This was our third trip to Europe in three months! Amazing!
Saturday, April 13
We left home at 9:30 am and drove to JFK, thinking we would
have plenty of time to spare because that drive usually takes us about five
hours. Not today! It took eight hours, and by the time we parked, took the
AirTrain to the terminal, went through security, and hurried to the gate, our
flight began boarding within five minutes. No joke. And that was with the
benefit of TSA pre-check! Thankfully, we only had a backpack each, so there was
no luggage to contend with!
The plane had my favorite layout, 2-4-2, so we had two seats
to ourselves. We flew on Delta, and this was our second time flying to Europe
on Delta this year, and I must say, I have been very impressed. I like to
consider myself a pretty seasoned traveler and I'm often underwhelmed by
airlines (if it's a discount airline such as Frontier, Spirit, etc., that's a
different story and I know what I've signed up for!). But between flying
to/from France in February and this flight, Delta has made a very positive
impression on me! I hope I'll be able to say the same about our flight home at
the end of the trip!
Sunday, April 14
The flight was a red-eye and we arrived in Amsterdam Sunday
morning. We took a train from the airport to the city center and walked over to
our hotel.
If you've read any of my travel posts, you know I always
take pictures of the hotel – our room, the lobby, etc. – but I have exactly two
photos of the outside of our hotel.
Not a fan. Period. Staff was unfriendly, it was very
expensive, and our room was something you'd find in a Hampton Inn or Holiday
Inn Express. Not that there's anything wrong with those hotels – we stay in
them all the time. But we don't pay many hundreds of dollars a night for them.
Just so you have a sense of why I was unhappy, here's a
little comparison of recent hotels.
View from our hotel in Tokyo:
View from our hotel in Barcelona:
View from our hotel in Lake Louise:
View from our hotel in Paris:
And this was the view from our hotel in Amsterdam:
Not impressed!
Additionally, we have generally found hotels in Europe to be
rather accommodating when we have arrived very early after a red-eye flight
(we've been given free breakfast, we've been given a better room than the one
we booked so that we could get settled more quickly, or we've been assured that
our room would be given priority so that it would be ready as quickly as
possible). Not here! They could not have been less accommodating and offered absolutely
terrible customer service, bordering on being outright rude.
We dropped off our bags and wandered around the city for a
few hours, and I knew immediately that Amsterdam was not my cup of tea. It was
so crowded, so dirty (trash everywhere and all garbage bins overflowing), and
completely overrun with people that it is clearly ill-equipped to handle. Like
a much worse version of Times Square, but where other pedestrians will bulldoze
right into you without a second thought and you are at constant risk of being
run over by bicycles or cars. Whatever seedy things you've heard about
Amsterdam, they're probably fairly accurate. That's my only comment on that.
We went back to the hotel in the early afternoon and were
finally assigned the room with that spectacular view pictured above. We were
pretty exhausted from traveling, so we slept for a few hours and then went out
to grab some dinner. I didn't feel particularly safe and therefore had no
interest in being out at night, so thank goodness for Netflix!
Monday, April 15
Today was the saving grace of this trip – and really our
motivation for visiting Amsterdam in the first place – the tulips at Keukenhof
Garden!
We took a 45-minute bus ride outside of the city and had the
most beautiful, wonderful afternoon! It reminded me so much of the afternoon we spent at the flower park in Tokyo! The tulips were unbelievable! The pictures
of the fields do not even come close to doing them justice! The colors were
beyond stunning and it is a day that will long live in my memory. I loved every
second of it!
Tuesday, April 16
With it being the week leading up to Easter, everywhere we
went was ridiculously crowded. We booked this trip last year when I thought I
would be teaching and this week is Spring Break. No doubt it would have been
busy any place we'd chosen to travel, but it was also the peak time for the
tulips, so that compounded the issue here.
We really just explored the city today. Nothing of any
importance to report here, although I was very pleasantly surprised by how
clean the train station and metro was, given the general lack of cleanliness
everywhere outside of the train station. The city, in my opinion, is
unremarkable. Every canal seems the same.
The best part of the day was visiting the public library at
night; what a beautiful building! So between the tulips yesterday and the
library today, the trip was not a complete bust.
Wednesday, April 17
We packed and checked out, and then took a high-speed train
from Amsterdam to Brussels. The train was great and the trip took a little less
than two hours.
I honestly can't express how glad I was to leave Amsterdam
today. It is absolutely my least favorite of the European cities we've been to
and I have zero interest in ever returning. There are just too many places to
see in the world to waste time going back to a place that left such a terrible
taste in my mouth.
I can't wait to see what Brussels has in store!
Around Amsterdam:
The Library:
 |
| definitely worth mentioning... a freshly made stroopwafel! |
FaceTiming with Ginny:
TULIPS!!!!! (along with some other gorgeous flowers!)
Happy Tails to you!
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