Day Sixtytwo - Jul 22, 2012
Brussels, Belgium to Amsterdam, Netherlands
Daily Didactic
Today was another travel day. As our trip heads north, these will come more regular and significantly longer as we make a lunge for for Norway. Today, however, was a relatively short day of three hours. To avoid the ridiculously "in addition to your fancy Eurail pass" charges of France's TGV line, we took four trains with three connections. Originally it was two with one connection, but something got cancelled. The first train was a good hour and a half, and then there we three half hour trains with connections ranging from 3 to 8 minutes. Against the odds, we managed to make all of them (even when the 3 minute connection became a "30 second across the platform" rush. We arrived a little later than we expected, caught tram #1 to Leidseplein, and zig zagged to our ridiculously idyllic little tree lined street of 19th century buildings. We met our host Harm (we are sure it is not pronounced phonetically, but he was kind enough not to correct us), who lead us up four flights of the steepest stairs we have ever seen. With packs it reminded us of that "don't lean back too far" feeling of the golden staircase on the Chilkoot Trail. We settled in, got a snack at a cafe across the street, and proceeded to wander the streets and canals of downtown Amsterdam for a few hours. In the early evening we found a market for dinner makings. We headed back up to our attic room and Theresa prepared an amazing salmon dinner in the "cutest little kitchen". Feeling obligated, we went back out for a short late evening walk to see the city lit up. It really is a spectacularly pretty old town, with the beautiful old buildings (not covered in graffiti), canals all over, and bicycles careening everywhere. After about an hour, we called it amazing enough and climbed back up to our attic for the night
Today's Photos
