Gezzeligheid: Last Days of Amsterdam

I'm writing this blog post on the overnight train from Amsterdam to Prague. By the time I find some wifi and post this we will already have arrived and spent some time in Prague. It was very sad to leave Amsterdam, but we both agreed we did everything we could have wanted to and in a relaxed fashion. We never felt rushed or pressured to do anything, and we still got to do mainly everything we wanted to. There are a few things like taking the train to the beach or exploring more parts of Amsterdam but it's always good to have something to do when you go back.

We spent our last couple of days mainly finishing up a few things we wanted to do/get and wrapping everything up from the trip while getting ready to go. On Monday morning we got to go on a canal boat like we had wanted to. We experienced Amsterdam by bike, foot, and tram (both modern and historic) so it was important to experience it by water as well. While it was just a one-hour tourist canal cruise in one of this big boats, it was still fun and we learned a few tidbits of information about the city. Next time I'd love to go in a smaller boat with some friends/family playing music and cruising through the canals.

I am not sure what the name of this bird is (I still want to write this post on birds in Amsterdam that I saw) but it looks like a Black Swan to me, or at least how it is usually depicted. It has red eyes and is very territorial about the parts of the canal it is in. The couple of times we sat by the canal and watched, any time a mallard duck or another one of these came by it would chase them away.

After the canal cruise we went to Haarlamerstraat, the main street behind our apartment we frequented a lot, to do some laundry. Meanwhile we grabbed a quick lunch of pasta salad, prosciutto and arugula sandwich, and dolmas at this deli on the same street and ate on the canal. We spent the rest of the day hanging around town and eventually getting dinner in the Jordaan. We ate our last meal at a Thai place and got some delicious Pad Thai. When we got back we had to pack and be pretty much ready to go for the morning.

When we got up the next morning we had to check out by 11am so we just had enough time to grab some pastries and then get together the rest of our belongings before leaving. We also took some last minute pictures.

The owner (who lives on the floor below our apartment) had to move some things in so he had to get in to our room for a bit one afternoon in order to access the hook at the top of the building. All Amsterdam row houses are still built with these hooks in order to move things in to the building. The houses are built with very narrow staircases in order to maximize square footage of the house, so these hooks are what help them move in. Think of the quintessential picture of an Amsterdam row house with a piano hanging outside of the third floor. :)

After we left we stored our luggage in Centraal Station (very convenient!) and took the tram one last time to the Rijksmuseum. They are under renovation so they only have "the best of the best" out to see. There were some very cool things to see! My favorite was the beautiful furniture with the mother of pearl inlays and the big model ship. Before leaving I had to get lunch at this small cafe we had been to before only for this one sandwich: ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce, and egg on a soft baguette. Yum! Very simple but the hard-boiled egg really adds to it. We ended the afternoon and day wandering around an area we had not been in before. Brouwersgracht (the canal we stayed along) was voted multiple times the most beautiful canal in Amsterdam, but we found one we believe is more beautiful.

And we found some ladybugs making love on the XXX poles. Very fitting.

After we said goodbye to our bikes we took our final walk through the city, and it was very nice because it was a walk we had done a lot. I took some final pictures along the Brouwersgracht.