Amsterdam part 1

Its 2pm on Monday afternoon, off we head to Amsterdam and then yorkshire and Hadrians wall.
The trip is...
sail from Hull at 8pm Monday,
arrive in Amsterdam city centre 10.30 am Tuesday - Two days seeing the sights of Amsterdam
Depart city centre Wednesday 5pm
Arrive Hull Thurs 8am
Assorted castles then Thurs night in Washnington (near Newcastle)
depart 9am to assorted Hadrians wall and roman stuff
Arrive home at approx 6pm Fri.

fear not... i have assumed control

This ferry was even nicer than the first one and we went along to the nightclub for a little boogie-ing down... can someone tell me.. why i am always the only man on the dancefloor???

The trip across was smooth again, but bloomin cold....

The coach ride was  about an hour and a quarter and we arrived into the heart of the city, got off into yet more freezing cold, the temp was 4 degrees (not that cold you would asume) but it did seem the wind chill was well in to the minus figures cos we both wrapped up scarfes, gloves, jackets etc... over the few days in Amsterdam and oop norf, Nic went from a size 10.. to a size 16.. apparently the minimum 4 layers of clothing can add to the overall size.

Let me at this point mention... BIKES... BIKES... there are a lot of bikes, no wait.. not a lot... there are gazillions!!!! of bikes... everywhere you step is someone on a bike.. and damn it.. what the hell are they doing riding on the right??... makes checking the roads insane.. not to mention they have their own bike lanes and they have right of way over EVERYONE.. watch out pedestrians!!.

The pic above is a bike park... like a car park.. but.. well you can figure it out huh... its pretty much the size of a 3 storey car park..and it is full of bikes, the whole of Amsterdam is consumed by bikes, every single upright pole, bridge support, tree, stick, fence..everything has a bike padlocked to it. They even have a maze made up of bikes.. this place likes the bike.

A crusie along the canals was delighful the city is quite remarkable by the amount of canals and the architecture is very pretty.. Clearly however  there is a problem with the building and the canals... that being the number of buildings that are on a lean... not a just a couple of buildings.. and not just a little lean... half the buildings are pushing against the one next door..or are dropping away at the side, and not just a little bit, the leans are up to half a metre, but noone seems to worry its all fine until they actually start to collapse... the pic is not a trick or photoshopped... the top of the building is leaning that far in fact...the lean of the buildings is even more than it seems in the photo..

As shown in the pic above.. then they start to somehow begin to straighten them before the windows collapse.

Lunch....now... lunch we wandered, wondering what would we like and ended up with a decision of pancakes.. now, these were pricy pancakes (eg $12 each).. but, by god they were LARGE and Nics was covered in thick chocolate and mine was mounded with a ridiculous amount of cream, very tasty.. but more fat than i would normally eat in a week.

 we also wandered around a fine art gallery and then took to the streets, seems this would be a city that just encourages walking (infact.. more encourages Cycling!!) we wandered the back streets through the city and in and out of coffee shops and then to Dam square.. the centre of the city (Interesting fact.. Amsterdam, is the spot where the river Amstel... was dammed = Amsterdam) taking care to avoid the bikes we walked further, hoped on a tram which wonderfully dropped us at the door of our hotel.

our room.. 2nd floor window, 2nd from the right

The hotel was always going to be a concern.. we had done it cheap (Duh!) and had read some very good.. and some very bad reviews, it would appear that one particular room (the cheapest) was very bad, the rest were apparently ok, we entered into a tiny staircase and headed up to reception where we were greeted by a delighful russian man who upgraded us to a bigger room.. yahoo... and it was a fab room, large, clean just delighful and great views of some lovely buildings out the window. we sorted out some food and headed back out into the night.

 More to come..