Amsterdam

Caught Air France to Paris after the usual security hassles (had possibly the most elaborate in-flight meal ever in Economy class, Chicken and pasta with wine sauce, a sea-food salad with real scallops, an amusing Medoc from Lee's stomping grounds in the Pays d'Oc, dessert, cheese, and real Port as well as some pretzels, mysteriously).  Then after more security and a plane change, on to Amsterdam arriving there at 8:30 AM.  Since we only managed a half-hour or so of sleep, we were delighted to be met at the airport by the owners of our B&B who kindly took us straight there.   Gaggles of giggling gallic girls had conspired to make sleep impossible on the flight but we thought it was better to keep going and get our internal clocks turned around, so we took off immediately to visit "The Zaanse Schans Windmill Village", a charming old restored Dutch village which boasted 7 of the remaining 12 working windmills in Holland.

The trip out was an expensive taxi ride so when we inevitably began to flag later that afternoon, we walked to the local train station and caught the 1:23 back to Amsterdam after figuring out the Dutch ticket machine and inserting 2.80E each.  This got us to Centraal Station in Amsterdam in a creditable 15 minutes.  We met some fellow Canucks who were off to visit the Van Gogh Museum near our B&B and after only 40 minutes or so of confusion, boarded a tram that dropped us two blocks from home.

At this point, Reggie felt that perhaps a nap was in order while Paul wandered off to explore the neighbourhood.  He turned up a baguette to go with the village's Gouda and sausage for supper and discovered a nearby Tram Museum before collapsing.

Wonderful city so far.

Windmill village of Zaanse

More windmills

Colourful specimen