Another random topic to start the blog….
Data: Both Suzanne and I activated the international calling and texting plans on our phones….they were pretty cheap and we wanted to be reachable. We did not activate data; those costs were outrageous.
Texting was the best thing….Cpher has his phone and texted and sent us pictures and we kept him up to date on what we were doing (he especially enjoyed pictures of our meals). Should have had Kevin text us from Europe last year….oh well.
Data withdrawal was a bad thing…..both Suzanne and I would check to see when we stopped somewhere to eat or rest or do anything if there was a free wifi network we could log on to. We did find out one nice feature about our Iphones….we could pull up a map (when we were connected to free data), and as long as we didn’t stray outside of that loaded map, the gps function would still work without data streaming in and show us where we are. A very handy feature while walking around Amsterdam.
Amsterdam Centraal: We slept in this morning…..finally got up, had breakfast, and headed out to Zandvoort.
The double deck of bikes that have been parked next to the train station…..
The train station…..
Suzanne’s text to me; we had separated…she had gone to get water, I went to buy the tickets to Zandvoort.
Zaandvort: The town is one of the primary beach resorts in the Netherlands; we just wanted to dip our feet in the North Sea. It’s a short train ride, maybe 25 minutes total….and it’s the first time that Suzanne and I have seen any type of topography on this trip; there’s some hills between Haarlem and Zandvoort.
for a beach resort in the middle of the summer, this place was dead. There weren’t many people around and we only saw two hardy individuals out in the waves…..
There were a ton of little shells; you could see some areas where they were a foot deep where the tide rushed in and rushed out. Nothing bigger than an inch in length though…..
We were able to walk out to this sand bar and walk up and down the coast a little bit. Sunny, but windy….there were a few people in chairs on the beach but they all had their backs to the North Sea and the canopies up to protect them from the wind….
Haarlem: The city is only 15 minutes from Amsterdam and we wanted to do something ‘else’ before we left, so, a quick trip out here was the plan (it worked out that to get to Zandvoort you had to go through Haarlem…). Again, a ten minute walk from the train station to the Centruum….this time that walk wasn’t very scenic (or, at least the most direct route wasn’t) and we ended up coming back later that afternoon a different way…..
The canal in Haarlem (that we walked over) is a little wider than most
The church….
The other church….always at least two churches on the main square. There was a market here on Monday….it was completely dedicated to clothing, bolts of cloth, shoes, socks, anything you can think of….
Laurens Coster, famous Dutch typographer…..they claim he was the first, not Gutenberg
The best view of the city is from the top floor of the department store….worked out nice for us, gave us a chance to get some candy (for Matthew, and for the crew at Jackson), a watch (Christopher’s only request…not sure why he chose a watch, but, ok), and just to look around.
We made it back to Amsterdam around 5 pm…..spent our last night going to dinner at the Thai place we’ve been talking about all trip.
