85. Amsterdam

 

Friday 19^th September

We arrived in Amsterdam to be met by Melanie who had come over from London to spend our last weekend in Europe with us. We took the train to Central station and then a tram to our Tulip Inn hotel. It was very good and Melanie enjoyed her room with the king-size bed.

Saturday. 20^th September.

We had decided to see the sites of Amsterdam on foot. The weather was great as we enjoyed the early morning walk to the tram stop about 10 minutes from our hotel, and the ride into the centre of the city. We alighted the tram and found a restaurant to have breakfast before commencing our wander alongside canals and through the delightful streets of old Amsterdam. It was such a pleasant walk but we had to be ever watchful as the hundreds of cyclists pedalled along the streets dodging in and out of the pedestrians.

Melanie navigated us to the flower market alongside a canal and we enjoyed the site of many colours and varieties of flowers for sale along with numerous stalls of tulip and other bulbs. We were too late to enjoy the spring tulip blooms. Our whole day was spent wandering, although we did find time to sit in glorious sunshine at a canal side restaurant for a drink and some food and also take a canal trip of 90 minutes.

As evening arrived we headed for Tram 17 and the ride out to our Tulip Inn Hotel. No sooner were we on board, the tram took off then stopped with a crunch that sent people flying into each other. After a minute we realised that a pedestrian had been hit and was lying on the pavement with a leg caught between the skirt of the tram and the kerbing. Everyone left the tram and stood on the roadside as people tried to extricate the pedestrian. Two ambulances and three fire engines arrived in a matter of minutes and the combined forces managed to free the man who surprisingly was able to stand up almost unaided with no visible damage.

By this time we were sitting back in the tram and after a delay of almost an hour the tram started up and all the passengers were allowed a free trip to our destination.

 

Sunday. 21^st September.

With Melanie we had a scratch breakfast in our room before completing packing our bags and walking down to the tram stop trundling our suitcases behind us. At the Central Station we placed the bags in two lockers and took the train out to Haarlem an old town outside Amsterdam and near the coast. The train ride was about 15 minutes and once at Haarlem we started walking through the picturesque streets to the main square, passing the Corrie Ten Boom jewellers shop museum on the way. (Corrie ten Boom’s family sheltered Jews in a secret room in this shop during W.W. 2.)

The town square was surrounded by open air cafes and we settled ourselves down for a coffee and early lunch. It seemed to be a special day as a stage was set up and a group was preparing to provide some music, while other people were setting up stalls etc. The weather was fine as we decided to walk some of the local ‘pedestrian’ streets that we found quaint and lovely to be in. Melanie decided to visit a museum of historical Haarlem while Chris and Warwick walked about the town and met up again with Melanie near the square where we all sat and enjoyed an ice cream.

We returned to the train station ( we calculated there were about 1000 bicycles under cover at the station, and many more stacked nearby) for Central, picked up our luggage from the locker and took the train to Schiphol airport for our flights to Paris (and London for Melanie). We had a slight concern as Melanie was directed to one passport control and ourselves to another before we could say ‘Goodbye’ to her. But after having our passports stamped we ‘bucked the system’ and returned to use the same entrance as Melanie and were able to enjoy a coffee with her before heading to our side of the Terminal through a second passport stamp, for our boarding gate.

A good flight, however on arriving in Paris we experienced another unusual adventure for our journey. All arriving passengers to the terminal were delayed for about an hour and a half just before the baggage carousels to let the local bomb squad demolish a suspicious back pack that had been left alongside a carousel. We heard the small explosion and arrived at the carousel to see the staff cleaning up the mess from the shattered back pack!!

We collected our bags without too much trouble amongst the several hundred people who had been delayed along with ourselves. Due to the long delay we decided to catch a taxi to our Youth Hostel accommodation and after a quick 30 minute trip and Euro 45 lighter, we settled into our simple but comfortable room at the hostel.