In late April and Early May we spent two and a half weeks traveling in the Netherlands. We had always wanted to visit the Netherlands to see the tulips. A couple of our friends (David and Sara) from Duluth, Minnesota run a travel agency that specializes in wine canal tours in France. We found out they were going to do an exploratory canal boat tour in the Netherlands so we signed on. We caught a late night flight, with Dave and Sara, from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Amsterdam arriving late in the morning. We met the other couple (Lisa & Jim) from Seattle, Washington at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
More photos from the canal trip can be found on my website.
We encountered our first problem at the airport. Since we were going to need cash on the boat to pay for community food my wife stopped at an ATM and attempted to get some cash. Her debit card did not work. The bank sent us an e-mail indicating that their debit card was blocked in the Netherlands. Since we put a local chip in our primary phone we couldn’t call home to try and straighten the problem out we were stuck. We later used a travel card to get cash and that worked. Later we activated out other phone which allowed us to call the bank only to discover that the debit card was blocked in most of Europe. This was contrary to what we were told at the bank.
We all caught a train into Central Station in Amsterdam and after a little effort caught a tram out to the Hotel Mercier where we were all staying.
My wife and I love walking around cities so shortly after checking in we met up with the tour leaders in their room at the hotel. This is a shot of the ceiling in their room which turned out to be the honeymoon suite.
We went for a late afternoon walk along the canals.
Lots of bikes. In the Netherlands bikes and scooters share the bike lanes.
It was a nice afternoon but a bit on the chilly side as everyone was wearing there winter coats.
Cheese is big in the Netherlands. This was the first cheese store we encountered.
An interesting way to provide outside access for cats.
We arrived in the Netherlands the day after Kings Day. Some of the buildings still had their decorations up.
We finally found a street consisting mainly of restaurants. It’s hard to make a choice when there are so many to choose from.
We finally picked a pizza place that looked like it might be warm inside.. This was the group that would be making a seven day boat trip on the canals.
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