Amsterdam -- Our Final Destination

Riding the train in First Class is very nice!  Leg room, big window, and we had the whole compartment to ourselves!  The train moves very fast, and both Ed and I nodded on and off.  It was a seven hour journey because we needed to switch trains, but overall, the trip went quickly.

Now we are in territory that Ed has been in before.  He has visited Amsterdam during business trips three times in recent years.  He had an idea about the trams, where to go and what to do.  We bought a 48-hour tram pass that would get us back and forth from our hotel to just about anything.

What I noticed VERY quickly is that Amsterdam can be a dangerous city!  There is a transportation pecking order (my term), and it goes like this -- Tram/Bus, BIKES, Pedestrian.  This means "get out of the way of the tram/bus/bikes" if you value your life!  Pedestrians are low on the totem pole!  Watch the lines painted on the street to know if you are in the pedestrian lane.  So once I figured this out, I was more aware.  But many times I would pull Ed or he would pull me to get out of the way of on-coming traffic!  Stressful!!  Let's go shopping...

A mirror inside a store -- our reflection

One terrible thing we learned when we were in Prague at the Jazz Fest was that the Malaysian Airline Flight MH17 was "blown out of the sky" over Ukraine.  We heard this from the performing group The Ploctones, who are from The Netherlands.  When we turned on the BBC news in our hotel room we confirmed this terrible news.  We observed in Amsterdam today the flags at half mast:

It is not easy orienting in this city.  Canals and amazing architecture everywhere!  We decided to go on an evening boat ride with Amsterdam Canal Cruises!  Now this was much different than the Berlin boat tour because we were going when it was getting dark.  It was a beautiful night for a boat ride!  Notice the low bridges -- just enough clearance for these boats!

  

  

  

 

The next full day was spent going to museums.  The Rijks Museum first.  Our hotel was able to purchase tickets for us, but we still had to go through the line to get official tickets.  We especially LOVED seeing Rembrandt's and Vermeer's, and those can all be accessed by the Rijks Museum link.

The Toilet Mirror - Joseph-Germain Dutalis, Louis Royer, 1828 - 1829

There was also a Calder exhibit outside the museum, so we walked all around:

 

 

This was really neat, but I got stung by a bee!  There were all kinds of flowers nearby, but I did not notice the bees.  Time to get some ice on it, so maybe it's also time for lunch!


We had a GREAT lunch at the Museum Café:

Then we went to the Van Gogh Museum.  All I can say is “AMAZING!!!”  So many pictures I have never seen.  They did not allow pictures inside, so this is all we were able to do:

Not the real thing!! It is only wallpaper...

We then walked all over the city but were on a mission.  Ed wanted to find his favorite restaurant he has visited on each of his prior three visits, Lucius.

We had the best seafood dinner we have had on this trip!

First, the appetizers

Ed's Meal

Martie's meal

Don't forget the amazing dessert:

 

And now we can work off some of this fabulous meal on our beautiful walk back to the hotel… 

 

Our wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime vacation is coming to a close.  There is not one favorite place or moment.  The ENTIRE trip has been fantastic.  Lots of memories, and I hope this blog conveys even a sliver of how much we have enjoyed our time together...

Last time up in the hotel elevator

  

    

Berlin -- A Big City

After such an amazing and emotional visit to Oelsnitz, I was tired by the time we got to Berlin.  But the fun part for Ed was driving on the Autobahn!  He went 100+ mph!!!  And actually there were cars zooming past us -- maybe 125-140 mph!!!  The German cars are made to go fast -- our car had six gears!

OK, so on to the next destination:  Pullman Berlin Schweizerhof.  We are on the 9^th floor overlooking the Zoologischer Garten!  We saw cranes flying around and landing on treetops.  They must live at the zoo…

Cranes at the Zoo -- view from our hotel room!

We settled in and took a walk from our hotel to the Brandenburg Gate!  

 

This was a nice stroll through Tiergarten Park down the main drag.  We walked around looking for a place to eat.  There are a lot more people here and it was late by the time we started our quest.  We tried two very busy places before we found our dining pleasure for the evening, Restaurant Mark Brandenberg, which is part of the Hilton Berlin Hotel.  The food was not great -- Ed and I had two different types of fish -- they both looked similar:  OVERCOOKED!! 

We did a lot of walking this night, and it felt quite different from walking in Vienna or Prague.  Berlin has a “Big City” feel.  Let's just say I held tight to my pocketbook!  We walked everywhere.  And we both need a good night’s sleep.  Then we'll be ready, Berlin...

  

Our mission on our first full day:  The Victory Column.  We walked up to the top and got a panoramic view of Berlin:

  

Then we decided to take a 3-hour boat tour -- Can you hear Gilligan’s Island theme song?  We bought our tickets from Reederei Riedel and then waited for the tour to begin.  Across the street from the boat dock was the Steinway Haus, so we decided to kill some time:

Nice, huh?!

 A boat tour is a great thing to do to get oriented to the City.  The bridges we went under were very low – had to duck a few times!

 

 

 

We were mighty hungry after the boat trip, so we stopped at the nearby Greek restaurant, Ach! Nico Ach! .  Our waiter remembered us from last night, and treated us to a glass of Ouzo.  Ed explained that I don’t drink, so the waiter brought him two more shots!  Ed enjoyed them very much!  We had quite a dinner.  Wish we had taken a picture of our plates before we started eating, but you can get the idea, it was a massive amount of food:

We decided to explore after dinner and started walking around.  I was thinking we would find the shopping district, but we actually were going in the opposite direction.  Eventually we stumbled upon Neuer See.  This was inside the Tiergarten and included high-end restaurants in a casual atmosphere. Beers were too expensive, but what a scene:

We eventually found our way back to the hotel, but decided to continue exploring.  We found the shopping district!  It was literally right around the corner from our hotel…

 

The next day we started out at the shopping district and went on a mission to get some gifts for Emma and Hans.  We wanted to get Hans a jersey for the German Football World Cup victory, and Addidas had the goods.  Well, they did have them, and they sold out immediately.  The next shipment was coming in on Friday, but that was too late for us, so we will try to order one on-line when we return home.  Instead, we found an Ampelmann (check out that link!!!) shirt for Hans.

For Emma I wanted to find a bag.  Emma loves bags!  I found a large, exclusive department store called Karstadt and decided to check it out:

Sure enough, they had a German line of bags, Picard.  These bags are made in Germany!  There were several that were on sale.  The first one I picked up I hung onto and looked all around.  I kept coming back to this green bag, so that’s the one for Emma.  Hope she likes it!  

Next, Ed and I rented bikes and decided to tour around on our own.  We found the path along the canal.  It is mostly flat, so it was fun to just tour around all over.  The Tiergarten is really amazing.  We found gardens, saw some bunnies, and even nude sun-bathers (I had read that might occur).  We chose to take pictures of the gardens:

 

Once we made it out of the gardens, we headed for Checkpoint Charlie. 

This is where all the people are!  There are loads of tour busses everywhere.  Snapped some shots, then headed back to Unter den Linden to get some beverages and eat our sandwiches we made at breakfast.  

Next stop, Reichstag.  We found out there were no tours into Reichstag – those needed to be booked months in advance!  Also, they were doing renovations, so we could only view it from the outside.

This is us!

That’s ok.  We just wanted to ride on the bikes anyway.  We continued along the canal until we reached the shopping district.   We decided to find a dinner spot there.  There was an Italian place, and although the service was a little slow, it picked up.  I ended up only eating half of it, so we saved the rest:

I forgot to mention that we are staying up all night so we can catch a 4:22 am train to Amsterdam.  We ended up at an Irish Pub for a Guinness, and then continued walking around.  Next we needed to return our rented bikes before midnight, and also pick up our bags being held at the hotel.  Then Ed and I walked to the train station and sang many appropriate songs to shorten the walk:

“Ticket To Ride”, “Ruby Tuesday”, “Yesterday”, “Take Me To The River”, “We’re On A Road To Nowhere”, “Yellow Submarine”.  Ed started this whole thing by changing the words from “We Are Marching to Pretoria” to “We Are Marching to the Hauptbahnhof".

It was a long night.  We made it to the train station and although it was mostly empty, there were enough people around to make me suspicious.  I could not sleep!  Ed napped a little, but I kept watch.  We got on the train and had First Class reservations!  Amsterdam, here we come!