Amsterdam- half way there

Prologue

“I know it’s unlikely this year since we’ve had so little snow but can you imagine if, after all that time saving and planning, a storm delayed our trip?”

            “What?  A historic storm?   Coming in this weekend?”

…

“Since Lufthansa only flies out once a day in late afternoon and their flights are completely full through next Thursday, I just feel so sure that they may seriously delay our flight, but they won’t cancel it.”

            What?  They cancelled the flight?”

…

“Thank you, Lufthansa, for booking us through Delta Sunday night!”

            What?  You oversold the flight and when you told us we had seats what you actually meant was we quite possibly don’t have seats?”

…

“Ok.  We are on the plane.  Please, please, please just let us get there.”

…

7 hours later……

Cue shot of one seriously woozy woman,  absolutely no sleep under her belt, gazing out the plane window at one of the most beautiful sunrises she has ever seen, (ok, technically one of the few sunrises she has ever seen, because that’s how night owls roll, people) washing over Amsterdam. 

“Kaia!  Look at that sunrise!  It’s a good sign.  I am totally taking a picture.”

Then we had a wonderful day (Ok, a wonderful 6 hrs) in Amsterdam, which is full of beautiful architecture, canals lined with house boats: 

Thousands of people zipping around on bikes

like this one,

                                                         
And this one,

And this one, despite the freezing weather, 

And a flower market that is a gardener’s paradise.  I’m serious.  I’ve never seen anything like this market- stall after stall of every kind of bulb or seed you could imagine:

    And I do mean every kind: blue tulips, striped tulips, bonsai tree seeds, lemon tree seeds, cannabis seeds… 

Sure.  You can pick up your own starter kit, if you’d like.  

There are also dozens of bakeries 

(Hank, we succeeded in getting the girls some Chocomel),

museums (we spent an hour at the Van Gogh exhibit), plug in cars, painful places such as the Anne Frank House:

And sweet places such as little markets tucked into back streets that just begged to be photographed.  

I mean, come on!

    Oh.  And a China Town that we happened upon which is dotted with the occasional red light-district oriented shop.

People, you give the Hayashidas 6 hours in a foreign city and we get around.

I'm posting this from Greg's in Thailand. But I'll write a separate post for our first day here.