Day 4 consisted of heading back to AMS airport, meeting M33p at Stuttgart airport, dropping our stuff at his place, and heading to Wine Fest to meet a bunch of his friends. Here are the Day 4 photos.
Amsterdam’s airport (AMS, in case there are multiple) is laid out well, with an almost industrial architecture without seeming impersonal. It reminds me a lot of the airport in Berlin, which I went through a few times in 2004/2005 for work.
We were on Standby for our flight, but they found out first class seats so we didn’t complain much. The flight was short- just over an hour.
I’ll post more about Wine Fest tomorrow, time to upload some photos.
I put the Day 3 photos up last night but I’m just now getting around to the Journal article. I don’t have the photos captioned yet, but that’ll happen eventually.
On Day 3 we spent a lot of time walking around Den Haag and also snuck in a canal tour through Amsterdam. The history of The Hague is great, and I’ll be looking for some literature when I get back.
The canal tour was pretty nice, but after a bit you get the “yeah, yeah, we saw this already” feeling, which isn’t accurate or fair but comes with the territory for guided tours. On the tour we passed the Anne Frank house, a 16th century house (1578 I believe, the oldest in Amsterdam), and some amazing houseboats. Apparently the boats are “fairly cheap” at €100,000 but the spots can cost between €300,000 – €400,000. I don’t care what the dollar > euro conversion rate is, that’s a lot of money.
We ended the evening with some more walking around and sampling fares at brewpubs and Dutch cafes. We played cards (Milles Borne) in the square and later at a pub, it was a nice way to pass the time and watch the crowds.
The photos from our first two days are finally starting to go into the Photo Album: Europe 2010: Days 1-2!
The internet access in The Netherlands was troublesome at best, but now that we’re in Stuttgart and using my buddy m33p’s stable (and impressive) network, I’m catching up a little on blog posts and photo uploads. We did this for our Honeymoon (article), and then the 2007 trip to London and Edinburgh (article / photos), and it’s really nice to be able to somewhat reconstruct the trip years later. Photos and blog posts can never replace true memories and experiences, but they definitely help capture the interesting nuances that fade away as blocks of memory get overwritten.
The first day of our trip was the start of the red-eye flight from Dulles International and didn’t produce any photo-worthy moments.
On Day 2 we landed in The Netherlands at 0800 and went to our hotel in The Hague. The early landing worked out well- we dropped luggage off at the hotel, walked around town for a bit, and checked in to the room early at around 1100. After a short nap (~ 1 hour) we headed out for lunch and to check out more of the town. First thing we noticed: the traffic patterns are nuts! Pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, trams, and taxis all share the same lanes and just adjust accordingly; bikes and trams have right of way. I still can’t believe we didn’t see any kind of accident- I’m impressed that a guy can ride a bicycle with no hands on the handlebars because he’s using them to smoke a cigarette and send a text message, all the while avoiding pedestrians, trams, scooters, and taxis. Crazy.
Enjoy the photos! If I manage to upload the 2 minute video we took on a busy street corner from a pub, I’ll update this post.
We landed in Stuttgart, Germany yesterday after 3 days and 2 nights in the Netherlands. I couldn’t get consistent internet in the Netherlands, so this is the first time I’ve started any blog posts or photo albums for this trip.
Over the next few days you’ll find articles here at JK’s Journal, photos in the Europe 2010 photo album, and of course there’s always my twitter feed: @planetjk.