Day 2 - Amsterdam to Cologne 19/12/09

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One thing, if you are going to be travelling on these bus tours, dont expect to sleep in! That just never happens. A wake up call at 8am is an amazing sleep in. Dont expect to get many of these! For our morning in Amsterdam, we had to be on the bus for 8:30am. That means breakfast was at 7:45am and wake up call 7am. (I did write a whole pile of these minor notes in my cosmos book, however that was lost the last day - very frustrating, especially for all the details on internet costs etc for you).

Breakfast was lovely. Alot of choices and options. Once again, when we went outside there was snow everywhere! First thing we headed out to a boat cruise around the canals. Now unfortunately my son was the last off the bus so i didn't get the chance of a window seat and really this is the best chance you have of taking photos of their houses and bridges! If you can, race off the bus to secure a window seat on this trip! After the cruise we went to a diamond factory. I would have preferred to have seen clogs being made than the diamonds. Not sure if anyone bought anything here, but they did a big sales pitch regardless. We then were driven to a windmill that isn't in working order to take a photo for 5 minutes before being dumped in the city for an hour and a half for lunch.

It was funny listening to the warnings about the Coffee houses! I'm not sure if any people on our group took up that "option". When we got off the bus, the first thing I did instead of going directly into the town was cross over a bridge to look at the bike racks! Honestly so many bikes! It was stunning, and to think you park your bike amongst the hundreds and then have to find it again in the afternoon! It was really cold in Amsterdam, in the minus, but that made it fun. We headed off to get pancakes for lunch, as we were told they should be tried. Just a word of warning, these pancakes are massive! Luckily I chose a savory, my son chose a sweet one, at half time we swopped and it made eating a full one bareable! After lunch we wandered just around the city admiring the buildings. The palace was under updating, which was a touch disappointing, however just outside the palace, there were pigeons everywhere being feed. For a bit of fun, we stole some of the bread off the birds then held it for them to eat. Made for some cool photos!

The shops were a bit different for buying the usual tourist trinkets. My innocent 14 yo son was horrified. All the standard shops had novelty sex objects and weed for sale amongst everything else. I tried to explain to him, that that was just how they did things over there, but I think which is cute he still thought it was disgusting and inappropriate so he didn't really like the town for that reason. That aside, the buildings were just beautiful. However at times when wandering the streets you can smell the coffee houses, and thankfully we didn't end up in the Red Light district!

It didn't seem like we got much time in Amsterdam before we were on the bus again and heading into Germany. Just a word of warning, all the toilets in Europe are a user pays system! The other thing to note is the first time we got to an ATM was in Amsterdam city, and because I didn't take money out on the boat via the ATM's it did mean only credit card purchases for the tea the previous night as there were no ATM's at the service stations either!

We had one stop at a little bus stop just inside the German border before getting to Cologne at night. As a treat because we got their early, we were driven to view the Gothic church. We had five minutes to jump off the bus to take photos and then back on. Driving to the hotel we saw a christmas market, which would have been beautiful to have explored, however it would have been risky heading back into town at night as we weren't that close to the centre and another early start in the morning! We had an included meal that night, which was good as well!

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Photos

snowmen
in the morning heading out to the bus it had seemed someone had been busy making snowmen on tables outside the hotel

canals
so many beautiful views were seen from the boat. It really is quite pretty here

diamond factory
I'm sure we could have done better things than having to listen to a sales pitch

how do you find your bike?
seriously look how many there are ... are bikes all that distinguishable?

ham and cheese
combined both were an amazing lunch!

joel
it was funny this one bird started off behind his neck and wandered down

eye bender
some of the buildings and lines were just stunning to look at! I'm not sure if they built these under the influence of drugs or not, but they can't seem to build in a straight line!

gothic church
cologne

tea
the tea was a lovely serve yourself option. some of the dishes changed after the first lot was consumed

desserts
bits and peices for everyone