March 23rd
The previous day (the afternoon I arrived) the sunshine came out so we went for a nice walk at a nearby park.

Apparently I brought the sunshine with me from New Zealand.  :-p

It’s so flat here!!

A pretty grove of trees that we walked through.

There isn’t much to tell from today. I’m staying with my Dutch friend that I met in New Zealand. He had to work today so I stayed put. Around 10 or 11 I started to feel really tired. So I figured I would lay down and take a nap. I slept from about 11am until 5pm. Yup – I guess I was tired.

New Zealand is 12 hours ahead of western European time; basically switching night and day time. So the only real way to overcome jet lag is to not sleep during the daytime (when you are most tired and want to sleep), walk all day and wear yourself out, and then come home and sleep during the night-time. Well, that was my strategy at least (with the exception of the 23rd).

March 24th

First day out and about. We caught a train into Amsterdam from the nearby train station. It’s about 30 minutes (via the Sprinter train) to Amsterdam Centraal. We started off the day in Amsterdam with a canal boat tour which was really neat! I didn’t take too many pictures during the boat tour. We did a loop around Amsterdam Centraal which took an hour.

After the boat tour, we walked…. and walked and walked. There are bike lanes EVERYWHERE here! It is amazing. Every road (besides the highways) have bike lanes that are separated and/or colored differently from the main road. There are parking lots and parking garages for bikes here. You have to watch out for bikes when crossing the street because they are NOT few and far between – they are a form of traffic to be reckoned with! So look both ways in the bike lanes and the streets.

I love this picture.

I’m in Amsterdam!

We walked all the way through to Vondelpark and a bit further where we found a little cafe and enjoyed a drink and the sunshine.

Pit stop at a cafe (Vondeltuin) in Vondelpark.

On our way back towards the central station, we had dinner, dessert, then hopped a train.

March 25th

Today there isn’t very much to report either. I tried to do a little bit of planning of my itinerary for Europe. As per my usual, I get these grand extensive ideas of what I can accomplish: I thought I could come up with the itinerary with dates, cost estimates, train schedules, etc. My jet lagged brain said nope…. not going to happen. So, I sort of just solidified my mental itinerary and that was that. Couldn’t do anymore. I was tired and overwhelmed with the grandness of initial concepts as well as the dwindling of my budget. It feels like it’s all just slipping away so fast that sometimes I think maybe I should just go home now while I have some money left to my name.

But, once I’m rested, I usually recover to my normal mental state of “I’m going to spend everything” and then go back to work. 🙂