Ashley & I woke up around 9am and left for the Göttingen train station around 925AM. We snagged some Brötchen sandwiches and croissants before we got on the train, which was 5 minutes late. We got into the station as our next train was leaving, but the announcer on the train we had just gotten off from said our train was waiting for us on track 12, so we ran over there and hopped onto the train... The doors literally closed right behind us. Then we realized we had gotten on a train going to Köln (Cologne) instead of Niederlande (the Netherlands). We found an information lady on the train and she told us which trains we needed to take - it would get us into Amsterdam about 2-3 hours behind our original schedule. At one point when we were waiting in an area in between first class carts, a lady gave us some soccer-shaped chocolates...
Deutsche Bahn soccer chocolate
To Amsterdam!
When we got to the next station I saw there was an earlier train leaving to Amsterdam which we then took. We went into the dining cart and had some coffee...
Eventually we got to Centraal Station in Amsterdam. It was humid and a little hot... and extremely crowded.
The crowded streets of Amsterdam
One of the main squares, here with a war monument in the background
Main square #2 with a view of the city-hall
Main square #3
Main square #4 with gangsta' face
We found the street we needed to walk down to get to Hotel Sphinx but we stopped in Maoz falafel first. They give you a falafel and let you fill & re-fill it with the items in their salad/fillings bar. After that, Ashley checked into the room and we started to walk around town.
Land iguana statues in a small garden outside Sphinx Hotel
Sphinx Hotel room
We visited one of the town's "coffee shops" called Dolphin, which was amusing. Most people there speech fluent English so it was a change from trying to understand & speak in Deutschland. After that, we wandered through the city streets for a while and saw a bunch of shops, weird architecture and all the canals.
Asian people with umbrellas going under a bridge on a canal
A typical canal in Amsterdam - the boats are called Steppenwolf and Kaos
Front of one of many churches
A large building in Amsterdam with Atlas holding the world on top
A building with a reflective front
At one point it started raining strongly so we eventually found a 5 euro umbrella (of course, by that time, it had stopped raining but we were still drenched).We went to a bakery where we got stuff that ended up being something like 4,15 euro... Ashley tried to pay the 15 cents with 1 & 2 cent coins which the guy said weren't accepted anymore in Niederlande.
After sitting by the side of a channel for a while, we wandered some more until we sat down outside an Amstel bar (Amsterdam literally means 'dam on the Amstel river'). We chilled there for a while.
Local brew
From the Amstel bar we went slowly back to the Hotel to rest (it was about 9pm), take showevers, etc. When two girls came into the room to claim their beds we were getting ready to leave. We went out to this big square where there were tons of people. Amsterdam is especially bumpin' at night... and this was just a Wednesday night.
Amsterdam at night
We found this Italian place to sit down and eat at - I had a nice Pizza Marghirita and we had 2 small Heinekens. We sat next to some sociable/drunk guy who talked in bursts and always had a little comment to make every two seconds.
Eventually we departed and found the Jazz club 'Alta' after initially walking past it. The guide (and the front door) said entrance was free but a guy was asking us for a 5 euro cover charge. That, combinbed with the fact that it was extremely crowded, led us to look for the other live music place called 'The Waterhole.' There was a guy sitting in the doorway there too and we were getting tired so we started the trek back to the Sphinx Hotel, which has some of the steepest stairs known to man... the fourth step is almost above your head. Its like climbing a curving ladder). When we got back, those two girls were just going to bed. We looked at the travel guide for a few minutes and then went to sleep.
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