As any reasonable adult could have easily predicted, I was unable to get much sleep on the flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam, even after closing my eyes for three consecutive hours. I did get the opportunity to watch Hidden Figures, which was a decent movie, so that was the trade-off. At the same time, the airplane meals were terrible, and now I was officially jet-lagged on my first day in Europe at 6AM in the morning.
The first stop after going through immigration and getting picked up by our tour guide and coach driver? Amsterdam. If you look closely enough, you can see me in the following picture.
Anyway, here are the stops we made on our first day in this very “chill” city:
- Marriot Courtyard for our check-in and of course some wonderful continental breakfast. My hotel looks super nice, and I get this big bed all to myself. The breakfast was relatively decent, resulting in the consumption of three subsequent plates to offset the terrible taste in my mouth left by yesterday’s horrible airplane food.
- We took the tram to the city from our hotel, and walked around the block, gazing our eyes in wonder at the various buildings and shops. And Bikes. Lots of bikes everywhere in the city.
- After a brief walking tour (about an hour or two), we opted to ride some paddleboats, me of course doing most of the paddling while my lazy former co-worker just sat in the back of the boat doing nothing. We got lost and had to resort to the usage of Google Maps in order to find our way back, and I subsequently crashed the boat a few times into a few other boats. That was funny, I suppose.
- After a short break, we went to the Rijks Musuem, our only museum on the entire trip comprised of different Dutch Art and History paintings and sculptures. Being not a huge fan of art myself, I didn’t find the paintings particularly that fascinating. HOWEVER, in being super jet lagged from the trip, I could tell nobody in our group was really that big about it. We went to the park afterwards to chill and watch some skaters practice for some competition tomorrow.
- Dinner was served at Dutch Pancake House Candela, where I got a ham-infused pancake. I took a picture of a strawberry one after realizing I already consumed a huge chunk of my pancake, which no longer looked attractive to feature here. I give the restaurant a 3 out of 5 stars, but then again, I’m hard to impress.
- We went grocery shopping afterwards to buy supplies, where I encountered a funny looking bag of chips.
A few other observations:
- Not sure how navigation works in the city but people seemingly move all over the place with their bikes and cars. It’s still pleasant though.
- People pee in random public toilets that seemingly flow straight into the fertilizer source.
- They sell cheese. Lots of cheese in stores. Not sure how that’s a profitable business model, but that certainly captured my interest to say the very least.
We decided to all call it a night early and get some much needed rest. Come tomorrow, we will be on European time – ready to mingle, ready to chill, and ready to have fun in Amsterdam (Round 2), without this tiredness we all currently possess in our soul.
