Amsterdam touchdown

Upon landing we began our little foray into European ways of doing things [efficiently].

We stopped at a mini grocery store in the airport to pick up a few items to insure ourselves for food in case stores were closed on Christmas. Calling it a convenience store would be only half accurate - it was convenient, but it's goods wouldn't fit into a 7-11. Natural unsweetened juices, salads, produce, baked goods, cheeses, and a couple of chocolates, but not chocolate bars really. Healthy stuff like a grocery store.

From there we went to the train station. My pre trip research showed taxis to downtown were like €40, but the train went to 150m from our hotel (another way of saying I tried to pick a hotel close to the Amsterdam Centraal station), and the train is €3.60 and takes 15 minutes with no stops. It's simple to take once you're on the right platform, but considering it looks like we can get anywhere in the country via train from the airport, it took a while to figure it out.

I always like arriving here and being reminded that part of my brain is vastly inferior and underdeveloped - the langauge part that is. Yes we all speak Dutch here, but yes once you say Hi to us we'll just accomodate you with perfect English, or French, or German too.

Downtown is nice on our first walkaround. Lots of tourist stuff availabl, seems busy, and no worries of not having stores open. The foods/restaurants available remind us that this city has a long, long history of world commerce, the variety is impressive.

Despite me oogling all the pancake houses, we got some sort of food I haven't had before, don't really know what it's called. Kind of Mexican.

Walked past some churches on the side of the red light district back to our hotel for a good night's sleep.