Blogs from Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands, Europe - page 12

Short blog here to let readers take a break from the massive ones recently. Had a great first day in Amsterdam! Well, the afternoon was great. We had another day of sitting in Maccas all morning waiting for check in. We left Brussels at 7:50am, on a train that took almost two hours to get to Amsterdam. Check in was at 2pm, and by the time we’d gotten off the train and walked all the way to a maccas close to the air bnb, it was only 10:30am. So, we played cards and watched some videos and gawked at the lady standing outside the toilet asking people for 50 cents to use it for almost three hours. We left at 1:30pm and were able to check in straight away. We spent about half an hour settling ... read more

Rijksmuseum Our hotel was very close to Rijksmuseum – National Gallery of the Holland. I’d wanted to visit this museum for a long time. After getting off the canal cruise, we decided to look round Rijksmuseum. We showed our Amsterdam Passes at the start of the museum. Having looked at the floor map, we understood that Dutch paintings are displayed on the 1st and 2nd floor. We went up to the 2nd floor. We saw a huge variety of paintings and artworks – blue-and-white porcelain, sculptures, winter landscapes, Rembrandt’s portraits and his masterpieces, amazing still-life paintings. All the paintings and decorative arts had English commentaries. My parents admired massive collections of Rembrandt’s self-portraits and historic paintings with the commentary how he produced colours on the point reflecting of the sunlight in the dark place... read more

Up at 8 am. Decent buffet breakfast at the hotel. Now, last night we had made reservations at the Van Gogh Museum for 11:45. That museum is located in the same museum quarter we visited yesterday. We decide to make our way there early and see what else we can see. It's a dreary day, so museums seem a sensible choice. Single tram stop and some walking. A word about bicycles in Amsterdam. As I may have said earlier, there are not only more bicycles than cars in Amsterdam, there are more bicycles than people. And bicycles appear to have the right of way over both pedestrians and motorized vehicles. Major streets have a bicycle lane in the middle of the sidewalk. Pedestrians are supposed to walk on either side and leave the centre free. This ... read more

And now we are in Amsterdam, the terminus of our river cruise. We still have one more sleep on the boat, however, before we disembark tomorrow. Because we will spending a few days seeing the sights of Amsterdam on our own, we have opted for an excursion just outside Amsterdam to a place named Zaanse Schans. Zaanse Schans is an open air conservation area and museum on the bank of the Zaan River. It displays the traditional architecture of the area and has several functioning windmills and craftsman's workshops. Our guide is a friendly lady with an infectious laugh named Rita. She provides background information on the historical relationship between Amsterdam and the sea. As is commonly known, most of the Netherlands, and in particular Amsterdam, is below sea level and is protected from flooding by ... read more

Our trip is pulling to a close where it began, in busy, intriguing Amsterdam. This is the penultimate blog entry. There will be one more as we're staying 2 nights in Seoul, South Korea, on our return to Australia. Returning to Amsterdam from Budapest has been a journey of discovery on our own, quite different from the tight and well-planned itinerary of the river trip. Each style of travel has had its benefits, surprises and pleasures.... read more

Well here is going back and blogging what we did in Amsterdam now that we have had time to slow down and smell the Gardenias in Croatia. Boy we were late getting back to our hotel on the 25th and were we tired, we crashed hard, a lot of walking and serious jet lag. So today we crawled out of bed around 1030 Hrs and it was cool and windy outside. I worked on my blogging that I was already behind on and we never crawled out of the hotel until 1345 Hrs. We walked over to a big bus station right beside our hotel and thought we were catching the bus to Centraal Station, but it turned out to be heading down to the Museum district, which was alright anyways. We got off the bus ... read more