Our Trip to Europe

Day 17 – London to Amsterdam

We travel today to Amsterdam to meet up with our Rick Steves tour group. We took the Gatwick Express train out of Victoria Station to the airport. We had thought the security might be very strict after the bomb scares they have had over the last couple of days. It was more strict than we have encountered so far but not too extreme. We had to check our luggage though as they are much more strict about what you can carry on. Our flight is on Easy Jet which is a European company. While waiting in Gatwick for our flight, an alarm starting going off and they announced that the fire alarm had been set off in another part of the building and that we were to stay put. This went on for 30-40 minutes. We noticed that several of the gates for flights had closed and were concerned that we were going to be able to make our flight. Finally our gate came up and we headed that way. There was only a short delay before we boarded our 1 hr flight to Amsterdam.

Once in Amsterdam, now we cannot read any of the signs, we had to find our bus to Haarlem. It took some time to locate bus #300 but we did it, boarded the bus, tried to figure out what stop to get off at and picked the wrong one!! With the help of a map in one of our books, we were finally able to locate our hotel, dragging our luggage around behind us.

We went out for lunch, another experience as nothing here is in English and so you don’t know what you are ordering. Our group met in the hotel at 5pm and we met our tour guide, Ferdi. He went over all the rules and regulations and gave us an overview of what to expect.

We then went on a walking tour of Haarlem with a local guide named Hans. He took us throughout the town, pointing out the brickwork in front of the stores in shapes to indicate what type of business it was. This was done because the people long ago were all illiterate and so they relied on symbols rather than the written word. He explained why there are different types of bricks on the walkways and why their money is in all different shapes and sizes – to help the blind citizens get around and be able to identify their money. We also saw our first “Coffee shop” or marijuana store. Soft drugs are legal in Amsterdam and they are VERY liberal in their thinking and acceptance of different ways of life, especially homosexuality and nudity.

We were on our own for dinner and went with some new friends, Barbara, Bruce and their grandson Jeff to a Steak House restaurant next to our hotel. We had a delicious meal and a waiter that was a real character.

Our group consists of 5 couples, several mother daughter pairs, a single young lady and a lady and her two sons – a total of 25. We have a wide range of ages from 70’s to the youngest who is 14.

Tomorrow we take the train back to Amsterdam for a tour.