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EuroVicki
Waking up at 6:30 is not my ideal way to start the day! Yet there we are... Our guide brought his car even though I said we had 4 large suitcases and 8 Carry on and 3 people (we are traveling with an Australian friend from the ship) to Amsterdam- so he turned around and got his limo. Traveling first class!! Nice .. We drove to The Hague with a stop at the beach. Housing, lots of different styles, then continued toward Amsterdam passing agricultural and pastoral scenes. - sheep! We even passed a circus. In to Amsterdam we found that our hotel was directly across the street from the Centraal Station, on the Seventeenth century canal ring . Quite convenient! And a nicer one than I remembered - our room was high - had nice views and gabled roofs - but the radiator didn't work, so we changed to a room with no view but could get warm. Then off to explore! Walked around with Joey and Joan- and turns out our hotel is about a block away from the red light district! We saw a sign on a wall and I thought I knew what it meant - but I google translator-ed it in case: quartier putien = ******* neighborhood!! And if that wasn't enuf, next door was a coffee shop (pot store), and next a tattoo parlor and then either a pizza place or a bakery or a cheese store. And the next block it repeated. And again! Huh. It seems that the attitude is "it's here if you want it. If not, go to a different neighborhood." Seems like a healthy attitude... Then we were speaking with a easier later who said there were good and bad things about the pot being so available: walking to school past the "coffee shops " as a young child and knowing the smell might make a teenager more likely to try it... Who knows.. Walked a bit more and found a place to eat lunch-kind of a cowboy diner.. Dinner at Restaurant de Kroonprins attached to the prins Hendricks Hotel. This is where jazz trumpeter Chet Baker died in 1988- and blues music was playing thru dinner. We both had the original Dutch pea soup with sausage and bread. Excellent! Very filling! We walked another direction after dinner but decided to head back to the hotel and we watched a few reruns of Hawaii 5-0 before we fell asleep.
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Judith We loved Amsterdam!