{"id":14631,"date":"2025-08-23T11:42:34","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T18:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=14631"},"modified":"2025-08-23T16:29:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T23:29:46","slug":"amsterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2025\/08\/23\/amsterdam\/","title":{"rendered":"Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Arrived in Amsterdam Centraal a half hour later than we were supposed to due to a few crossing signal issues along the way.\u00a0 \u00a0But it was better that trying to get here the following\u00a0 day when all the trains in the Netherlands were canceled due to a nationwide strike for the whole day.\u00a0 \u00a0 We arrived in the Centraal station and went to the Metro station and took one train back toward the way we came to get off at Amsterdam Amstel station.\u00a0 We paid via tap 2 pay for the metro ride as unbeknownst to me we could have just taken a free regional train back using our Eurail Pass.\u00a0\u00a0I only realized that when we headed out Wednesday morning toward the Zaans Museum and the windmills along the Zaans River.\u00a0 \u00a0We took a train to Zaans and it was right from the platforms the Metro came in on.\u00a0 We used our train pass to get into the platform area and on the way back here we needed to use special gates to get out of the station so our eurail pass would work to let us out of the gates into the rest of the station.\u00a0 \u00a0Most of the gates are for using the Metro but probably 8 were for the trains.\u00a0 \u00a0As we exited our pass QR Code wouldn’t let us leave, and then a passerby mentioned the train gates were over to the right side.\u00a0 \u00a0Those let us out.\u00a0 They were marked but it wasn’t obvious to us till after that passerby mentioned we had to use the other gates to get out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The walk out to the Windmills was beautiful.\u00a0 \u00a0We took a short boat trip to see the Windmills from the water side first then walked along the paths that got to the land side of them.\u00a0 \u00a0It was pretty spectacular when they opened the sails on a few of the mills and they started spinning..\u00a0 \u00a0These things were extremely old so that they could still work was quite amazing.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Thursdays morning we took a tram from Amstel Station lot to the Van Gogh museum.\u00a0 \u00a0It was a different place than the VG museum I had been in 40 years ago.\u00a0 \u00a0 Afterward we headed downtown for a slice of pizza after which we found the canal boat I had spotted earlier and signed up for a very nice 1 hour canal boat tour with wine and cheese.\u00a0 \u00a0I had picked this boat as it had a roof over it and looked more like an old wooden boat and not the plastic looking canal boats there were everywhere you looked on the canals.<\/p>\n

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Bicycles are EVERYWHERE!\u00a0 \u00a0Its amazing how many there are.\u00a0 And we had never really seen many of these bikes with a sort of wheel barrow in the front, but Amsterdam had thousands, and we saw just about everything stacked in them.<\/p>\n

Saturday was spent wandering around Negen Straatjes<\/span>,\u00a0 the picturesque part of Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

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Sunday we \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>bused to the<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Castle Muiderslot in the small town of Muiden.\u00a0 \u00a0Beautiful small town.\u00a0 \u00a0 Had brunch at Cafe Ome Ko and while we were awaiting our food a two masted schooner pulled up along side us to go thru the lock there to the North Sea.\u00a0 \u00a0When I had looked at the lock I wasn’t sure why it was there, it looked like the water on both sides was at the same height.\u00a0 \u00a0Later while talking with a local he said it was because the north sea is a few centimeters higher than the river.\u00a0 This castle was pretty amazing and actually almost pretty.<\/p>\n

We headed back to the hotel and later that eveing we went and had our last dinner in Amsterdam at Friet van Oost (Loosly translates to Fries of the East)\u00a0 They had the best Spicy Hamburger I’ve ever encountered!\u00a0 \u00a0Over the 7 nights this was our third time eating dinner there.\u00a0 Kathy tried 3 bowls,\u00a0 Tuna, Chicken and Salmon the three nights.<\/p>\n

Things to know about Amsterdam.\u00a0 The Trams and White\/Blue buses do not have A\/C,\u00a0 the Red Buses do.\u00a0 \u00a0The red buses seem to be the one that take you longer distances, like out to different towns while the W\/B are inner city buses.\u00a0 Also its Tap 2 Pay, but the difference here is you must tap to get out too.<\/p>\n

We take the EuroStar to Brussels in the morning.\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Arrived in Amsterdam Centraal a half hour later than we were supposed to due to a few crossing signal issues along the way.\u00a0 \u00a0But it was better that trying to get here the following\u00a0 day when all the trains in the Netherlands were canceled due to a nationwide strike for the whole day.\u00a0 \u00a0 We … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Amsterdam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveling-the-hiways-and-byways"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14631"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16233,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14631\/revisions\/16233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}