Alive in Amsterdam

After 12 1/2 hours of flight time, layovers, etc. me and grams finally arrived in Amsterdam!  Which despite the permanent cloud of smoke from people smoking cigarettes (amongst other things) is quite a marvelous city.  When we first arrived at the Ibis hotel (eee-bis) in room 3138 we walked in to find that somebody who stayed in the room before us (or so it smelled like) had smoked marijauna...  we arrived at about 7 am so we got all freshened up and then headed out... 

In Amsterdam the airport is not just for flying out.  It's a central place to catch the underground train system that takes you to the heart of the city...  From there you are free to catch one of the many trams, buses or metros to your hearts contentment (let your feet do the rest...).

Me and G-ma decided to throw out the idea of a pre-planned tour and create our own adventure!!!  So we got a map, found some of the places we wanted to go in our travel book and started forward motion...

There is a woman singing somewhere over the rainbow behind me right now while I am tyiping this to you...  But back to the story...  Me and Gma had to make frequent coffee breaks (and bathroom breaks) because of our jet lag and boy I had forgotten how much I missed European coffee!  After getting to centraal station and sipping some joe with GRams (which felt great by the way if I forgot to mention) we just did some peeking about you might say... looking about random shops if you will...  Before we discovered the wonders of the tram system we were walking everywhere(then increased the caffeine intake... which increased the need for toilets ha ha).  We walked clear to the Anne Frank house (which is far) and then headed back to our humble aboad for a nice 11 hr nap...  he he..

The next day we each got some free coffee because the machine downstairs that you would normally buy it from was broken (yes!)...  then we headed back to centraal station took a canal ride, went to the rijks museum, van gogh musem, and tried though the attempt was unsuccessful to go to the hard rock cafe ( someone had booked the place for the week...  Yikes!) but we found a cute local place nearby where the lady supplied us with good info about the train system (and dutch suckers... yum).

So all in all it is a great place to be...  With nice dutch people around every corner to help lost tourists... who couldn't love this city????!  It's weird coming to a country and not knowing the language at all..  I've never experienced that part before..  Someone could be totally laughing at you (and sometimes I think they were or cursing in some occassions) and you wouldn't even know it...  weird... Anyway!  I would write see you later in Dutch but I don't know how so English will have to suffice... we leave for tanzania in the morning so i hope to write more soon!  be blessed! 

With Peace and Love...
FRom AMb