Up at 5:00am to allow last minute packing and whatever you have to do to leave a hotel room, decided at the last minute to take a taxi to St Pancras station as the underground was to hard to navigate with our luggage and all those stairs. Boarding the channel train began at 7:00am and was a breeze, just put your ticket in the gate, go through security check and then customs,
Train was very comfortable and roomy, only 2 seats on each side of the aisle and has caferteria facilities,
Going through the channel is only about a 30 minute experience but quite a shock to the sensors when you hit daylight again and all you can see is the country side, beautiful, but the rain was following us,
Finally getting to Brussels we had to leave the Eurostar and board the Thalys train on another platform, boarding this train confusion reigned as there was no where to store our luggage due to the amount of luggage already stored, thankfully our seats were near the caferteria and the little train conductor man said to just leave them behind the counter, made our way to our seats to find another person in them and she was not going to move until another person pointed out to her that she was definately in the wrong seat, so she moved, I think she wanted a window seat, sad about that!!
Finally getting in to Amsterdam, the rain had disappeared, and no customs etc to go through we made our way to the hotel, only a 5 minute walk, booked in and we had two options the dreaded spiral staircase or the lift, decisions decisions,
After dropping our stuff it was out the door and into the mass of people that is Amsterdam, After wandering around and not really knowing where we were we came to the final conclusion to get on a hop on hop off bus and this would gives us our bearings, plus we were still looking for a post office. We did the complete circuit of the bus tour, got off and was able to work out what we wanted to see while here, another walk around and we were both getting very tired, found a place to have a quick bite to eat, back to the hotel and shower and I was dead to the world asleep by 7:30pm.
After a fantastic nights sleep we were up and out of the room, first stop was to see the Ann Frank house, now this was not opened till 9:00am, but would you believe when we got there the line up was very long, so we decided breakfast first as that line was not going to get any smaller soon, my breakfast consisted of what I requested or thought I requested an apple banana pancake but it came out as a huge crepe, but god it was beautiful. OK back to the line, and a line it was, would you believe it took us 90 minutes to get into the building but so worth it, any body that has read the Ann Frank book would be amazed to see how they lived for the 2 years. I would defy any one who knows the story not to finish the tour without a tear in their eyes, I know I did.
From there we hopped on our favourite bus and went to a diamond building to see how a diamond is cut and polished, and towards the end of the tour we were taken into a room and the tour guide explained and showed us the different types of colours in a diamond, and yes they were the real ones, and then she started to pull out trays and trays of rings and yes we were allowed to try on, OMG heaven.
Leaving the tour we went back to the hotel and sorted out our clothes as we definately had packed to much and really needed to send some home, yes we had found the post office, then on to the rail station to book our tickets to Prague tomorrow
I don't know what I had in my mind about Amsterdam but not what I found, I did not know that the city is surrounded by canals, and not just one but a lot of them, and that people actually have house boats on the canal and they actually permanently live in them, and every one rides bikes, alongside each road is a bike trail, and I have seen all ages young to old riding bikes, even bikes that have a small child on the front and another one on the back, or like a carriage on the front for the children to sit in, and by god do the bike riders rule the road, they don't take any notice of the road signs, you can be crossing on a cross walk with the green sign and before you know it they are crossing in front of you without a care in the world, I honestly don't know how there are not more accidents with the bikes.
The city is beautiful when you really look at it, hard to walk on the cobblestones that are every where, and we have been lucky to have just the best weather.