We are excited to arrive in Amsterdam after a 12-hour flight from Portland and our first time setting foot on European soil. Our first impressions of course are of the airport: crowded and the largest airport we have ever seen! Signs tell you how many minutes it takes to walk to other terminals. One reads 28 minutes to D gates. That’s a hike. Turns out after doing some research that’s it’s the second largest international airport in the world. We placed our carry-on bags in a locker, tried to memorize the location to retrieve our stuff later, and made our way to the train terminal for the ride to the city center. Our first struggle being in a foreign country was the realization that we couldn’t read the signs! Some are written in multiple languages, including English of course, but many have no English at all! Due to poor directions from the ticket man or possibly our lack of following directions properly, we ended up on the wrong train and traveled a few miles out of our way. A nice English passenger on the train alerted us of our mistake and once we exited and got on the correct train we were off to downtown Amsterdam. Our single day in this well-known and infamous European city can best be summed up as wet. It rained the entire time.
Aside from rain we found: beautiful canals, more bikes than people, scooters, busses (learning to stay alert or one will easily get run over), Monday is apparently trash day, and lots of "coffee shops" but no coffee? For those not in the know, “coffee shop” is the common term in Amsterdam for a smoke shop or weed shop. We wandered down many an alley smelling strongly of sweet Mary Jane. We spent most of the day ducking in and out of cute cafes and bars, trying to avoid getting soaked, buying Bill new socks when he did not succeed at this last point and had an altercation with a very large puddle, and walking, walking, walking. Amsterdam seems to be a lovely city and at least Bill thought it would be fun to come back and see it again in the sunshine someday. Ellen is not so sure.
