Traveling to Amsterdam was our first cross country train experience on the ICE (Inter-City Express). We departed Friday afternoon from Stuttgart, transferred just before Frankfort, and arrived in Amsterdam that night. The weather was overcast and we were fortunate enough to make it to the main station before the rain began.
When purchasing a train ticket, you have the option to reserve a seat or do a first come first serve basis. We decided to forego the seat reservation as it was an extra fee and we figured how crowded could it possibly be? Huge mistake. Our first train was smaller and there were two seats together, no problem. After our transfer to a larger train, we were not as lucky and spent half an hour standing between train cars with nearly a dozen other people waiting for spots to clear out. Two stops later, we found seats together and the rest of the ride was much more enjoyable. We even ventured down to the food car with some friends to get some dinner.
The commute was super easy as the Metro we took left from the main station and our stop was just across from the hotel. We stayed at the Hampton by Hilton, it was a twenty minute train ride from the center of the city. The hotel was really nice and built only a year ago. We checked in and relaxed with a Heineken and some of my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I brought along before heading upstairs. I'm like a mom. I always bring treats. Remember how I said hotel room booking could get weird (or that we just don't understand it)? Well, we ended up with I Love Lucy style beds, two twin beds separated by the nightstand. They were super comfortable though.
Arriving downtown just after nine, we wandered the streets for while to get a lay of the land, as we didn't know exactly where we were going. The itinerary for the day wasn't set in stone, but we did have some places we really wanted to go. While waiting on some friends to finish up at the Anne Frank House, we explored the nearby area. I found the Amsterdam Tulip Museum and the Cheese Museum. Although, I think the word "museum" was overkill. The Tulip Museum was a gift shop with a history of tulips along the walls and the Cheese Museum had an endless amount of free cheese samples on the first floor and a history of cheese in the basement. We bought an award winning goat cheese (so good) and entertained ourselves with their photo prop area.
A beautiful church outside the Anne Frank House.
We met up with another couple and had drinks down by a canal; beers for the guys, coffee with Baileys for the ladies. Our view of the canal was great, we were by a bridge and got to see near collisions of boats, families of ducks swimming by, and people pedal boating their way through. All of us were interested in doing a canal tour so we checked out a nearby ticket center. The wait for the next tour wasn't too long, maybe fifteen minutes, so we got in line and waited for the boat to arrive.
Amsterdam is known for their liberal, open ways, but one thing I never realized was the breathtaking beauty of the city.
Amsterdam is a densely populated city where houses line the streets, in some cases up to the water. Some people opt to live on house boats rather than live further away. I could never survive on a house boat, but after seeing the city I certainly understand why people very much want to stay.
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