Amsterdam

Officially this would be my third time to Amsterdam. One could add to that an extra two days for the nice 9 hour long layovers I’ve had here in the past. I must say that it is one of my favorite cities in Europe in terms of its atmosphere and simply the feel of it. There’s nothing exceptional about it – aside for the canals. It is not an exotic destination, nor an insanely beautiful one. Yet nevertheless I really like it here.

We are staying here with Agnes, or rather for now we are staying in her apartment. She and Robert are due back from Poland later on tonight. They got this cute little place on a charming little street with essentially no car traffic about 20-30 minute walk from Vondelpark and the Rijksmuseum. That means that although it was really easy to get here from the airport, it’s a bit of walk to get anywhere and my feet can most definitely attest to that.

Last night, after arriving at around 4pm and after a short nap we walked from her place all the way past all the museums, on to Dam Square, through the Red Light District, meandering through some of the other canal streets, back through Vondelpark and managed to get back to the apartment by about 12:30am. Today, again rather than taking a tram we opted to walk to the Rijksmuseum, from there on to the floating flower market etc.

Day 2. Kilometer 32 (?) and counting (wish my iPhone could keep count of the mileage we’re walking).

Speaking of iPhones - when your hosts provide you with the wrong internet password walking around the city with the iPhone network page up is quite entertaining. Generally speaking there are at least 20 – 30 networks available. Unfortunately most people are smart enough to have them password connected. But there was a corner, about two blocks away from Agnes’ house, where we managed to get an open network. So we stood next to the pharmacy, typing off a few emails. Just wish that the iPhone could make some kind of noise/signal whenever it found such a network rather than having to check for them manually.