Amsterdam The Netherlands

Day 1 – Hop on Bus

We disembarked the Celebrity Eclipse at 9 am and got a taxi to our Mercure Hotel in the Amsterdam Canal District. The taxi ride was a thrill for Paul who was in the front seat. The driver looked for police, and if there were none, he turned at no right turn signs and followed the trams, narrowly missed cyclists and drove quite fast. It cost the maximum 25 euros for the trip (he had quoted us 12-25) and Paul thinks he wanted to get back to the ship to catch another unaware tourist.

The Mercure is very centrally located. It is one block from a main road and close to many attractions.

It is not on a main road so would be difficult to find on your own. It was originally 19 houses that were changed into hotel accommodation.

The lobby is very understated. The receptionist has a laptop on one small round table. There is an office area in the room behind. Anika is very friendly and helpful and manages to do the same job as a much larger hotel with a formal lobby area.

We stored our luggage and bought hop on bus and boat tickets from the hotel desk.  It is about a 5 minute walk to the Heineken Experience where we can catch the bus. It was difficult to find the actual bus stop as local regulations prohibit them from putting up a bus sign (not helpful for tourists). They have a free app you can use to show them but we were not this organised on Day 1. So it was word of mouth with other tourists looking for the same place. We did a full loop which took 2 hours. No drivers stopping for cigarette breaks, or buses terminating without warning. Very pleasant compared to Stockholm.

 

See Paul’s video for more details of the bus trip.

We were on the bus by 10 am and back in our area by 12 noon.

 

We had lunch at De Carousel. This is a very popular and quaint café on a large roundabout, so we could watch the world go by, and try to make sense of the bicycle traffic.

 

The waitress told me there was a place to get my nails down just down the road so we went looking and I booked in for 2 pm – perfect.

 

While we waited we wandered through the markets that are open every day but Sunday. Opposite to ours at home.

We also found a chemist, ATM, supermarket and lots of restaurants.

We had a drink at an Irish Hotel and then I left Paul to have a few more beers while I went to be pampered. What cost me 163 euros on the ship cost me 39 euros here. That is why I didn’t return to the spa on the ship. Way too expensive. And this salon used OPI instead of the dreaded shellac that they used on the ship.

We then went back to the hotel to check in and have a rest.

 

Later we ventured out and stopped for a drink at a local bar that was crowded with smokers outside. We sat inside to escape the smoke. There were some kiwis at the table next to us. We keep running in to Aussies and kiwis here.

As Amsterdam is not known for fine food, we chose a Chinese restaurant and had a very light dinner of soup and an entrée. I think the volume of ship food had finally caught up with us.

 

 

Day 2 – Hop on boat doing canals

 

We went back the De Carousel for breakfast before walking to the nearest canal boat stop. The boats can use signs so it was easier to find where to board. The boat was not at all crowded when we got on so we could choose seats. A few stops later and it got much busier. Today we were more organised and downloaded the free app so we could tell when the next boat would arrive.  This is a great idea for tourists so they can make good use of their time.

 

The boat was much better for sightseeing as the bus was too close to buildings to get good photos and there were lots of trees at window height on the bus. It wasn’t long before the roof was opened on the boat, which meant I had to photograph through 2 panes of glass, hence some reflections I could have done without!

Again we did almost a full loop which took 2 hours.

We now have a good overview of the city.

 

Day 3

When we found the supermarket on Thursday we tried some mango hummus at a kebab type shop. We went back today to have a felafal kebab with the mango hummus. This is my best food find of the holiday. I have googled and there are lots of recipes so we will try it out at home.

 

Today is a rest day so we are not sightseeing, just having a very lazy day.

I am enjoying watching some of the US open tennis which I don’t normally see at home. Go Raffa!. I watched up to the end of set 2 last night and today they are repeating the highlights which is perfect. Just saw him defeat Khachnikov in 4 sets.

For our last evening in Amsterdam we went beer tasting, And no, we didn’t go to the Heineken Experience as Paul already knows he doesn’t like Heineken. we went to the Taproom near our hotel that had 24 different beers on tap.

 

I started on beer with Paul and then changed to the Apple Bandit cider that I have been drinking. Every beer Paul tried came in a glass just for the beer so it was a great experience. We ended up having Bitterballen ( a dutch beer snack food consisting of six meatlike balls battered with a potato type texture) and ‘Not so french fries’ (fries with a lemon pepper sauce and parmesan) which ended up being enough for dinner before we wandered home to our hotel.