charismatic megafauna since 1985

Arrival in Amsterdam

My flight got in right on time, around 0730 Amsterdam time (GMT+1). For those of you keeping score, that’s 6 hours ahead of Washington, DC, making my body time 0130. Luckily, I got to sleep a few hours throughout the flight. Getting through passport enforcement was no problem, and the nice young woman said I looked “a lot better” with shorter hair (my passport photo is from my first year of college when I had long, shaggy hair). Getting my Eurail pass validated wasn’t a problem, and neither was getting to Amsterdam Centraal, the train stop in downtown.

That’s when I proceeded to get lost. I walked around for a while, just to get a feel for the city. Then I wandered back to the train station to get some Euros and directions to a hostel. It shouldn’t have been too hard, but for some reason (I’m going to throw “sleep deprivation” and “jet lag” out there) I got myself lost a couple times even with the map. An hour or so later I got to the hostel, checked in, dropped my stuff off and headed back out to SE Amsterdam.

My two stops for the day were the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. The Rujksmuseum is in a big cathedral-looking thing normally, but most of it is being renovated so only one wing is open. It’s still got an amazing collection of paintings and Dutch historical artifacts, but I imagine it’s more impressive when the whole thing is open.

The Van Gogh Museum, is also partially being renovated, but only part of one floor. Most of the exhibits are still there. On Rick Steves’ and Taylor’s recommendations, I bought the audio tour for this, and it really was spectacular. It mixes history, art criticism and actual quotes from Van Gogh’s letters. A must-see, if I do say so myself.

I caught dinner at a falafel place and then made my way back to the hostel. I’m a bit disappointed that I have to pay for the Internet (5 euro/hour!) but I’ll probably just suck it up and go out to a coffee shop next time.