It is is super hot here in Amsterdam. Up to 37C. That is more than 100 F. On Thursday, Amsterdam recorded the hottest day, EVER. We do not have A/C in our apartment. Sleeping that night was a little hard. We are leaving the windows wide open. We are on the first floor with a balcony with French doors. And a flowering vine that reaches it from the ground (second floor the way Americans count). After that, the landlady gave us a fan. It has cooled down some. Next week they are predicting heat again. Amsterdam feels like the safest place we have ever been. The Dutch do not seem to fear crime of any kind. The biggest danger here is bicycles. You have to be constantly vigilant about their whereabouts. It seems they have the right of way here.
Food here is okay. They have every kind of food available. A lot of middle eastern, Italian of course. They eat breakfast a little differently than we do. They put scrambled eggs on top of thick bread and eat it with a fork. They have a category of food called “toast”. It’s like an open face sandwich. They like their French fries. Hamburgers are everywhere. And hot dogs are fancy. We have been eating most meals at the apartment. We will have enough time when we have no choice but to eat out, so we are taking the opportunity to cook when we can.
2/3 of our stuff is going into storage. That means we will be back through Amsterdam in the future to retrieve it.
Our landlady was kind enough to do our laundry this week. Then in another week, we have reserved an apartment (in Prague) that has a washer/dryer. We have also lined up hotels with gyms here and there. Our muscles need some work besides the constant walking. I am making lodging choices based on needs like that.
We leave Amsterdam tomorrow. We extended our stay 2 extra nights. We visited museums galore here: Rijksmuseum (Night Watch), Van Gogh museum, Ann Frank House, holocaust and Dutch resistance museums, and more. We made side trips to Delft, The Hague, Zaanse Schans (were they still have some of the old windmills), Volendam, Edam and Hoorn. It was a good schmeer of Dutch sightseeing.
Coming up itinerary:
Brussels 2 nights. Fly to Prague. Prague 6 nights. Train to Berlin, Berlin 7 nights. Fly to Copenhagen, probably three nights there. Then on to Oslo and a tour of the fjords that we are still planning.
We finally got our first pet sitting assignment! We are very excited about this. It will be in the countryside of Germany. Near Brunswick. We will be watching a house with 2 cats for 2 weeks. Then we are out of Schengen time and must head out of EU to UK.
Hope all is well there.