So we landed in The Netherlands at 12:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, November 22. From where I was seated in coach I spotted Brian exiting. He saw me and we exchanged a smile. I wasn't far from the exit door so I meet up with him quickly. We exchanged stories about our experiences. He did feel guilty about sitting in Business Class. Determined not to complain I tried my hardest not to say anything bad. I quickly explained my book reading, game playing and sleeping experience. I informed him that the food wasn't very good before he went into telling me about how he watched a ton of movies and couldn't sleep. At first he spoke like the experience was wasted on him and that I should have totally taken the seat but after chatting a bit I could tell by his "ooh this" and "ooooh that" that he had a pretty good time in Business Class. I did mange to point that out to him. hehehe The first order of business after landing was trying to find a place to buy a train ticket. The TimeOut tour book said you could hop a train from Schipol Airport into Amsterdam for a few Euros. The one good thing about flying standby was that our luggage was the first pieces off the plane (how convenient!). With luggage in tow, we found a machine that sold train tickets in the claim area. We quickly learned that our credit cards didn't work. Um problem! While we had cash the machine didn't take Euros so we were a bit nervous as to what we would do next. The machine kept asking for pin numbers no matter why type of credit card we put in the machine. Who in America knows their credit card pin number? I think you only know this if you get cash advances and that is something we don't do. After trying all of his cards and my cards and getting help from some lookey loos we couldn't buy any tickets. We had one of those "What would they do on Amazing Race?" moments and continued on. Figuring there must be a counter with a real live person or a machine that takes cash we walked some more. Eventually, we found the train transfer area and sure enough, there was a ticket buying area with real live people and bought two tickets. We managed to go to the wrong station to wait for the train. This was my fault and my hubby told me that I would suck on Amazing Race (that is so not fair I said! hehehehe) After correcting the problem, we only had to wait a few moments before the train came and I was frantically trying to figure out how I could charge my phone. I had left it on, on the plane and all the searching to find signals ran the battery down. We needed to call the lady who we rented our place from when we arrived at the train station in Amsterdam. After boarding the double decker train I looked for outlets with no luck. I sat back and from the window watched the snow twinkle down. I should have backed those boots I thought. The ride only took about 20 mins. We arrived at Amsterdam Central Station and tried to find a pay phone. Luckily in our search we found a travel center with outlets. I found my European converter and plugged the phone in but I had to wait until it got enough charge to make a call. The hub left for a moment. When he came back I had enough juice in the phone to call the lady at the Bickersbed house rental. She told us we could take a cab or walk 10 minutes. We chose walking. However, we didn't exactly know where we were going because she spoke Dutch and had broken English. We go outside and its like a blizzard out. Ok, not really a blizzard but totally blowing snow which I hadn't experienced since I went home to Michigan in January a few years ago. I thought I totally made a mistake coming here in the winter. Luckily I was worrying more about how we were going to find our rental more then being cold. After about 5 minutes the blizzard died down and we found ourselves wandering. How far could it be? 
One important thing I learned in life was from my Aunt Sandy and that was when you are lost or need to find a place to rent look for a postman. When I moved to Los Angeles, my Aunt Sandy came with my mom and I and we were looking for apartments and got lost and sure enough the United States Postman knew where there were open places and he set us on a right path. Remembering this, I jumped at the chance to ask where this street was when I saw a postwoman delivering mail. Sure enough she gave us directions that allowed us to find our way (we did have to ask one more person because of all the darn canals all over the place!). Our 10 minute was was more like 30 but we found our rental. Someone had taken a house and made two rentals out of it. We had the top floor. A very nice Dutch woman was there who gave us a map and circled all the places we should go. She gave us the tour of the place. It wasn't really big but it had a nice room, funky circle bathroom and a kitchenette. Downstairs there was a computer with access to the internet and a small kitchen table. She told us the couple staying downstairs was leaving the next day but that they were quite. After unpacking our stuff and getting more layers of clothing on, we took off walking around 3PM in the afternoon. With maps in hand we ended up in the Red Light District. 
It was familar to me since I had visited in the summer. We walked around and around taking in the ladies and the millions of bars and weird shops until our stomaches growled for food. We took out the TimeOut tour book to see what it suggested. 
I had a circled a few places. A few things decided where we ate, distance and the ability to locate the place on the map. We really wanted to check out a place called Oriental City but ended up with Thai because we happened to be right by it (and we had spent 20 minutes trying to find the darn Oriental City with no luck - thanks canals!). So we decided to eat at a Thai place called Thaise Snackbar Bird. Not exactly an enticing name but per the book the most authentic Thai place in town. The restaurant was the tiniest place I had ever seen but it was full of people. There were no tables available but the guy sat us at a table for four that already had two young girls sitting at it. I was about to order ice tea when one of the girls, who turned out to be Canadian said "Don't, it's sparkling." "Ewe," I say and thank her for letting me know. The waiter asked why both the Canadian and I didn't like sparkling ice tea. Other then it was gross, we both replied, that where we both live sparkling Ice Tea isn't the latest thing. 
The guy was confused as it must have been popular in Amsterdam but he brought me a Coke nevertheless. We received two huge helpings of food. I had the Pad Thai and the hub had the beef thing. The Pad Thai was good but not the best I ever had and the hub's meal was pretty tasty. So I ended up taking lots of bites from his food. After dinner it was about 6:30PM. We walked around a little more and headed back to the room arriving around 8PM. It was early to call it a night but we barely slept on the plane and had been up for over 48 hours straight. The hub went to bed immediately and I got to deal with the couple downstairs who was anything but quite. I was lying in bed trying to figure out the plan for the next day. After walking around in the big ole city that afternoon I knew we needed a plan for the next day. 
Then I hear someone coming up the stairs. This guy knocks on the door I answer and he asks in broken Dutch if my "man" was available. I said no he is asleep. He looked at me all weird and then left. He went downstairs and proceeded to make a ton of noise. It was like he decide to cook dinner and bang on all the pots and pans in the kitchenette. He comes back upstairs an hour later and knocks on the door. I growl because I had just gotten asleep and that isn't easy for a light sleeper like me. Then he asks "beer?" While I appreciate the fact he wanted to include me in his party I was tired and very annoyed. I basically gave him the "Are you friggin' crazy?" look and he went back downstairs to make more noise. It seemed our quite retreat, in a quiet part of the city wasn't quiet. You could hear the coming and goings of all the neighbors who seemed to go to bed in waves. The first wave went to bed at 2AM and the second at 5:30AM or at least that is when the biggest door slamming noise occurred. I am not sure when I fell asleep but when I awoke the next day it was 11AM.
One important thing I learned in life was from my Aunt Sandy and that was when you are lost or need to find a place to rent look for a postman. When I moved to Los Angeles, my Aunt Sandy came with my mom and I and we were looking for apartments and got lost and sure enough the United States Postman knew where there were open places and he set us on a right path. Remembering this, I jumped at the chance to ask where this street was when I saw a postwoman delivering mail. Sure enough she gave us directions that allowed us to find our way (we did have to ask one more person because of all the darn canals all over the place!). Our 10 minute was was more like 30 but we found our rental. Someone had taken a house and made two rentals out of it. We had the top floor. A very nice Dutch woman was there who gave us a map and circled all the places we should go. She gave us the tour of the place. It wasn't really big but it had a nice room, funky circle bathroom and a kitchenette. Downstairs there was a computer with access to the internet and a small kitchen table. She told us the couple staying downstairs was leaving the next day but that they were quite. After unpacking our stuff and getting more layers of clothing on, we took off walking around 3PM in the afternoon. With maps in hand we ended up in the Red Light District. 
It was familar to me since I had visited in the summer. We walked around and around taking in the ladies and the millions of bars and weird shops until our stomaches growled for food. We took out the TimeOut tour book to see what it suggested. 
I had a circled a few places. A few things decided where we ate, distance and the ability to locate the place on the map. We really wanted to check out a place called Oriental City but ended up with Thai because we happened to be right by it (and we had spent 20 minutes trying to find the darn Oriental City with no luck - thanks canals!). So we decided to eat at a Thai place called Thaise Snackbar Bird. Not exactly an enticing name but per the book the most authentic Thai place in town. The restaurant was the tiniest place I had ever seen but it was full of people. There were no tables available but the guy sat us at a table for four that already had two young girls sitting at it. I was about to order ice tea when one of the girls, who turned out to be Canadian said "Don't, it's sparkling." "Ewe," I say and thank her for letting me know. The waiter asked why both the Canadian and I didn't like sparkling ice tea. Other then it was gross, we both replied, that where we both live sparkling Ice Tea isn't the latest thing. 
The guy was confused as it must have been popular in Amsterdam but he brought me a Coke nevertheless. We received two huge helpings of food. I had the Pad Thai and the hub had the beef thing. The Pad Thai was good but not the best I ever had and the hub's meal was pretty tasty. So I ended up taking lots of bites from his food. After dinner it was about 6:30PM. We walked around a little more and headed back to the room arriving around 8PM. It was early to call it a night but we barely slept on the plane and had been up for over 48 hours straight. The hub went to bed immediately and I got to deal with the couple downstairs who was anything but quite. I was lying in bed trying to figure out the plan for the next day. After walking around in the big ole city that afternoon I knew we needed a plan for the next day. 
Then I hear someone coming up the stairs. This guy knocks on the door I answer and he asks in broken Dutch if my "man" was available. I said no he is asleep. He looked at me all weird and then left. He went downstairs and proceeded to make a ton of noise. It was like he decide to cook dinner and bang on all the pots and pans in the kitchenette. He comes back upstairs an hour later and knocks on the door. I growl because I had just gotten asleep and that isn't easy for a light sleeper like me. Then he asks "beer?" While I appreciate the fact he wanted to include me in his party I was tired and very annoyed. I basically gave him the "Are you friggin' crazy?" look and he went back downstairs to make more noise. It seemed our quite retreat, in a quiet part of the city wasn't quiet. You could hear the coming and goings of all the neighbors who seemed to go to bed in waves. The first wave went to bed at 2AM and the second at 5:30AM or at least that is when the biggest door slamming noise occurred. I am not sure when I fell asleep but when I awoke the next day it was 11AM.
Comments