sandy's post

 hey

so nothing has been posted. we were really jet lagged at the beginning. And now Jim has COVID, so he is not up to posting. I will let you know where we are, but I am not the writer that Jim is...so, here it goes...

We left Edmonton on Tuesday afternoon. It was cold enough that they had to do a small deicing of the wings. I remarked to Jim. this is the last of the cold weather I want to see!!! Our flight to Vancouver was uneventful. Our luggage was checked through to Amsterdam, so when we landed in Vancouver the only thing we had to do was make our way over  to the international terminal.

We were allowed in the KLM lounge in Vancouver, had some really good food there. Wonton soup, noodles. Soon we had to leave for the gate. The flight was great. we ended up fling over Edmonton airspace to go the northern arc toa Amsterdam. 

In Amsterdam, we decided to take the bus so we would be comfortable on the bus system for our return when we took the bus to Haarlem. The people at the airport were extremely helpful on how to purchase tickets and what bus to take. Instead of costing 70 Euros for a cab, it cost us a tenth of that to take the bus, and just as fast. Their public transit system is amazing, computerized so you knew when the next bus was coming, on time.

It was 1 in the afternoon, so we decided to walk around and take a canal tour. Trying to stay awake until the evening. The canal tour was amazing. We felt it was the best and easiest way to get a real sense of Amsterdam and get your bearings/

On our walk about, we went by the royal palace. which was blocked off by the police. We stuck around to see a limousine with a police escort take 2 women away...turns out French President Macron was in town, that was Macron's wife and the Dutch President's wife.

For dinner, we wanted real Dutch food. There was a lot of Italian, Indian, Irish restaurants/pubs...we didn't come to Holland to eat that. Jim found a Dutch restaurant nearby. It was the busiest restaurant on the block. We managed to get a communal table and had a wonderful meal of thick pea soup, stampot (mashed potatoes with Kale, meatball or sausage on top with gravy) delicious. Dessert of Yoghurt mixed with custard and berries on top. 

With our bellies full, and it was 7pm, we were hard pressed to make it back to the hotel without falling asleep.

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