Sep 26 - Amsterdam day 3

Toilets – I keep forgetting to record this for Jason – the Amsterdam hotel has dual-flush toilet. I don’t need to get into details here … you can google this one if you are interested ! This is the first time that I remember encountering such a toilet on our travels. It works … not sure that Gavin would like it though … I won’t bother explaining here …

We are having cereal and coffee in the room today. We picked up some juice and yogurt on the way back to the hotel last night. Right now we are relaxing and watching BBC World at 9:55 a.m. Boy are we slow !!

The plan for today … get dressed … walk to local market recommended by Kasper … perhaps have lunch there if we are hungry by then … go to diamond store (Sandy wants to look and drool, but we won’t buy) … take canal tour boat … eat dinner somewhere … go to ballet … back to hotel and pack … The day will race by too quickly. The day will race by too quickly. The day will race by too quickly.

No doubt it will rain again today. The weather is interesting – it will be sunny one minute, raining the next, and then sunny the next. It’s a city for umbrellas and/or hooded raincoats. People walk, ride bicycles, whatever rain or shine. It’s a great city for growing flowers.

The plan for tomorrow … our flight is at 11:something so we’ll take the Tram to the train station and the train to the airport. We are due to arrive in Philly at 2:something but of course by the time we get luggage, get through customs & immigration, collect car, get to Stef’s it will probably be 5pm. I’m saying 5pm so that I’ll be pleasantly surprised when we arrive at 4pm. There is one added complication in that I cannot find the car parking ticket so I’ll have to go through some routine on checkout. I’m sure that I saved it and brought it with me but perhaps it got stuck in some other papers or I thought it was another used ticket for something (you use a lot of tickets on a trip like this) and threw it out. Hopefully we can find the car in the long-term lot in Philly !! the location was written on the back of the ticket !! groan.

… later …

Of course it rained. This is Amsterdam after all.

The market was fascinating. Mostly for locals, it would be perfect if we lived in the area – seafood, meats, vegetables, housewares – the market itself went on for a good dozen blocks, a real taste of Amsterdam.

Food – I forgot – we have also had Japanese (Sushi in London) … and now add French to our list with our lunch. For dinner, I’m afraid we repeated – Italian again but I’ll get to that later.

It was well after noon when we left the market. It was raining again of course. We then headed to the canal tours and after a false start at one tour, got our money back and found the boat that we wanted. The best deal with have been the on-and-off canal boat but we simply took a 75 minute circuit that wandered by areas that we had already seen, eg. The Anne Frank house, then out to the harbour and back around. It was good but we did not see anything new. Sandy insists that it would have been better to have done this first to get an overview then do our walking, but I think it all works out to the same thing.

After the tour we walked back down to Centraal Station then found the cheese outlet that Sandy had heard about. Many varieties ? – perhaps – but the St. Lawrence market in Toronto has more selection overall, but not as many goudas …We bought some to take back – hopefully the drug dogs in the airport won’t complain about our cheese !!

Back to the hotel I got rid of the camera bag and we headed out to Rembrantpleine area for dinner, close to the location of the ballet. We didn’t find anything new to try – actually I take that back – we were tempted by Indonesian but the two restaurants that we spotted were both fixed price meals at 40-50 Euros (60-75$) which was too steep. The meals probably would have been good but we were short on time.

The Italian place reminded me of New York – indifferent service – but then sloppy accounting and messed up orders put it in its own league. The food was very good – simple and well prepared -- but I can still taste the garlic which is my fault, not theirs. As I get older I find that some tastes linger on … and on …

We raced out to the ballet getting there with less than 5 minutes to spare. It was 4 short pieces, with an intermission after the 1st and 3rd. It was hot inside, too hot. I didn’t particularly care for them – modern dance – I like classical ballets better.

The sky was clear before and after we left for dinner and came out of the ballet but I brought the umbrella anyway. It looks like better weather is on the way – must be time for us to leave !