After napping away my last full day in London (best decision I have ever made), I was feeling 100% and ready to meet up with my brother and take on the world (Amsterdam). I woke up early and was able to get out of the hostel early and spend some additional time in the KLM Lounge in Heathrow Airport before I took off to meet Bryan. The flight went off without a hitch, met a mid 40-year old dude from Portland while I was in line boarding the plane and after we were talking for a while he mentioned to me, “I quit my job 8 years ago and have been doing my own thing ever since, I just wish I had done it 20 years ago. You should too!” So we will see whatever comes from that.
It took me about 30 minutes to fight through the customs line. It seemed like everyone and their brother was coming in to Amsterdam without EU passports and they only had one lane checking people! Once I got up there, I got though in 10 seconds. Met up with Bryan and we made our way by train to the central train station in the city. We wandered our way back to our hostel (2 bed private room, basically a small hotel room with a sink but no bathroom) and learned along the way how nicely set up the city is for bicycles and how poorly for pedestrians. Limited sidewalk space made it difficult for Bryan who was rolling his second bag behind him. The city layout is incredible, there is water everywhere, it’s all really cool!
We made our way back out from the hostel to downtown and grabbed dinner at a local pub nearing a small town square area. There was some sort of demonstration or rally or something going on, could not really tell. We did some more exploring of the city after dinner, then made our way back to our hostel.
This morning we kicked things off early with a canal boat tour. It explained a bit about the history of the city, how and why things were set up the way they were. Afterward, we continued to explore the various churches around town and we stumbled into the redlight district. It is pretty funny that on the back side of the church is where the district starts. Interesting place to say the least. We made it out of there in one piece and continued on to Chinatown very quickly. We then walked through the Jordaan neighborhood and stumbled upon a carnival in one of the town squares. Pretty surprising to see a huge ferris wheel in front of some of the old infrastructure, but none the less...there it was.
We rented 2 bikes for the afternoon and decided to ride out from the city center to Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, a small adjoining town about 6 miles away. There is a road that runs along the river, so we took that the full distance. Along the route we found a small, zoo-like park which had a variety of animals. We specifically saw wallabies, llamas, cows and sheep. We kept moving along the road and immediately stumbled upon a windmill! Nor Bryan or I thought we would actually be able to see a windmill since we were going to be staying in the city for the most part, but here one was! Turns out it is fully functioning too! We walked up to it to take a look and this man walks into the fenced in area and says hello, asks us where we are from. We get to chatting and he actually lives in the windmill. I was able to get a majority of our conversation on video with my Go-Pro and he explained how it was used back in the old days to pump water from the surrounding area into the river. He said now that he can “run it when he wants to”. It is basically a hobby for him as he is retired. It was a very neat experience! As we continued on our way, we rode past several very, very expensive homes. They had waterfront property on one side and giant fields behind them. Some people know how to make some money over here, that is for sure.
We continued on our way to Ouderkerk and rode around the town streets for a few minutes, just to catch an idea of how different living is out there. Everything was so condensed, it almost seemed fake. Now it was a Sunday afternoon, but Bryan agreed, it still seemed a bit odd. We saw some sheep on our trip back to Amsterdam and made our way back to the city.
Bryan and I are about to go grab a late dinner and see what Amsterdam has to offer after dark?? Hopefully I am alive to put up another post.
Pray for me...
