The Tourist - Part 1- Amsterdam

The Tourist is the apt title for this blog.

Part 1 ? Yes this is the start of my interest to travel around , I have always had the notion that travelling teaches a lot of things . Now that I have a companion in my wife , the tourist experience is elevated to a different level.

This is the start of my tourist journey . What better place to start the adventure than the colourful and historic city of Amsterdam.

Named after the river that flows through the city , river Amstel. Amsterdam the capital city of The Kingdom of Netherlands is known for many of it's historic museums, tourist friendly people and not to forget the liberal mind set as the Dutch were the first to legalize Euthanasia & Prostitution.

No better place to start the journey.

My travel to Amsterdam wasn't planned , here the logical mind gave away to what the heart was saying . I had already visited Amsterdam about five times, logically I could had to chose another destination but Amsterdam it was for two reasons; one it was the first ever foreign city I had visited ever in my life and two i had fond memories of the city.

Decision was made in a spur of the moment as I had booked the tickets and hotel only on Thursday night for a Friday departure , I was lucky to get both of them albeit a touch expensive due to last minute booking .

I was all set to travel to Amsterdam by bus aka coach service. The coach would go all the way from central London & cross the north sea via Dover port to Calais in Paris en route to Amsterdam.

Just at the Dover port we had to complete the border control formalities.

The biggest surprise to both my better half & myself was the sea crossing,where our coach sat in the hull of a ship and we were asked to be on board the ship while we crossed the sea. Being in the middle of the sea and on the top deck to get a glimpse of the clear sky and the sea around was purely magical.

Once we crossed and entered the French border , we were again on our way to Amsterdam on road.

We reached the historic city of Amsterdam at around 05:30 local time on Saturday morning . The city was quite and the metro station close to where we had arrived , it was completely deserted. The first metro to central station was at 06:35.

We killed our time just by walking around the station and also toying with the Ticket vending machine.

We took the metro to central station. As such we could not check into the hotel as hotel check in was only allowed after 14:00 , we asked for a early check in without success . However e hotel did allow us to refresh ourselves . Once refreshed , we were proper tourists , ready to explore.

We had purchased a day card which entitled us to travel through out Amsterdam. We decided to have breakfast first, one of my good friend and colleague had suggested that we try out a boutique restaurant near Museumplein called " Brasserie de Joffers " , true to it's description this place was awesome. Very friendly waiters and a great ambiance.

http://www.brasseriedejoffers.nl/home

We had a full Dutch breakfast sans ham & egg instead were offered fresh tomato soup.of course no Dutch food is complete without cheese , we got our fair share of cheese and butter .

Once we completed our sumptuous breakfast , we walked around Museumplein , then took tram no 5 back to Central station.

A trip to Amsterdam is never complete without a cruise around its canals, Amsterdam its believed to have canals running for over a 100 Km. We did the honours by taking a one hour cruise themed " 100 heritage places " a tour operated by the travel company Tui.

It was great to see both modern "Nemo" building in tandem with the old , the djiks. It was a treat to our eyes as went through canal after canal.

Once we completed the trip , we were in a dilemma on which museum to visit, as there were scores of them. 

We rightfully settled to visit two of the both famous , one " The Van Gogh museum " & " The Diamond Museum".

Both of these were worth the money spent be it elegance of van gogh's painting strokes or the exquisite diamonds .

We also visited the coster diamond factory explaining the diamond cutting and polishing art.

After an exhausting first half of the day, it was time for us to have lunch . 

During my second visit , one of my good friends , Sathish T S  found a shop which gives you falafel in a pitta bread but the uniqueness was that the filling was unlimited and for a vegetarian follower, this was a blessing in disguise.

During this trip, i searched for the same shop, after a few hassle i found the shop , rebranded as" Maoz vegetarian" . 

After a solid vegetarian lunch of falafel and salad filing , it was time for us to check into our hotel.

Once we checked in and were ready again, we walked around the city . We first took the tram from central to Leidseplein and from there we walked across to Vondel Park. By now it was dark so we started walking back trough Koeiningsplein where we stopped off for coffee at Starbucks, somethings never change where ever we go. The coffee was same as i have tried in other parts of the world.

From there we went to shop at Etos , a supermarket where we bought few necessary items .

Then we started to walk back to the next tram station from where we got our way back to hotel. By now i was completely out of touch with the world. I had to connect and see what's happened, fortunately we were provided with access to hotels business centre where i was able to log into facebook to see what had happened.

We closed the day with a quiet dinner and crashed to bed.

Next morning we checked out and headed again to Brasseire de Joffers for breakfast. Once our breakfast was complete , we headed out to Dapper Markt & Albert Cyup market both of which are very famous , only to find that both of these were not open that day, what a shame.

We then decided to go from one end to another end . From Amsteldijk tram station, we then started to walk to Wibaustrat metro station, one end of the station was closed and we were put to map reading test which we failed miserably and got to the wrong end , fortunately not long after we were corrected in  our direction by two haughty women in their 60's. 

We took metro 54 from Wibaustart to Biljmer Arena , which was just another arena where a football match had just completed and was completely full with people.

Two hours later , we took another metro back to central station where we completed our lunch and headed back to boarding our coach back to London.

We left Amsterdam in a good mood , knowing fully that we did not even explore 1% of the city . We took heart to the fact that in 1 1/2 days that we had , we put the time to full use . Specifically we were happy this trip was completely unplanned.

There were many highlights of the trip but one the best that we enjoyed was a WIFI connectivity in the middle of the sea where i was able to finish about 80% of this blog on my iphone , isn't that cool!

Back in London and finishing up this blog , am already thinking where next !

The Tour continues.....