// Europe 2004 Travel Log Starts Here //

Amsterdam

Greetings from Amsterdam!, it was interesting getting here. I was going to try to be at the airport by 8:00 but was the usual 20 minutes late, still had to wait in the cafe outside the terminal for 45 minutes though, and they tell you to be there 3 hours in advance, ha!

The flight into Detroit was fine, they just remodeled the Detroit Airport so it's really nice. Check out the psychedelic hallway on the way to our plane! It even had psychedelic music.
My seatmate on the plane was a lady from Grand Rapids going to visit her daughter in Providence, she was cool. Changed planes in Detroit for Amsterdam and, took an airbus A330 (Rose, you only will appreciate this) and my seatmate this time was this lady from Uganda who complained about here seat and was going to go home to see her father who was sick. She was actually pretty cool when you got to know her just complained a lot.

Got into amsterdam at 5:30 I took this pic

of the sunrise from the plane. We then got a ticket to Amsterdam Centraal Station, hit up the tourist office and proceeded to get on the wrong tram (4 instead of 24) which took us to the other side of the city. This, as travel mistakes often do turned out to be a good thing, as we got to wander around the city in the morning on foot while it deserted and beautiful. Walked through several parks, saw lots of bikes and a couple of bums on park benches but nothing too exciting. We finally found our hotel an hour later, it looks like soviet bloc housing from the outside but the inside is really nice.

The Amsterdam Train Station

Walking the canals in Amsterdam

The Dutch are an interesting people, very liberal minded and accepting of just about everything. It's embarrasing but they all speak perfect English too, I've learned one word of Dutch so far "Dank you Ver" (phonetic spelling), we Americans are truly pathetic when it comes to languages.

We next went to the Van Gogh museum, it was cool but there were too many people and you felt like you were being herded through the museum, plus I was so tired that I was practically falling asleep on my feet as my body told me it was 11AM the next morning by then and I couldn't sleep on the plane because there was this annoying lady who kept gabbing and kept everyone within 10 rows of here awake. We took a stroll next through the Red Light District, then I feel asleep on the tram and got made fun of the locals, got back to our hotel and I then slept for 14 hours straight, supposably talking in my sleep the whole time.

Woke up early and got some breakfast at the supermarket, got asked by the supermarket clerk if I needed my change (either that's the custom here or I just look like a dumb tourist who will tip for everything) then took the Heineken Brewery tour where I sent a video card to everyone at MMI, got a bunch of free beer tickets from some girls and then walked through the shopping district to this internet cafe, gotta run now, only a couple of minutes remaining on this terminal...


Vats at the Heinken Brewery


My beer at the Heineken Experience
- posted by mark @ 8:42 AM (0) comments

 
Monday morning...the rain drizzles down, the sky is dark and opressing, As I slog through the rain on my way to work I wonder "What's the weather is like in Amsterdam?" In 3 days I will know.

Lots of stuff to finish beforehand, our system administrator is moving the stuff on the server around all over the place so that has caused someheadaches, nothing too serious though.

Streetjam industries site is coming along, the client liked the first design I came up with and the framework for the site is up now.

I've got too much work to do to write in this blog, and time is ticking away...
- posted by mark @ 12:55 PM (0) comments