Amsterdam (Again)

Hi there! It's my third time in Amsterdam, my third time staying at the Bulldog, and the second time I'm here with James! But that doesn't mean that there are no new things to do!!

After the long (delayed) bus ride from Bremen, we took a pretty easy night and got on top of booking our next trips including jumping through hoops of Two-Factor Authentication that don't work on James's eSim plan...

The next morning we had one mission (rather James had one mission and I was happy to go along with it until I got hungry), and that was to find a tennis court we could play on. James had not stopped talking about playing tennis since the moment he touched down in Germany so even if only to be finally able to talk about something else, we set off with Google Maps and a plan. We started at a tennis store to buy balls then we walked to a tennis club that had fingerprint scanners to grant access to their members. Needless to say, we were not able to play there. Then we ventured back to a large park and found a public court with only two groups waiting to play before us! We got in the cue and then got some coffee to appease a slightly hangry Katie.

Then we got to play and both of us were happy! I was even happier when we got breakfast after!

All of our morning and afternoon were taken up by this tennis task so we went back to our hostel to change and get ready for our evening activity: a trip to space!

The photo doesn't do a very good job of explaining what we did and I don't think I will either but it was like this large projector exhibit/movie in this huge warehouse that takes you through scientific advances in the space program and then showed stunning footage of stars, planets, etc. It was super cool!

After our cosmic adventure, we got some very tasty Indonesian food at a restaurant I went to when I was in Amsterdam a year ago and it lived up to the fond memory! We decided to go out for a drink after dinner but then tucked into bed quite early again tonight! I think we might be getting older or maybe just more mature because the idea of going out drinking until the early hours of the morning (like some of our hostel roommates were doing) was just not what we felt like doing anymore!

After a full night's rest, we went out for breakfast to find some Dutch pancakes and they were so tasty! I'm realizing now this whole Amsterdam post is just becoming about food but that's okay, it deserves it! We made the wise decision of one savoury plate and one sweet and it was perfect!!

We didn't just eat the whole time we were in Amsterdam, we did do some touristy activities as well, like a canal tour, checking out the gardens at the Rijksmuseum and just wandering around the canals:)

We really enjoyed finding the areas outside of the super touristy "Amsterdam" and went for dinner across the water to a beer garden with the best burgers! This place was really cool, with fun decor, painted glasses, all of the equipment for beer making and connect-four!

The next morning James and I split up as I had to go back to school in Trondheim and he started a week of solo travel through France, Luxembourg and Italy! But don't worry (and don't feel the need to make a joke about James and I "splitting" (looking at you Kenny)), he'll be joining me in Norway soon and I'll be posting about all of our Norwegian adventures!