This is the beginning of a 5-week trip to Europe with my sister. We have a few set plans but mostly the time is unplanned and subject to whim -- what a luxury.
We decided to travel in luxury this time, having both acquired a lot of frequent flyer miles, so we flew business class to our jumping-off point in the USA and then first class to Amsterdam. And oh my goodness what a difference first class is. For the first time, I was able to lay flat and stretch out and sleep -- an unbelievable luxury. And we were given two amazingly good meals -- not "good for plane fare" food but really delicious food. And, of course, I had several cocktails with up-scale bourbon. So we arrived in Amsterdam in quite good shape considering all the hours of travel.
After puttering around in our hotel room for awhile, and then taking a short nap, we decided to wander around a bit just to get ourselves acclimated even though it was lightly raining. We are staying in a very central location, so within 10 minutes we were in the famous red light district. There were some women sitting and waving from their red neon-outlined windows, but I think the activity was a bit subdued because it was a Monday evening. We passed up many opportunities to purchase fun sex toys, naughty lingerie and marijuana seed packets, although we did spend a few minutes discussing whether to go into the Moulin Rouge club that advertised live sex acts. Ultimately we settled for a cheese fondue dinner and then back to the hotel. We are definitely in a more northern area than home because it is quite light outside even at 10:00 PM.
I must add that walking in Amsterdam is great but a bit hazardous -- we have to be very vigilant about vehicular traffic. Not only cars, but bicycles, who are just as happy to run us down as motorists. And Amsterdam has millions of bicyclists. Really -- millions.
No comments:
Post a Comment