Our visit to Amsterdam

On Tuesday we headed out late morning to take the car back to the airport rental office. Once we got there and after all the walking we made Mar do yesterday - she decided that she would pay for a rental car for the remaining time of our trip!! She enjoys sitting in the back and looking at the sites more then doing all the walking - she has problems with knee and hips :(  Well I do love riding the trains and trams but since this will give us more opportunity to get to small villages in northern Holland plus moving to our next chalet near Den Haag will be easier.  She said we could still take the train but now we could drive to the station instead of walking 1.7km :)

So after dropping off the car we went back to the Thrifty office to find out about renting for 10 days, but she even said to book online for a better rate. So I went back to Rental.com and got a really good price thru Enterprise 217E ($325C) unlimited mileage :)  Mar was happy with the price so I booked vehicle pickup at the office near Central Station in Amsterdam to avoid the stupid airport surtax!

Once that was completed we got our train tickets to head into Amsterdam. Once there decided that a hour canal cruise would be a good start. Bought our tickets and waited about 20 mins before the cruise would leave which gave us time to eat our lunch we had brought with us - cant eat frites EVERYDAY!! LOL!!

Arriving by train to Amsterdam

In the train station there are vending machines with hot food! 

Central Station

Canal cruise boat

The canal tour was good. Got to see lots of very old houses along the canals (1665) It was a great warm sunny day for the cruise :) 

Centre house built in 1665

Just cruising the canals 

So many neat looking gables 

It would be fun to live in one of this canal houses 

Here you can see the hook that is used for moving the furniture into the house thru a window since the staircase is to narrow

This is the smallest house in Amsterdam- 2 floors and 2 windows! Not sure how a person could get a bed in there - guess it would just be a single bed. Wish we could see the inside

Think living in this corner building would be nice

In Amsterdam a Coffee shop is where you can smoke pot, a Koffie Haus is where you can get a coffee :)

After the canal cruise we head to the main centre square - Dam Square. To get there we walk along the pedestrian walk that is lined with all types of stores, from pot selling stores to clothing stores to bakeries and of course the usual McD, Burger King and KFC.  We are on the search for a tobacco store called Hartman to pick up cigars for a friend of Mar's. I checked maps.me and it shows its 1.5 KM away. I told Mar she could get a coffee at the Burger King and find a bench to sit on and we would hoof it over to the store.  We found the store and entered a very narrow store with hundreds of different cigars. I gave the guy the types we were looking for and bought 5 cigars for 70E (105C) I KNOW!! Hope Scott really enjoys them!! He does know that they would cost him about $25C each -I got him a bit of a deal by buying 3 in a package of one type of cigar instead of just buying 2 singles

No we didnt buy any of this ice cream :)

The organ player near the Dam Square

After that we just headed back to Mar because it is now time to start towards the car rental office to pickup the car at 4. The office is about 5 blocks away - but we got Mar there :)  We end up getting a nice Volvo V40 - a 4dr with sunroof. Not at all what we expected! Great car with GPS :)  We had the Enterprise rep show us how to us the GPS because I sure couldn't figure it out! As it turns out it is not the easiest NAV to use - maps.me is faster. Anyways, the rep got our "home" address in and away we went. Missed the first turn, but as it turned out we were taken out of the city in a less direct but also less busy direction.  On the way back we stopped at a shopping mall to pickup a few more things we needed.  I'm able to use a blowdryer from the office but really need a curling iron.  Found one and it was only priced at 14E. Thought that was good - until we got back and I looked at the receipt and found that I was charged $27E! Guess the curling irons got moved around and I missed it at the till because I was having problems with my credit card and ended up having to get Mar to pay for my stuff 😞 Oh well I can use it for the next 2 and half months and then keep it for our next trip :) :)

When we finished walking around and checking out the stores we headed home for supper.  Tomorrow we'll head to Haarlem and Alkmaar