We woke up Monday morning to the
sound of rain hitting the windows and roofs of the nearby houses. We really wanted to see the famous
flower market, and had to return the bikes that morning. We grudgingly got up, packed our bags,
and dropped them off at the luggage lockers in the train station. Thank goodness the apartment is only a
5-7 minute walk, because it was not pleasant in the pouring rain.
Rainy Monday Morning
We walked back and quickly found
a tourist shop where we could buy ponchos. Super helpful in keeping some water off of us as we rode our
bikes to the flower market. We saw
all the colorful flowers in the little tents that lines the canal. There were tons of varieties and
Kristin bought some tulip bulbs of her favorite type of tulips. The rain had let up, so we rode our
bikes back, returned them to the shop, and stopped for a little brunch at the
nearby bakery. The apple strudel
and coffee were perfect to help us warm up and try to dry off.
We killed the time before our
train and explored some neighborhoods we hadn’t seen. Once back at the train station, with LOTS of time to spare
this time, we went to go get our Eurail passes validated. What we didn’t know was that it would
take 45 minutes to get the piece of paper stamped. So even though we had given ourselves ample amounts of time,
it again seemed like we had to fast walk to the platform. We made our train but it needed to stay
on schedule so that we could make the 4-minute connection at the next station. We made this connection because the
second train was running 10 minutes late.
Phew! I’m starting to appreciate the fact that things are never on time
in Europe.
One the next leg of our train
travels, a man in a different car became really sick. So we were delayed about 15 minutes while the paramedics
evacuated him. This was again not
boding well for our next train connection, even though this time we had 18
minutes to transfer. We arrived at
the train station 20 minutes late, having been told that our train was going to
wait for us (the passengers of the delayed train). We rushed to the platform only to find out that this train
was also 15 minutes late. So all
in all, late trains usually work out well because they are all late! We finally
made it to Hamburg, Germany!!
Katinka, our host here, met us at
the metro station and walked us back to her apartment. She couldn’t have been nicer. Showed us her apartment, where we could
use anything we wanted, offered us a beer after our long day of travel, and
helped us order a pizza to be delivered since we hadn’t eaten dinner. She’s a second grade teacher, and we
sat outside and talked for an hour as the sun set. It was great to be welcomed so warmly after a long day of
chaos.
Our room in Amsterdam
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