Amsterdam Day 1: Zombieland

Hey everyone! Lucia and I landed safe and sound in Amsterdam this morning. We grabbed some much needed coffee, and hopped on a train to the city center. From there, we lugged our bags in the direction of our room (Air BnB with Audrey) and found a nice cafe (NOT coffee shop) to sit in and waste some time while we waited for check-in.

Instead of just facebooking, we decided to actually plan our trip a bit -- since there hasn't been much time for that. So far our trip is shaping up nicely. On the 6th we'll be leaving Amsterdam to head for Bruges, Belgium (2 nights), and then on to Paris (4 nights). That's all we have so far -- but we may make a detour to Germany for a few days and ultimately travel to Barcelona (our final destination) through Lucerne, Switzerland.

After the hour or two in the cafe, we dropped off our bags and started our zombie march through Amsterdam. I showed Lucia where I spent time when I was here for work, we took a canal boat tour, and then just got lost walking through the streets along the canals. Despite the fact that we were both falling in and out of sleep during the tour (I also fell asleep at the table during lunch), we both learned a bunch, enjoyed the scenery, and met some really great folks from Sydney, Australia who happened to sit right next to us!

Our host, Audrey, seems really nice and recommended a dutch pancake place to us for dinner. We ended up getting a pancake with bacon, cheese, and onions -- it was awesome. No more commentary needed there.

Today was definitely a bit of a blur after the long red-eye flight (not too long thanks to a few episodes of Top Gear), but it was a good introduction to the city and we're excited to jump into things tomorrow when we're a bit more rested.

The internet here isn't that great, I'll add some photos from the cafe tomorrow morning. Good night!

UPDATE: here are some photos!

Check out our other entries from: Europe, Netherlands, Amsterdam