Amsterdam Part 1

We were finally able to board our plane a few hours after we were supposed to leave.  It cut into our exploring time, since Amsterdam was technically only a layover on our way to Scotland.  Instead of going out into the city when we arrived, we crashed in our hotel room.

Emily was funny on the bus ride to our hotel.  She kept staring at all the Caucasian people and commenting on all the tattoos (in Japan, tattoos are still mostly taboo).  English was still not the most commonly heard language, but we would catch snippets here and there, usually heavily accented which made it hard to understand.  She was also shell-shocked because we were driving on the right side of the road.  She was pretty funny to watch, and I spent a good deal of time just laughing--I wonder if that's what I had been like when arriving in Japan.

The plane ride was pretty good, but not as nice as my flight to Japan.  We took the time to catch up in our journals, read, and just enjoy spending time together.  Emily was having a hard time leaving Japan, not knowing when she would be able to return.  It became real to her that her sojourn in Japan was at an end.  She had to cancel her Japanese phone plan and do a few other things to finalize her leaving.

There wasn't much in the way of customs getting into Amsterdam.  It was crazy how easily we got off the plane and out of the airport.  We kept thinking that somehow we had missed something. 

 Our airline meals.  You could choose the Asian meal or the European meal.  Emily chose Asian (below), I chose European (above).  It wasn't too bad considering it was airplane food. 

 Our hotel:

 I don't know why they had the beds squished together, but we separated them. 

Emily checking out the shower

Pretty flowers

We only slept a few hours, both of us excited to get an early start and explore as much of Amsterdam as we could before catching our flight to Scotland that afternoon.  We must have given up sleeping and gotten up around five or so because we were at the train station before seven.

We had to wait a few minutes for the free shuttle back to the airport, so we took some pictures around our hotel.

Waiting for the bus

Our train ticket

Waiting for our train into the city