ccomfort.com / Traveling / Holland

Part I (Arrival)

It has taken me forever to find the time to write about the Holland trip. Not sure why it has taken so long . In reality I have been to Holland (namely Amsterdam ) numerous times, but this is about the first time.

It had been awhile since I had traveled abroad. I had not traveled much while in college. Either I was too busy studying or could not afford to travel around the world. Plus Georgia Tech was a tough school and it took a lot to get through there.

When I arrived in Birmingham and started working I did not have any vacation. I was given one weeks vacation after six months with the company and immediately jumped on a plane to Lake Tahoe to go skiing for a week. When I returned I once again had no vacation time. After another six months I received another weeks vacation.

However, I used that vacation before I even received it. I went on a week long sailing trip from Key West to the Dry Tortugas. The finally, on my second January with the company I received a full two weeks of vacation. Yep an entire two weeks, can you believe it!

So now I needed to plan a cool trip. My uncle and I always had a great time traveling and we talked about somewhere to go. He had been to Amsterdam before and from his description it seemed like a fun place to go (for non-seedy reasons thank you!).

So we planned a trip to Amsterdam. Of course it had been awhile and I had to get a new passport. I downloaded the forms, filled them out, and noticed that there was a place for returning your previous passport. I did not know where it was. I had that when I was sixteen and had moved three times, how was I expected to find it. So I called the post office I planned to go to for the passport and they said that I should just say it had expired and was destroyed. So one obstacle down.

I gathered the forms, my driver's license, and my birth certificate to head to the Pelham post office. When I arrived there was only one family ahead of me. When it was my turn I brought up all my forms and the woman started looking through everything. When she got to my birth certificate she frowned. She told me that I had brought the hospital birth certificate and I needed to bring the state issued one with the State Seal (from Maine of course ). So I left empty handed. I returned to work, found a company that could get the state birth certificate and FedEx it to me. So in two days I had the correct birth certificate and returned to the post office. This time I had all the right documents and twenty minutes later I was headed back to my car.

Three weeks later the passport arrived in the mail (January). We were heading to Amsterdam at the end of March so I had a lot of time to spare.

I bought a book on Amsterdam and I received another for my birthday (March 1) from my sister. So I had a lot of information on Holland (specifically Amsterdam) and was ready for a new adventure.

My uncle flew up from Fort Lauderdale and we met in the Atlanta airport. We were flying standby (as always). The flight was pretty empty and we got first class seats together. The flight over was uneventful. My goal was not to sleep on the flight or during the first day until it was evening in Amsterdam.

We arrived at 10am at Schipol airport and jumped in a taxi to our hotel. For this trip we had a Hilton just outside the city. It was just a couple of blocks from the trolley that ran to the center of the city and about a mile walk to the Museumplien area where most of the museums (of course) can be found.

We checked in, brought our luggage to the room, took showers, changed, and headed off to the city. Since it was my first time my Uncle was being the tour guide. We decided to walk all the way in to the city center (about 2-3 miles).

Our first stop was the Concertgebouw (Concert Hall). We wanted to see if there was anything good playing the week we were going to be there. The first marquee we saw was for the London Symphony Orchestra. It was playing on Monday (this was Saturday). We knew there would not be any tickets left but had to check.

The woman behind the ticket counter told us the show had been sold out for four months, BUT it just happened that someone returned nine tickets and so there were some available. We bought two, eighth row, center. What a great way to start our week in Amsterdam.

Holland, Part II (the End of Day 1)

We left the Concert Hall and walked across the street and headed through the Museumplein. The area is so named since there are three large museums in this area, they include:

We did not stop, this time, to check out the museums, I was still trying to get my bearings on where everything was.

We continued our walk to the center of Amsterdam, our goal was Central Station, the train station at the city center . On the way we passed:

The walk was great and it helped keep us awake. We stopped at an authentic Dutch restaurant for lunch. The food was excellent and we find ourselves there at least one each visit.

A close family friend and her husband spent part of the year in Amsterdam since they were part owner's of a bar/hotel. We decided to walk over to their bar after lunch and see if they were in. The place was very nice and we sat down to have a drink or two. Our friends Monty and Alice were not around so after a couple of drinks we continued our tour around the city.

As it started to get dark we decided to head back to the hotel. On the way we found a nice Italian restaurant not too far from our hotel. We checked out the menu and decided to have dinner there. It was about 8pm (early for dinner by European standards). We ordered our drinks and next thing I knew I my Uncle was waking me up to order. Seems I had fallen asleep against the wall. Then after we ordered I noticed my Uncle did the same thing. We had to keep each other up so that we would be awake when dinner arrived. The dinner arrived, the food was great (don't remember what I ate).

After dinner we headed back to the hotel which was just a few blocks away. We were both exhausted from the flight over and the day of sight seeing that I don't think we lasted twenty minutes before we were sound asleep.

Part III

It's Sunday, and we are up early. Our bodies are not sure what time zone they are supposed to be operating in. Fortunately it is not too early. We decide to head in to town for breakfast at a place John has been before. It is not too close, but the walk is refreshing and it is wonderful to be walking around such a beautiful city.

(Click to Enlarge)

After about 30 minutes we arrive at the restaurant. It is a small two story place nestled in between other offices. It is on small street just outside of the second canal ring.

We opt for the non-smoking section which happens to be the bottom floor. It also is on the floor with the kitchen which is open and right there. A little loud, but it's cool to watch the food being prepared. (I guess it could have been bad if the hygiene was suspect, but it was not).

It was a nice breakfast, good omelet and good coffee. After breakfast we decide to walk around the outskirts of the city. Amsterdam is inundate with canals which form a sort of ring pattern. As you move out from the city center you cross these canals that form rings around the city. In the outskirts (which is still less than 2 miles from Central Station) there are more apartments and less businesses. It was a great time. We saw where a lot of Dutch live, their apartments are on the small side, but I believe that to be true of most large city dwellings.

The adventure through the canals was a lot of fun. We had lost track of time and it was now just past lunch time. We had made plans to meet Monty and Alice at their bar around 2pm so we decided to head there to grab a quick lunch and wait for them.

When we arrived Monty and Alice were already there. So we joined them for a drink and some food. While we were there some of their friends (Dutch) came in and we all sat around and conversed for a couple of hours. Their friends, Audry and K, owned a restaurant not too far away. We made plans to go by and eat there one day.

Audry and K headed back to their restaurant. John and I wanted to head back for some time to refresh and made plans to meet with Monty and Alice for dinner later that evening.

After a shower and a short nap it was time to head back out for dinner. We had agreed upon Indian food for that evening. There was a place Monty recommended near their bar and we met them that evening. The food was fantastic of course.

We stayed there for awhile after dinner just catching up (which you would think we had already caught up at lunch, but there was still more).

We headed back to the hotel and crashed.

Monday we awoke at a more reasonable time, headed back to the same place for breakfast. After breakfast we decided to head back toward the hotel and go to the Van Gogh museum.

Don't judge, I like art museums and we spent most of the morning there. It really was interesting. Of course you are not allowed to take picture in most of the museums so my photos of the experience are few and far between (if I find any I will post them). The Van Gogh museum had more than just pictures by Van Gogh, thee were a lot of other exhibits from the same period. It was a real pleasure to see such great artists work in one place.