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| View from our hotel room |
Our first adventure was a walking tour. Our luggage would be transferred to our hotel and we'd see it later. It was bittersweet to walk off the boat. It had been such an experience up to this point. Viking does it right. Everything ran so smooth. The customer service was outstanding.
Which is why the process to get the walking tour moving forward was so bizarre and unorganized. The tour guides were late, the program director on site was hard to understand and didn't address us all at the same time. Whispers back and forth on what was happening. It was just weird to go from a well oiled machine to total chaos.
Finally our tour guides showed up. We had our "whisper" machines so we could hear her and we were off. The hotel was a good distance from anything interesting, so we had to do a good amount of walking to just get to the good stuff. Again. I'm very much over this walking a distance to get to fun stuff.
Our tour guide wasn't great either. Up until now we had fantastic tour guides who were knowledgeable, friendly and willing to answer any and all questions. This lady seemed dry and boring. Or, could it be that Amsterdam isn't that interesting? I couldn't believe that.
This walking tour could not end soon enough. She didn't have anything interesting to tell us, no good WWII stories, no real history of Amsterdam. Just bleh.
We ended our tour in Dam Square. Now the fun was going to begin. We were meeting one of my high school roommates and her husband. Marella and Micha found us in the square thanks to our crab hats. It was so good to see her again. She hasn't changed a bit. Micha I barely knew and quickly realized he was a riot.
We had some time before our boat tour that was scheduled for 1:30. We walked toward the Anne Frank house (where we'd be getting on the boat) and found a place to have lunch. Lunch wasn't great, but I didn't care. It was more fun just sitting and talking to Marella and Micha.
The boat tour was fun. Really just floating around the major canal and checking out the architecture. I loved the buildings and houses that lined the canals.
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| Traffic jam on the water |
After the boat tour we walked a little ways and found a bar to stop and have a drink. We spent another hour or so getting caught up, laughing and hearing about life in Amsterdam for them. It was so much fun to see her. I couldn't believe it had been 25 years, but it had.
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| Marella and Micha |
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| Talked Marella into wearing the crab hat |
Marella and Micha were trying to get us on a tram to get back to the hotel. Once we got on the tram conductor said we had to pay only with a card, so we got off. That meant we had to walk ALL The way back to the hotel. Ugh. I was exhausted and hot at this point, but there wasn't much other options. So off we went.
As we got closer we started discussing what we were going to do for dinner. We weren't finding any restaurants as we got closer to the hotel, but we found a Starbucks. We stopped in and got ourselves a peach tea and a little rest. I wasn't going to buy a Starbucks mug but once I saw them I couldn't resist.
Once we left Starbucks our hotel was a short (half of mile) walk away. No restaurants around. I wasn't about to walk all the way back into the main city so we thought we'd eat in the hotel restaurant. Turns out there are no open spots until after 9pm. By this time we're both starving so we decided to just order room service.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the hotel food and yet the burgers that showed up were off the charts good.
The next day was full of absolutely nothing. I decided I was going to take a lazy day and not really do very much. I hung out in the hotel and just relaxed. I really wish our hotel wasn't so far away from the downtown area. My opinion of Amsterdam may be different, but as it is now, I am not impressed.
Sure it's a nice town. Beautiful architecture and the canals make it special. But the city is dirty and really didn't seem that very interesting. I think I need to give Amsterdam another try at some point - I think my exhaustion might be obscuring the view of how fun Amsterdam could be.
Total Steps: 14, 952
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