A day of separate activities. I visited the Rijksmuseum and Bruce did a half day tour. The Rijksmuseum has recently been renovated and it is an easily accessible place. My purchase of a ticket yesterday meant I just walked straight in. There was a queue in the access road which wasn't too bad. They seemed to hold people and admit 20 or so at a time. This was at noon on a Monday; weekends would be worse. When I came out at 2 there was no queue. Using the free Ri...

Today we moved from Douwe's apartment in the Pijp which is conveniently located near the Museums. His place is fine; a work in progress best describes it. We weren't unhappy there but the stairs are scary. We lugged our hefty suitcases onto the tram like good flash packers do and headed over to the Plantage district. We couldn't access the apartment until later but noted that we're on the first floor and the stairs go straight up. The apartment is located opposi...

Woke to some rain this morning. It soon eased off and was done by the time we headed out. We caught a hop-on / hop-off bus which gives a good view of the parts of the city you probably wouldn't otherwise do. I think we could have achieved the same via tram, only losing the commentary and perhaps not seeing all that we did from this form of drive-by tourism. We would have missed the best line - "Amsterdam is a city built on piles." First stop was at Anne Frank Ho...

We had a much more pleasant second leg. Both slept well - Bruce probably got 6 hours; I would have had 4 or so. Our section of the cabin was well behaved and it wasn't until we landed that I realized there was a baby in the centre rows. Very well behaved. Must be good parents. We made good time through customs and immigration to a taxi that got us to the apartment in The Pijp (pronounced pipe). It is a nice place although it's on the 4th floor and places in Amst...