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Published: August 10th 2007
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Adam Los
A fine young host. After getting back to Edinburgh Tuesday was spent doing a bunch of blog entries at an internet cafe while Heather and Jesse did another bunch of errands. We were up and at it fairly early on Wednesday 'cause we had a flight to catch to Amsterdam and we had to return the rental car on the way. Things were seeming to be going nicely, thinking of being at the airport about 8:00AM for our 10:00AM flight, when I just happened to check the paperwork for our EasyJet flight and boy, did things hurry up!!
The flight was actually scheduled to arrive in Amsterdam about 10 and the departure was 8:50AM. So much for thinking we were doing well and going to have an easy couple hours at the Edinburgh airport to have breakfast before our flight. Fortunately the morning rush hour in Edinburgh is nothing like the GVRD commute. Leaving downtown Edinburgh at 7:10 we got to the airport in time to return the car, check in with EasyJet, and still sit and have a coffee. I think we had green lights all the way, except one, and I had recently had a lot of practice driving on the left
Canal Barge
A wet transportation system hand side of the road.
Never having been in Amsterdam before I was impressed by the size of Schiphol airport and the convenience of the rail connections under the terminal. The terminal is huge and make YVR look like a mini-airport. We were in the Netherlands for a quick tour and had been offered accomodation at the home of one of Heather's friends, Bev Los, in Dordrect a short distance South of the Schiphol so onto the train we went. Buying tickets was easy with ticket agents on the main level of the airport and escalators taking you right down to the track level for your train. Five minutes later along comes the train, on we get, away it goes, and "Oh, Oh", wrong train. As we find out shortly from the conductor, not only the wrong train but we are only 2nd class passengers, and we are seated in 1st class. At least the train was going the right direction so we simply got of a the next stop, Leiden, and 10 minutes later along came the right train. Another hour and we were in Dordrect and soon at Bev's front door. Although Bev had offered accomodation, she
Sidewalk Cafe
Imagine a sunny day here watching the world go by and her husband Herman were also on holidays and had left their son Adam to greet us.
The last time we had seen Adam was in Edmonton when he was about 7 years old. Now he is a very polite young man of 20. After showing us around the house he took us for a tour to the centre of the old town. Dordrect is the oldest Dutch city and is at an intersection of two major canals. While we had some snacks in a restaurant by the junction of these two canalls we had lots of activity to watch. Here we could see lumber, coal, petroleum products, and containers of general merchandise, along with some vehicles, all being moved on the canal the same way we see material being shipped by truck.
Some of the buildings here are so old that they have leaned somewhat and have had to have foundations restored. Some of the buildings are leaning forward into and over the street and some are leaning to the left or right. Definitely neither square nor plumb. We have a very short stay here, only two nights and about a day and a half, and I
A Canal
Nothing about the Netherlands would be complete without a picture like this am writing this on the half day before we return to Amsterdam. It rained somewhat yesterday, nothing like our Southbound trip from the Highlands of Scotland, and it looks like the sun is breaking out now and a bit of blue sky.
Finally, I have the travels caught up to the day. Enjoy the pictures. We are on our way again, - - - back to Edinburgh for the night then on to Glasgow.
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