Hamming around Amsterdam.

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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 and decided to have a late lunch at the cafe at the Opera House and boy have I never been so disappointed in the coffee in Europe, actually about the only thing they are close to good at is making Espresso's and Capucinno's.

Most of the shops have gone away from the old style manual Espresso machines and are all automated now, not to the benefit of good coffee. I know how good a machine can make automated coffee, but you also need good coffee beans and it does not pay to cheap out.

So we walked around the Ryjks Museum, the I Amsterdam sign, the diamond district and over the canal back to the Heineken Brewery. We then caught a tram back to the Central station area and trooped around all of the shops, the Red Light District and bought some more cheese. It was getting dark and we went to eat at The Grasshopper restaurant and bar. We then decided we would go have a couple of beers because being The Kings Day tomorrow everyone was out partying in their orange outfits. We stumbled across this little hole in the wall bar called The Cafe Belgique and it only holds 16 people turned sideways inside and most people were just drinking out front on the street while they listened to a very good DJ that they had playing inside and he played all kinds of old rock and roll on two turntables. We had about 5 beers, celebrated some guys birthday party (got to eat cake with the locals) and then decided to find the train back to Schipol. From there we grabbed a shuttle bus back to the hotel. Bed felt good that night and we slept hard.

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