Amsterdam 2025

A 6:30 alarm (I thought this was meant to be a holiday), and we were ready to leave our room at 7:30. One last check around the room revealed my Argentina hat on the floor - this would have been the second time I’d left it behind - maybe it’s trying to escape…. We walked to the train station and bought our tickets online, and the next train was only 5 minutes away, so we had to “hustle” to get there as it was already on the platform. It was quite busy, so no seats, but the airport was only 3 stops away. We finally worked out which departure gate we had to go through and quickly checked our suitcases in. Security was less smooth as they identified Hattie as a drug mule, and she had to have her keyboard swabbed. Luckily for her, it was okay, despite me whispering “druggie druggie” in the background. Finding the lounge took a bit of time - the airport is much bigger than I thought, but once there, we had a couple of hours to kill. I couldn’t drink alcohol (booo), so I hit that buffet hard...

I woke just before my alarm today, which allowed me to see the majesty of Hattie’s alarm in action. It went off, and the beautiful tune started and went on…and on…and on until 5 minutes later, she turned it off - lovely. We got ready and went off to take our third mode of transport - the tram. We both enjoyed it. We were early for our cultural extravaganza, so we went for a drink and a croissant - very nice. Then it was time to go to the Van Gogh museum. Normally, I’d just make childish jokes about paintings, but these were genuinely brilliant. Ok, this one did look like a woman fighting a giant condom… …and this one looked a bit like Paul McCartney… …but apart from that, it was brilliant. Afterwards, Hattie found some new friends. Then we had a Gangnam-type experience. We then walked to get some food. We found a burger/grill place that was right up our street - the food and drink were lovely. Afterwards we went back to the hotel to drop our souvenir buys of...

We were both awake before 9 a.m. and out of the room by 10. I let Hattie decide what we were doing for breakfast, and she decided on pancakes, so off we went. Our first choice was so busy that there was a queue waiting outside in the cold, so we went on to the next one. We both went for savoury ones— mine with cheese and ham, Hattie’s had cheese and bacon. When it came out, it looked good. By the end, though— we were both glad to have finished them— they were nice, but just too much and ever so slightly tasted burned. Oh well, at least we’ve tried Dutch pancakes now. We had an hour or so to kill, so we decided to do some souvenir shopping. I agonised for ages on what to get Joss, and I’m not convinced I’ve done well— hoping that the agonising bit will make up for the final product. We dropped all that off at the hotel and went for a drink.  The sports bar we had chosen was more of a restaurant, so we felt obliged to eat something even though we weren’t really hungry. We had the Dut...