Holiday: Day 7 - Amsterdam

We really didn’t know what to expect from Amsterdam as it was the first time any of us had been there, but we locked it in and decided to make our way there after Brussels. But first we had unfinished business in the morning in Brussels and that came in the way of breakfast and waffles.

Again we made the walk up to the old town hoping that for a Sunday there would be a few early openers for us to be able to have breakfast in, unfortunately we were disappointed as most places were closed when we walked through just after 8am, though we did find ourselves a specialty coffee shop along the way, so I obliged and decided to have one which didn’t disappoint. I like looking at how different countries do coffee and this one was certainly a bit different, but more importantly next door was their Probat roaster which looked amazing, no wonder the coffee was the best we have had so far.

We retraced our steps from the previous night looking for the various waffles shops that had caught our eye, unfortunately they were all still closed and we soon found ourselves in the Grand Place almost all alone.

We wandered the streets and eventually found a small chocolate shop that was open where we bought some chocolate souvenirs and then continued on our way, hoping that somewhere would be open, and sure enough we found one.

Manneken Pis in Brussels

A bit of trivia first, there’s this little statue guy called Manneken Pis which to cut a long story short is a bit of a cult figure across Brussels, in fact he is the most common image on all of the merchandise and souvenirs, yes even more so than the chocolate and beers. So it was as we were taking our photos of this little guy (it was too busy the previous day to get a good photo) that we saw a local waffle store opening, our prayers had been answered and we lined up to fill ourselves with our last Belgian waffle, this one definitely did not disappoint.

After this it was pretty much straight back to the hotel where we got our bags, farewelled the spiral staircase and headed back to the station, to catch our train to Amsterdam.

The train we caught was nothing flash which was okay because it was only a short trip. What we didn’t predict was that another train would be cancelled so everyone that wanted to catch that one got on our as well. We were lucky that we got on early because after a few stops the guard was announcing that the train was full and that people should wait for a different train, unfortunately they didn’t oblige and the train became more packed. What did help though was a fire alarm going off at Schipol Airport which stopped our train from entering so quite a number of people got off and caught taxi’s, but anyhow the remainder of the trip was slightly less packed and we eventually got to Amsterdam.

Navigating the trains in Amsterdam was interesting as neither of us had ever used their metro, which is pristine and clean by the way. After a few false starts we found how to buy tickets electronically and managed to scan our way into the metro. Amsterdam uses a tricky QR code ticket process which works great, but is a bit different for newbs like us. After a few minutes of waiting around on a platform we were onto the next metro and headed to hotel.

Our first impression of Amsterdam and its canals

Post hotel check in we always tend to head out into the town to try to understand how to get around etc especially when we have a full day the next day to explore. We instantly liked Amsterdam, the city is relatively spread out compared to other cities, its very clean, people ride bikes everywhere which means there is less cars and vespas making noise, we rarely heard police sirens and you are never too far away from a canal, which I think just adds a level of tranquility.

We opted to grab a bite to eat and then wander around the streets, not looking to hard for anything in particular but just familiarising ourselves. We eventually ended up back at the metro which now that we understood it was extremely easy to use and there are only about 4 different lines so you really can’t go wrong.

And so that was our day, we’d transitioned to Amsterdam and had prepared ourselves for a busy day the next day.

Michael