Amsterbike part 2

Yes, I've renamed their city more appropriately I feel and will now attempt to describe our evening. In short, this was several tram rides and quite a bit of walking around the city and I have to say, it is much more beautiful at night. The buildings are all lit up and there are hoardes of people everywhere but, as opposed to daytime, you can't see all the litter and, all those bikes have headed home for the evening. So we wandered and of course had to check out the red light district. Although the many women showing their wares were attractive, and one nice young lady beckoned us in, we decided our money would be better spent elsewhere; jam doughnuts for breakfast and cheese and onion chips for supper. The beautiful building opposite our room was even more lovely at night too.

Spent the next morning using our tram passes to see the oldest bridge over the Amstel, a very leany building, have a cup of mint tea; yes that's a cup of boiling water with fresh mint in and boy was it refreshing! That will be in my garden back in SA for sure.

We went to Rembrandt's statue in his square as well as a 13thC nuns village called 'Begijnhof' which is now private residences but only tenanted by women. I felt like breaking out into a song from Oliver or Mary Poppins here, but it was early and the signs asked us to respect the residents....although we were also not supposed to take phot'os hmmmm.

By this time, 12ish, we were starting to be very glad we were only here for one day and were seriously wondering what we were going to do for the next 4 hours, so, we spent an hour in KFC before deciding we would visit the Royal Palace which has recently been refurbished and opened to the public for the first time. It was really something to see. From the marble floors, walls and carvings to the plush velvet chairs to the painted ceilings. Very diifferent architecture to English; minimalistic in its approach to showing off whereas the English style seems to be to cram as much into every room as possible. I found it almost breathtaking. It was originally built as a city hall in the 17thC for magistrates....this is the 'dock' where prisoners were given the death sentence, and is still used today for important meetings, particularly involving their Queen. Unfortunately the refurbishment meant the outside was covered in plastic and scaffolding, so we don't have any great pics of that, but this is what it will look like when the covers come off.

Suitably pleased with over an hour passed in this lovely building, we headed to a posh shopping complex to see how the rich spent their money. On the way in my dear husband noticed my flagging appearance and asked 'What do we need to do with you?' I said 'Sit down' So we found a table at a nice looking coffee shop and had a slightly more expensive cuppa (another lovely mint which revived me well) and spent another hour here chatting about bikes and leany buildings.
From here, I sat in a big clog and we bought more supplies of food to save money on the boat before heading to the bus stop to be picked up and taken back to Rotterdam's port.

I have just been informed that yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the Zebrugge disaster in which the boat (well, not the actual boat) we went to Bruges on sank just outside port, killing 187 people. The bow doors had been left open after departure and flooded the car decks taking the ship down. Aren't I glad he kept that to himself until now boys and girls!
So comfortably on our coach, we watched the Dutch countryside pass by for two hours until the sun began to set rather beautifully and we made it safely past the sniffer dog which looked a lot like Freedom's Tenji, and collapsed in our cabin where we dined on pot noodles, crisps, instant soup and potato. I have calculated that the 7pound travel kettle we purchased for this trip saved us in total about 30 pounds on cups of tea and food...not bad eh. All in all, Amsterdam was interesting, quirky, leany and beautiful; and now to the North and beyond.