We got to Central Station with no problem, and caught the proper tram (as recommended by the tourist booth/centre), but then we walked the wrong way to our flat, dragging our luggage around for twice as long as we had to. We eventually checked into the Sphinx Hotel (it was nice, reasonably priced accomodation, despite its cheezy name), and then went out to see the city. Holland seems to have as many canals as streets--Martijn says in winter you can skate clear across Holland, there are so many canals! Pictured here is a canal in Amsterdam (sorry, didn't get the name).

After lunch and a few drinks in an old Dutch pub, it wasn't long before we found ourselves in a coffee shop. At a friend's suggestion, we went into Pink Floyd, a rather touristy coffee shop, as the others were a bit intimidating at first. This photo of Pink Floyd's upstairs doesn't do the place justice--it's much cooler downstairs, but we were too embarrassed to take a photo in front of the locals.

In our somewhat intoxicated state, we found the red-light district rather intimidating. Our first trip lead us to de Wallen, which is a district mentioned in John Irving's book "A Widow for One Year." It was the scariest part of Amsterdam we visited. Lots of strange people. There were a number of people who were either yelling at each other incoherently on street corners, or else were checking the locks on bikes that were locked to the fence on the canal. Then we wandered around the city, ending up in some very local places. I loved it, but Rooney was a bit freaked out by the close quarters of the shops and pubs, and by the fact that everyone could understand us (English) but we couldn't understand them (Dutch).

We got a little lost in our attempt to return to the flat, and ended up getting back around 11 PM. Unable to sleep, we unpacked and reorganized all of our things. At left is a photo of Rooney that indicates our state of mind...tired and giddy!

There are more photos from Amsterdam. Click the frog to move immediately forward in the photo album.