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| Glenn's Journal for 10-14-02 - Amsterdam Well the rain has moved in and it is very dreary here in Brugge. The weather report for Amsterdam, our last stop in Europe, is not any better for the next few days. Oh well!!! Today we are due to catch the train to Amsterdam. We have breakfast and are out of the hotel by 9:30 am in an attempt to catch the 10:05 am train. We walk, in the rain, all the way to the train station where we indeed make the train. We are a little wet but hot for our efforts but we made it with time to spare. We made a little adventure out of the train ride. We were due to switch trains in Antwerp but I had not verified which station. We ended up getting off at central station only to find out that we should have switched trains at the previous station. Oh well. We caught the next train back and enjoyed lunch before catching the next train to Amsterdam. This cost us an hour but gave us a chance to have lunch. We arrived into Amsterdam after 2:30 pm without knowing where we would stay. It couldn't be as bad as last time as there was a broadcasting conference in town that had the town overbooked. This time we decided to stop into one of the hotel information desks along the main street from Central station. He identified a really good deal for a 3 star hotel (we deserved to splurge sometimes) for only 50 Euro a night for a double. Hostels would have cost between 34 and 40 Euro per night anyway, so why not? The hotel was a Best Western on the west side of town but within walking distance of all the main attractions. We trammed our way to the hotel for check-in only to find out that the rate we were quoted was not correct. It was really 55 Euros per night. Luckily we had a written voucher so, with a little argument, we received the room for the original 50 Euros per night. The room was the best that we had stayed in so far this trip. The only other issue is that the room was only available for 2 of the 3 nights that we wanted. After the hotel check-in we headed out as we had specific chores that we had to accomplish before we left. The chores included getting a prescription for anti-Malaria pills before we left for Africa, copying all of our photos to a CD (to free up memory on our photo cards), and work on our website now that we had uploaded journals and photos. The hotel desk attendant was very helpful in hooking us up with a local doctor that would fax in a prescription at the nearest Apotheke (pharmacy). Excellent, one chore close to being completed. After picking up the fax at the apotheke we walked into town looking for an internet cafe or photo shop that could download photos to a CD. No luck today on this topic but maybe tomorrow. We finally made our way to EasyEverything, a really inexpensive internet cafe, where we spent the next 5 hours working on the website. You know how sometimes you get on a roll with a project and you can't stop. That is what happened to Erin and I. We didn't realize how the time had passed. It was now 11:00 pm and we had not had dinner yet. We walked back towards the hotel, of course having to walk through the red-light district. By now there were only a few "quick-eat" places left open so we stopped in for a piece of pizza before continuing on. We strolled through the red-light district before returning to our room for a good nights sleep. |
| Our return to Amsterdam |