Steps today: 31 489
What a day! We walked our asses off!
Our first night’s sleep in the hotel was good. The room temperature was ok, it was dark and quiet… but I still woke up a lot during the night and by 5AM I was awake for good. My mom woke up around 5:30 but we lounged in bed until 6AM.
We were on the road by a little after 7, stopped for a small breakfast on the way to the train station and were in Amsterdam by 8:30. (The train ride from Haarlem is about 15 minutes).
We just walked and walked and walked and walked with no firm plans for things to do. We walked down the main drag, explored the floating flower market and then spent most of the morning in the Joordan district just soaking in the city.
We wanted to visit the inside of the Royal Palace, but it’s closed until the end of the month
Look! Rainbow Cheese!
The weather was great, but it’s really hard to dress properly. Fewer layers and be cold in morning? or a little less and melt in the afternoon? I could have worn my capris in the afternoon, but would have frozen to death in the morning so I am glad I didn’t.
One of the things on my list was have lunch at The Pancake Bakery, a restaurant Frank and I discovered 10 years ago. We went by to see what time it opened… it opens at 9AM! It was a little after 10 by then and we were both hungry since we had just a croissant for breakfast around 7:30 so we decided it would be brunch. It was fantastic! I had a cheese, bacon and mushroom pancake but the picture looks pretty bad (aside from the fact that I did not ajust the camera settings). The delicousness does not translate!!
Another thing I wanted to do was visit the Poezenboot (cat shelter boat) but since it was closed in the morning, we went over to the other side of the canal to see if any kitties were lounging on the deck but there were none. We’ll walk by some other time, later in the day, when we can see them basking in the sun.
From there, we visited the Houseboat Museum, and then back to Dam Square and sat in front of the National Monument to wave hello to Frank on the live webcam. It worked! He got a screen shot of us and was able to see us live. Neat!
After that, more wandering… and we eventually ended up in Rembrandtplein to see the Night Watch Statues. I should have taken a video – it took FOREVER to get through a huge pack of tourists who wanted to be photographed WITH the statues!! One after another after another after another – it was quite comical.
Next, we walked to the far east of the city to the Gooyer Windmill…
And then back towards the central station with the idea to have supper at the Skylounge nearby. It was great! Terrific views from up there but it was too hot for us so after getting (or rather: trying to get) some nice pictures of the view we settled in to a delicious meal.
We got back to Haarlem by about 7:30 but it was SO nice outside we did not hurry back to the hotel. We stopped off at the Old Town Square to see if we could find out when the fun-fair ends and sadly for us it’s after we leave so we are stuck with it. So annoying!!!! this makes TWO visits to Haarlem now with no decent view of the gorgeous architecture of the buildings around the square. I took some pictures anyway… it’s mostly a mish-mosh of carnival rides.
Here are few I tried to get, but could not get far enough to get the whole building in one shot. I had to either cut off the top or the bottom.
Still feeling good and wanting to enjoy the weather as much as we could, we stopped for a nightcap before calling it quits for the night at about 8:30PM
It was a great day, can’t wait for more adventures tomorrow.
