Amsterdam....... Part 1

Sitting at home on Monday lunch time when this conversation happens.

Hub ... let's go to Amsterdam?
Me .. When ?
Hub... This afternoon ..
Me .. What , are you mad that's too short notice - tomorrow?
Hub.. Ok, ( lots of button pressing on the keyboard ) booked ..

So Tuesday teatime we arrived at the boat, took our case to our little cabin with four bunk beds



and then went up on deck to wave bye to England. The big ship behind us was getting ready for a cruise around the Baltic.



The ferry crossing is an overnight crossing so it doesn't seem as though you actually spend that much time on the boat itself. We left at 5.20pm , and for once the boys were allowed to stay up late - there isn't anyway they would have gone to sleep as they were just so excited.



While they checked out the view I took some sunset pics.






It was a bit of an eventful night , with Gabe falling out of bed twice , getting used to the slight droning of the engine and Hub waking me up to tell me about the Blackjack he'd been playing on one of the upper decks!! We arrived in Amsterdam bright and early and then got a bus transfer to the heart of the city.

First stop food ..... the biggest chip portion ever and we had to scoop out nearly a bottleful of mayonnaise.



I had to take this one for all you UK peeps, can you believe they still have Clockhouse too !!



It is such a busy city and first impressions were not of the Amsterdam I had pictured in my head, there were too many shops for a start but things started to change though when we found the floating flower market ( where I wish I had taken more pics )



There were so many different types of tulip bulbs, fresh flowers galore , bonsai trees , even branches of cotton flowers , it was a lovely sight.





This is the back of the market with paintings on the back of the actual stalls and in amongst all that lot was a little shop that sold Christmas things and it was so pretty but there were big signs everywhere saying NO PHOTOS.....bah humbug.



There were so many backlanes we just didn't have time to explore them all but down one of them we stumbled across this little square.



Inside it was so quiet and peaceful, It was hard to believe that outside were hundreds of people going up and down one of the busiest shopping streets.





After the peace of this gorgeous square we ventured across to the Red Light District - but I think I'll leave that for part 2..