until Napolean installed his brother as the king and acquired the building for the royalty.  Our second day we logged 19,800 steps!

Red brick building is a house!

I had read about how in the old days, buildings in Amsterdam were taxed buy the width.  It was kinda cool seeing the actual thing!  There are some buildings (residences mostly) that look like you would have to step outside to change your mind!

There are examples like this all over the place!  

Another interesting aspect of building on unstable ground, a number of buildings have quite a tilt to them!

And we did take a stroll along the Red Light District, I guess its a must to check off the list of been there done that!  (Our canal tour boat captain talked about the district and its history)

We hit some museums, including the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum.  

We saw Rembrandt's most famous piece, the "Nights Watch".  The painting is enormous, about 12 x 14 feet (3.63m x 4.37m)!  Kinda the same as seeing the Mona Lisa in person and saying, wow, I thought it was bigger.  

We did a canal tour and it was a great way to see the old architecture of the city.  Our captain, Brian, was fantastic.  His pride and love of the county, city and culture was very evident!  He was a floating wikipedia on Amsterdam and the Netherlands's history!

We really enjoyed the small group setting, there were only 6 of us, unlike some of the other large boats with about a kazillion people on board!  The other couples were from Britain and were a pleasure to take the tour with!

We took a tour out of the city to Zaane Schans.  This is one of the few places where there are actual working windmills from days gone buy.  I am still amazed at the engineering that went into the building and operating of these wonders, all built by hand.

The ones at Zanne Schans are not water pumping types, they are examples of sawmills, which it turns out, was why they were initially built, to produce lumber to build the dutch merchant fleet in the 1600s and grain mills.  There is also on there that is still producing paint pigment that is used in the restoration of ancient works of art all over the world.

At the end of this tour there was an 8 minute ride in a helicopter simulator that was really quite something!  It took us all around the Netherlands, seeing the country and highlights from a birds eye view.  I thought is was awesome, however, Munchie, not so much!  She said it was likely the worst 8 minutes of her life!  I'm not sure why it would have been, she spent the entire time with her coat over her eyes!

I'm posting this on our last day in Amsterdam. We spent the day walking about, checking out open air markets ( they are all over the place!).  It will be an early night for us, our flight to Alicante departs at 7:15am, so we will be headed to the airport at 4:30am!

Next post to come once were are settled in Santa Pola!