Back to our First Hotel, Amsterdam in the Rain, Private Canal Tour, Even More Indo Food

Posted by Andrew on Sep 27, 2010 | 2 comments

Andrew gave me his cold and it is now in full swing. I woke up this morning with a raging sore throat and had a hard time getting up. Because of this and the fact we were up late last night making travel arrangements, we slept in until 11:00 a.m. and then packed up. We enjoyed our first hotel and its location so much that we decided to move back there for our last night in Amsterdam. We also wanted to take advantage of their private boat for a little canal tour. In other news, our luggage is getting pretty tight with all the stuff we bought plus we have a small box waiting for us in London as well. We will see how it goes, but we may need to buy another bag to get everything home. At around noon, we took a cab back to our original hotel and checked in. The room wasn’t ready yet so we walked to a little Indonesian restaurant that was serving lunch. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it really hit the spot. Especially since it is cold and rainy outside.

Ignoring the rain we decided to do a little more shopping on one of the main streets. It was pretty much an area that had all the brand name stores we have at home so we didn’t end up buying anything, but we did get soaking wet because of all the rain. Oh well, a little water never hurt anyone right? We also visited this really cool vintage shop that has an awesome leather weekend bag I am thinking of buying to lug all our souvenirs home in. We will see.

After our little shopping trip we had coffee in the hotel lounge while they put the finishing touches on our room. This one is even better than our first room here. It’s huge with a second floor bathroom suite. Nice! After we scoped it out it was time for our private canal cruise. The boat was a little bit late picking us up because it was having some technical difficulties, but when it arrived it was just beautiful and our captain Nico was really great. He gave us information about the canal houses and lots of history on Amsterdam. He even took us out into the open harbor. It was a perfect way to spend our last night here. After the boat ride was over we broke our cardinal vacation rule and ate at the same place twice. We enjoyed Blauw so much two nights ago that we couldn’t resist another meal there. We even discussed it with the concierge, but he agreed that if we liked it that much then we should go back as they don’t have many other modern Indonesian restaurants in town.  They even remembered us and gave us the same table. This time we tried the 20 plate rice table which is basically 20 small dishes of all kinds of different things. There was gado gado (peanutty slaw), two kinds of sate, two fish dishes, two beef dishes, a pork dish, my favorite coconut shavings and lots of other things as well. We were stuffed at the end of it all, but Andrew still made sure to save room for the cendol dessert. We took a taxi back to the hotel and now we are preparing for an early morning. Tomorrow we get on the train to spend one more night in London before heading home on Wednesday. Tomtom, our London coffee shop, is calling Andrew’s name. Au revior, Chelsie and Andrew