It's really stunning, right up there with Grand Central in NYC.
From the train station we walked down Meir, the main shopping street, to the Grote Markt.
Yeah, it was lovely. And we weren't there at night when I'm sure it's more striking, but I thought Brussels was more impressive. My two cents.
Then we walked around Antwerp for awhile. It's a picturesque city and might have been fun to spend a night there. The air felt really good and smelled like the ocean.
We ate a knockwurst and some fries at Max on the Groenplaats (Green Square). I don't know what knockwurst is. I don't want to know. It tastes like deep fried sausage and I felt like I was going to die of a heart attack when I was consuming it.
Back on the train and up to Amsterdam. I was dozing, as I do on all modes of transportation. On planes, no matter what time of day, I'm usually out before takeoff. As passengers got off and on at the Rotterdam stop, I woke up. A passenger ten rows in front of us started asking if anyone had seen his bag because it was gone. My stomach dropped. I stood up to check on my backpack which I had put in storage above my head. It was gone.
I'm mostly irritated at myself. I shouldn't have stowed something that would fit at my feet just for want of more leg room. But after you've been travelling for ten days and taking trains and public transportation all the time, you gain a sense of security. And I don't want to be some paranoid person addicted to Fox News. I refuse to live in fear. I know whoever stole my bag has it coming. This little terrorist will be caught someday and he or she will pay for making off with the following: my passport, driver's license, coasters from 't Brugs Beertje, and our Canon Rebel 2Ti.
Yes, our fancy DSLR camera and ten days worth of photos were gone. Hubs brought a good point-and-shoot with, so he would be snapping photos with that while I had the DSLR. On some days, like Versailles, I didn't take any photos, so he had the DSLR, thus, no photos. None of Marie Antoinette's curtains. No Hamlet.
When I realized the camera was gone, I cried for five minutes, and then we had to move on. We still had four beautiful days ahead of us in Amsterdam and this wasn't going to ruin them. We contemplated how much time we'd spent taking those photos. Maybe too much time. Perhaps we should focus on living more in the moment during our vacations, rather than focusing on the more concrete memory that is photography. Next vacation, maybe we will take less photos, or spend less time taking them.
(I thought I had coped with the tragedy. But when we went to the airport a few days later, I tearfully realized that my iPod had also been in the stolen backpack. How was I going to make it through a transatlantic flight with no iPod? I stole Hubs' Kindle.)
We rolled into the Amsterdam train station, and I was completely spent. We tried to file a police report at the train station police station but were told to come back the next day. Frustrating.
Hubs bought tram/subway tickets and we made our way out to our hotel. If you're not renting a bike (I haven't ridden a bike in years and Amsterdam didn't seem the place to be on rusty wheels), buy the pass for whatever amount of days you're going to be there. It's worth it. Then you can jump on and off the trams any time you want.
We stayed at Citizen M Hotel, a very modern hotel that I highly recommend. Hotels in Amsterdam were extremely expensive. The whole vibe at Citizen M was upscale and chic with little fetishy flourishes thrown in here and there, but it was a decent price for Amsterdam. It's not near the city center, but it's near a tram stop, the subway, and a train station. Close to nothing, convenient to everything.
Time to eat. Emotionally spent, I wanted some comfort food. A burger sounded particularly good, so we went to Burger Meester to see how Holland does burgers. Pretty well, actually. We both ordered the Burger Meester, a thin patty piled high with grilled zucchini and eggplant and topped with a spicy mayo. The bun was dense and wheaty. This burger was a full meal and the most nutritionally well-rounded burger I've ever had. Just what we needed.
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| There's a patty in there somewhere |
2 burgers + 1 milkshake = 20 Euros
We went down to the city center and walked around. We did the red light district walk-through, so very bizarre, and strolled along the canals.
And then it was time to put this very long day to bed.
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