Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Part 1

Amsterdam is filled with a lot of nice people.  Most everybody speaks English there and it is really easy to get comfortable and adjusted to the city.  The city has been called the Venice of the North and I have to agree.  Only they should have said the much nicer Venice of the North.  Having just recently been to Venice I can say that Amsterdam is both cleaner and prettier than Venice (in my humble opinion).  Although the trees were not leafing we were still able to enjoy the sites of the area.  

We were able to find some deals for the high speed train and made it to Amsterdam from Frankfurt in only 4 hours.  It was early afternoon and we immediately attacked the town.  I think we wanted to get some parts of the city out of the way the first day since they were the more touristy and we dislike multitudes of people.  However, the first thing we did was to find a pub near a canal so that we could have a beer.  With the sun out and warming everything we spotted two chairs (no table) and pounced on them.  We had good timing and the server was there immediately.  We ordered our beer and then moseyed the chairs right to the edge of the canal with everybody else behind us and out of view.  For the next hour and a half we sat with our feet nearly dangling over the edge watching canal cruise boats go by us.  It was a pretty good start to a stay in a city.  Four or five more hours of exploring and we wind up back at our place laden with three kinds of cheese (sambal, smoked and hollandaise mustard), bread, apples and chocolate covered pearl sugar ladened waffles.  

Our lodging was one of the cheapest places we could find and it wasn't too bad.  It was in the red light district but that just gave it some character.  It was an extremely narrow building, as they all are, and the room was noticeably listing to one side, which was a little weird.  The ceiling was shorter than I am and had beams so I was always watching my head.  

The next day was Rae's birthday and we began by heading back to the train station to grab a train to Leiden, a good sized town 40km south of Amsterdam.  It is the jumping spot for getting to the tulip fields so it made Leiden a pseudo-tourist town.  Our plan was to bike ride to the fields but the weather was very cold and cloudy dreariness.  I had wi-fi in our room though so I saw the prediction that by noon it would be partly cloudy and warmer.  So we had coffee and explored Leiden for a few hours in the morning.  I exercised all my will power to the weather and blue skies started peeking around 1100 and by 1145, it was nearly completely clear!  We were very happy we decided to not wait for the weather to clear in Amsterdam first.  We finished our wanderings of Leiden and had a pre-bike ride beer at this cool restaurant with a cat.  Then it was off to the train station to put a deposit on some bikes.  More to come...