Review of Amsterdam

Hi...

Think it is time for me to provide a review about my trip to Amsterdam...

But before that... just some minor news...

1) I am moving to a new home sometime in May... haven't quite decided when I want to move... It is a nice lady... her children / grandchildren live just behind her home so I gather most days the home is quite quiet. Near the school I am based at, so I don't have to wake up early and walk... further from the town centre but I can always take the bus and it is quite near to Dill's place as well. So not too bad lah. And... it is near HT as before it was near CC.

2) My kids prefromed 'This Blood' in CC at the 9.30 service. I was a bit upset that 4 girls didn't turn up for the dance, but no worries... everything went well and I am so proud of these kids. I gave a little speech about working with young people and how they can seem annoying, but there is so much in them that we don't notice. I hope that would have hit a spot in some of them. Dill said some of the old ppl had lemon faces... meaning not pleased with what I had to say... tough.

So... moving along... Ansterdam. Well this I have to give thanks for... firstly, the weather was excellent! Secondly, during the first day, we were debating on places we wanted to go and see... and timing so we can cover as many places as we can without wasting time and money.

When we arrived, the hostel looked a bit dodgy... and the smell! Oh man... you didn't have to smoke them joints to get high... the air was enough to do you in! So needless to say we were a bit concerned but we decided to go by grace. The rooms were alright... 14 beds in a huge room, despite we had to share the bathroom and toilet, it was relatively clean. The first thing we did was go on a canal ride... which lasted an hour. I think collectively we took about 3 hundred pictures that evening... We got off and went hunting for a dutch restaurant. Note, we arrived in Schiphol Airport at about 5 and by the time we got to our Bob's Hostel was about 6ish - we stopped to see if we can get info from tourism centre. So, we actually got on the canal about 7.30 and got off about 8.45.

So off we went looking for the restaurant and the map and road names did not help one single bit. Needless to say we got lost. Sheerah was ready to kill anyone and we were a little hungry. We finally found it after an hour of walk and turns out it was just behind our hostel... DUH! The kitchen was closing so when stuck in a foreign town, instincts tell you to hit to the most familiar spot... i.e. chinese restaurant - which I must say was God's blessing.

Ppl working in the restaurant were from Hong Kong and spoke cantonese so we asked them for suggestions for places to visit and one of the staff... Lee proposed if we didn't mind, he could be our tour guide and we pay him a small fee. After much pondering and debating, we took up his offer. I was a bit wary... but we prayed that night to go by faith. Before we met him, we went to check out at ths Tourism Centre and turns out, Lee was charging us 30 Euros each for 3 places, and other tour packages were like 27 Euros for 2 places. So we figured we had a good deal.

Lee was excellent... we managed to cover 2 extra places and also dropped us off at Heineken... I think I got our money's worth from him. The sad part is I missed the flower auction which was what I REalLY wanted to see... and I missed most of the museums I wanted to see... but money and time was not something we had...

So in the end, what did we do?
- Canal Cruise
- Peking Chinese Restaurant
- Walked along Damrak
- Volendam
- Marken
- Windmill village
- Cheese factory
- Old Dutch Village
- Clog Factory
- Heineken
- Flower Market
- erm... Sex museum
- Dutch Restaurant
- Fun Fair in Dam
- Walked along the other parts of Damrak
- Border of the Red light district

Home... ok lah.. not bad for a 2 day trip only... but at least we had a chance to cover all the outskirts of Amsterdam so if I ever go back it is to cover the central Amsterdam...

All in all, God is good as we had excellent weather, we were safe and we had fun and he blessed us with a good tour guide and we got our money's worth. Pictures will be in my blog soon... I maxed last month's quantity...

^__^