Today we said goodbye to Belgium, and hello to Amsterdam. The train ride (two trains) took a couple of hours...
Since we didn't get up to much on this day, I thought might be a good time for me to tell you a little about how we managed train travel during our trip.
(...10 hours later...)
SO I started to type this whole long thing out about trains, but then realized I had wayyy too much to say to include in this post... so I started another post.
So if you're interested:
TMI About European Train Travel
Now, moving on...
We arrived in Amsterdam and headed straight for the OBA Oosterdok, the central public library.
I'd read that there's a cafe on the top floor of this library, and the terrace provides some nice city views.
It did! And since we had about an hour before we could check into our hotel -- and the library was between the train station and our hotel -- we decided to pay it a visit. It ended up being a nice place to chill. You don't necessarily even have to buy anything at the cafe to use the terrace, but I was hungry, so...
Soon it was time to head for our hotel...
We stayed at the the ibis Amsterdam Centre Stopera. It was clean, convenient, quiet, and comfortable. There was a grocery store just a few blocks away. It may not have had the charm of the Erasmus Hotel in Ghent, but it was overall my favorite hotel.
That evening, we decided to visit the Amsterdam LEGO Store. It was about a one mile walk from the hotel.
The moment we stepped in, I was blown away. The two LEGO Stores in the Paris region had been cool, but the Amsterdam store was something else!
It had a Minifigure Factory, so of course I had to do that...
Then we headed back to our hotel, passing through the Red Light District on our way. No photos of that, but we did see some PG-13 signs and a whole lotta places selling weed. Rick Steves was right!
You may have noticed some of the outdoor photos look a little dull -- that's because it was actually overcast today! I hoped that would last, but... yeah, no. The sun was back in full force the following day.
Things I learned today:
*Tonic water and sparking water are NOT the same; tonic water is gross.
Tomorrow... Exploring Amsterdam!
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