Day 3, Part 1, Amsterdam

One hell of a thunderstorm came ripping through Amsterdam last night. Non-stop lightning, hail and wind gusts up to 50-75kmph. (I’ll post a video of the lightning on Facebook.) The storm at least made the jet laggy night’s sleep entertaining. We both woke up around 10:45 local time thinking we’d slept for 4-5 hours when in reality it had been around 2 hours. Still we managed to sleep on and off until around 5am local. And by that time the storm had passed, leaving a bit of damage behind.

We decided to grab an early bite at the hotel. Decent buffet. Breads, eggs, sausages, etc and an espresso machine. With our train leaving for Bruges at 12:15pm so we had a few hours left in Amsterdam. We decided to take a canal tour on a long canal boat.

Our tour company. I didn’t make the edit on the sign. Someone beat me to it.

What a wonderful way to see part of the city center in an hour.

Houseboats were all over the canals. Some of them were really neat looking.

Below are the Dancing Ladies. These are leaning buildings that look as if they are dancing. Zoom in to see how crooked they are. The likings they are built on are rotting and that’s why the lean.

In the distance you can see 7 bridges. Capt. Louie was excited about this. Notice the green radio thingys. Plug headphones into these and you could hear the recorded commentary in the language of your choice.

Twin houses known as “The Brothers” since twin houses called “The Sisters” are across the canal.

The canal cruise was great. Hitting it early enough to where there were only around 16-18 people aboard (we’ve been seeing the canal boats leave packed from the dock the day before with 50-60 people) was good timing. With only a couple of hours before our train we went hunting for Stroopwafels, a wafer like cookie and an Amsterdam specialty. We found some in a cheese shop where we sampled (And purchased) some yummy cheeses.