So, day 2 of our visit consisted of a trip to Amsterdam. We had to get up and leave on time this time since we had a bus tour scheduled for 10:00 and we had to be there by 09:45. Thankfully the Sat Nav lady didn’t have a lot of problems getting us there. It was nice to see the scenery on the way there.
Look at the top name on the following motorway sign. The names sure are long in The Netherlands!
So, we got to the park and ride complex and weren’t too sure of how it all worked. Thankfully the worker spoke English and was able to help us. We got the parking ticket and our travel cards and headed to the Metro to get into the centre of Amsterdam.
When we got off the Metro, we right there at Centraal Station and quite close by to where we needed to go. That was a blessing as trying to find your way around a new city is daunting enough in an English-speaking country, let alone a foreign speaking one. I was kind of anal about it all and planned where we needed to be before we even left England!
Amsterdam has lots of trams and tramways. These are a couple of trams that were in the station when we got there.
We got to our pick up point for the tour and we had a ‘tour’ of Amsterdam. This is where it gets to be a lot of a let down. The tour itself seemed like a big push to get us to the Riekermolen windmill and then to the diamond factory for a ‘tour’ of that. They diamond factory tour was just a big sales pitch. The tour of Amsterdam on the bus was just a huge let down. We wish we had have purchased the hop-on hop-off tickets. We know for next time.
We did get to see some good parts of Amsterdam and we did take some pictures. I am going to add a couple here.
After we got back from the bus tour, we asked about getting tickets to the Anne Frank house as we both wanted to go. We tried to get them online before we left England but they were all sold out. The chap at the bus tour office told us to try the tourist information as they have some there to sell. By this time we were both roasting and tired.
We made our way to the information centre and tried to find the information ourselves. In the end we took a ticket so we could speak to someone behind the desk. She said she was sold out for the day too and that morning was the best time to try. We wish we would have known this right as we got into Amsterdam.
Tip: If you can’t get the tickets online, go to the information centre outside of Centraal Station as soon as it opens and try to get tickets that way!
We were disappointed that we couldn’t get any tickets and we didn’t want to wait in the queues in the heat and didn’t want to hang around Amsterdam till evening. We decided to put it on a bucket list for our next visit. We found a cafe to have some food before we went on the canal tour.
We got to the pier for the canal tour and by this point I was as miserable as sin. The heat had really gotten to me. The canal tour, from what I remember, was good. We got to see Amsterdam from a different level. We had headphones that plugged in to speakers that had several different languages. It was quite informative from what I remember. We took some pictures from our trip round the canal and I will post them below.
At the end of the boat tour, we decided that we would head back to the hotel. All in all it was a good day minus the bad bus tour.
Tip: Don’t book the tour with Lindbergh Travel. Spend a little extra and get hop-on hop-off tickets.
We got the Metro back to the park and ride. We were ready to leave so drove to the exit barrier and put the ticket in. It didn’t open the barrier, so I tried again and still nothing. Then I remembered I hadn’t paid the €8 parking fee. We had a good laugh at this as we reversed back down so we could pay it. We paid and were headed back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel and chilled for the rest of the night.