June 29/30 – Flight & First Day in Amsterdam

After getting to the airport very early…I am too much of a planner…we left around midnight last night and took the red eye direct to Amsterdam. Very smooth flight and Patrick and I even managed to get a little sleep on the plane. Adding the comfort of extra leg room was definitely a bonus! Our two lovely children, slept absolutely ZERO! They are going to be in for a world of hurt once we have a quick shower to wash off the airplane stink and get going for the day. No rest for the wicked 🙂

First hotel is a very basic hotel but will definitely serve its purpose for the first 2 nights. Wanted to make sure we were close to the airport as we pick up our car on July 2nd so will be easy to pop back over before we head out to France later this week.

After a quick shower, we hopped on the bus to start exploring. Poor Sable is having a hard time staying awake but managed to walk all through Vondel Park. And for dinner…Burger Ki g 🤣

Interesting observations:

• The contrast between seeing all the windfarms in the water (guess it would be the North Sea) with oil platforms mixed in was kind of unique
• Going through security/passport control was very different than Canada/US. The self check was down so it had to be done manually with just a cell phone. No searching through luggage, etc. Just a what is the purpose and have a nice day. Even with the delay it was not too bad.
• Didn’t take long to see our first wooden clog…from slippers to real ones they are all over the place.
• When you think about bikes and Amsterdam you would not even begin to understand the shear amount of them in the city. At home you worry about cars hitting you…here you have to worry about all the bikes.