We stayed the first night, out of the city close to the airport. Apparently, Ray thought that the hotel was closer to the city when he booked it, but it ended up being closer to the airport than the city. We were in a big commercial office building complex, go figure. We assumed that getting to and from the city wouldn't be a huge deal so we decided to just stay put. I decided to wash some of my clothes in the hotel sink (Thanks sis for the laundry D) so that they would have plenty of time over the next 3 days to dry. The next morning, we woke up and set our sights on finding a place to do the rest of our laundry (that we desperately needed). Our hotel had a laundering service, but they wanted to charge 5 euros per shirt and 7 per pants. Being that most of our clothes needed to be cleaned, this was not going to work. We packed up a bag, and headed to the city in hopes to find a place to do it ourselves. But first we had to take a shuttle to the airport to then catch a train into the city. We get to the airport, buy our train tickets and come to find out that the intercity trains are not running this weekend, so we had to take a bus. Needless to say, what a train can do to get people into and out of a city is amazing, while buses have to work a whole lot harder to move the same amount of people. Alas, the line for the bus was atrocious. We waited and waited and waited… This was not going to be as easy as we thought, especially since we were planning on coming and going as we chose. Enter spontaneous hotel booking now. Luckily we found a spot, right in the city near the Anne Frank house. Right as we were next to get on the bus, we jumped out of line, rushed back to the hotel, and packed up all our stuff (including all of my still soaking wet clothes from last night’s sink laundering). Got back to the airport to find the line not as daunting as it was an hour ago and continued into the city. We had 2 addresses of laudromats that we checked out on our way to the hotel… Couldn’t find one of them and the other was all boarded up, no dice! We decided to jet over to the hotel. We stayed at Hotel Clemens, which should have been called Hotel of the Stairs. We were greated at the door by one of the staff members, who then immediately ran up 50 stairs to the lobby. Took us a little bit longer to make the trek up. Not to mention, these were not just regular stairs, they went straight up with a moderate curve leaving only a few inches in which to place your feet. To get to our room, there was another 50 or so steps, making for a pretty sweet view from the balcony and some huffing and puffing from me once at the top.
Oh and the guy at the hotel said he would do our laundry for us… SCORE!! We passed off our laundry and hit the city. We decided to take a canal cruise (recommendation for Eric and Regina who had just moved to Amsterdam a few months ago). But before we do, we drop in for a ‘ken”.
The cruise through the canals was fantastic!! We got a great view of the city and learned some history while doing it. I never realized how big and how many canals there actually were.
This building made a certain someone come to mind…
Here is the gorgeous Amsterdam Centraal (train station)… On the cruise, we learned that the station is actually built in the open harbor on 3 artificial islands in the IJ lake. This was done to allow the station to be connected with the existing main lines stations, as well as a projected new line. Its crazy to think that this massive building is realistically sitting on an island that didn't used to be there. 
Here are some pictures from our canal cruise...
These houses are know as the dancing houses,
since the sediment settled unevenly.
An old storage warehouse and a house built by a carpenter (hard to see all the detail).
Definitely worth doing, though in hindsight, I would have rather been on the boats that served wine and bbq too.
What a cool spot! Not to mention, that the beer was great too! We tried a few different types including one that is translated into “egg white”. The people next to us, even got hard boiled eggs when they ordered their drink. Come to find out, that these eggs they are talking about are ostrich eggs. Well at least thats what I gathered from the label.
We had dinner at a local spot called the bierliun or beer garden. It was amazing! It was so fun catching up with Hanna and getting a local’s point of view of the city. Since we sat at community tables we found ourselves chatting with the people next to us, as well. We got many recommendations of where else we should go on our trip and everybody said the same… Budapest! Hmmmmm, maybe we make a detour to this place. Anybody ever been there? Thoughts?
We briefly toured the highlights of the museum aka walked through the gift shop before continuing on our ride. We rode past the Heineken Brewery and a very pretty park in the middle of the city (though I can not remember the name of it now). Initially, I thought we would ride for an hour or so… 4-5 hours later we finally stopped.
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