Day 10, 22 June 2014 - Amsterdam & Travel Day (and night). When travelling on Amsterdam's trams and buses, the biggest thing to focus on is checken/check uit (which actually sounds identical to check-in and check-out). Basically tapping your travel card against a reader when you board and alight the vehicle. Very important. Hugely. Constant announcements. Which brings me in a round-a-bout way to my point. Had to check-out of my tiny wee hotel today. At the hugely anti-social hour of 10 am. (Much prefer 11 am or emminently sociable 12 noon check out.) In any event, left the big bag and headed off to amuse myself until 7 pm and my night train to Copenhagen (15 hours in a very small room with 5 total strangers - sort of a rolling-stock version of a backpackers' hostel I imagine). Took a few tram rides and discovered a delightful semi-walking street up near Centraal Station called Haarlemstraat. When I say semi-walking, it actually had pavements on both sides and the push-bikes by and large stayed on the road - all good! It's patently obvious that the Dutch don't get enough sunshine. Twice today I've been looking at houses and found people sun baking in their underwear on their windowsills - and these were regular folks, not girls-in-windows. Wasn't brave enough to snap a photo - didn't particularly want stroppy Dutch folks chasing me down the road in their underwear! Found another tram and eventually found a Chinese restaurant actually open at lunch time who cooked me up vegetables - thoroughly over-priced and under-delivered, but will keep me going for a few days until the vege urge strikes again. (The Dutch have a word used for everything from your date on a Friday to all forms of food... lekker - basically tasty. Can be used as a statement(.), a question? and an exclamation! Lunch veges were not very lekker.) It's really only when we've been travelling that we realise how many fabulous Thai restaurants that Sydney has (all open at lunchtime and keen to serve up massive, fresh meals for A$8 or so). But aside from James / Thai / Washing Machine & Dryer and a kitchen... that's about all I miss. Suspect my jeans will jump into the washing machine under their own steam when I make it to Wales in July! Anyway - it's been an afternoon of catching up with emails and hoovering up free wifi over a cup of coffee. Will head back to the hotel, luggage-up and catch the tram to Centraal in due course. The adventure continues - Copenhagen, Denmark tomorrow for 3 action packed days. Evening Postscript... Only 5 of us in teeny rail compartment - got rid of two due to a broken berth, and gained 1 somewhere in Germany. Made a couple of new friends and shared a bottle of wine that had been carried from the Golan Heights in Israel. PS - it is a quirk of European trains that we all assume we'll see our destination on the board. As here, Copenhagen was in very small letters and in local spelling Kobenhavn - so even though it was get on (200 odd people in less than 3 minutes) and get off at the end of the line in Copenhagen, there were other carriages going to other places - such as Praha (Prague), Warwaw and Berlin. Never ceases to amaze me that mistakes don't occur and the odd carriage load of people hooked up to the wrong engine. Fancy waking up in Russia for instance!