Go Historic

We've had a great few days in Amsterdam and are so excited to head home in the morning!! We're really glad we chose to fly out of Amsterdam Schiphol - it's an excellent airport. It has always worked smoothly on our previous visits and there are lots of great shops and restaurants to wander around. We've already checked in electronically and scoped out our departure point, so here's hoping everything goes as well as we expect it to tomorrow!

One of the best things about the airport is this panoramic terrace with a view of all the airplanes! It is so fun.

David enjoying the view

The plane that takes us home might be one of these

Or one of these. Our flight is jointly operated by KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) and NWA (Northwest) so it could be either one. We do know it's an Airbus A330, which is on the small side for a transatlantic flight but we like that.

Our hotel, the CitizenM, is very fun.

As advertised, it really is only 1-2 minutes walk to the airport, which is awesome. Under a covered walkway, too!

Our room is as small as expected, but it is so well designed that it's not claustrophobic. It comes with lots of fun gadgets, including a nice flat-screen TV with about 60 channels and free movies! We also have a Philips "Moodpad", a hand-held touch-screen gadget that controls the TV, music, blinds, lighting (available in many colors), and temperature. David loves it.

The bed takes up one end of the room and is absolutely huge - a big, comfy square of 2 meters by 2 meters, complete with fluffy white duvet and lots of pillows.

View from the bed of the rest of the room. There's a pod for the toilet (right) and one for the shower (left) - highly unusual, but it works!

The room and entire hotel are filled with clever little messages, all in English. The one at the top of this post is in the elevator.

Sometimes the design is just a little too creative, such as these signs on the bathroom doors in the lobby. It takes some squinting to determine which one is the ladies!

Aside from entertaining ourselves in our hotel and at the airport, we've also found time to do some last-minute packing and take the train into Amsterdam for an afternoon.

The city was a whole lot more crowded now than when we visited in November! This is one of the main squares, Nieuweplein.

Canal

Street in the Red Light District, with Bulldog "coffee shop" up ahead. We walked through here on our way to revisit the Oude Kerk, which is in the heart of the district (and no longer functions as a church). We didn't linger long, as it's all rather seedy and we did enough gaping at the women in the windows on our last visit.

Oude Kerk (Old Church)

Owl Misericord, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The main reason I wanted to visit it again is to take some photos of the weird and wonderful misericords, which I somehow missed the first time around.

And thus concludes my final blog post from the Europe Tour 2008! It will be good to be home.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane August 5, 2008 by Holly Hayes