Day 1

We reached Schipol Airport at 6pm local time and started looking for information counter and to buy train tickets to go down to Amsterdam Centraal station. We got the train tickets and then had to find the correct platform for the train. One said Amsterdam Centraal, Sneltrain. I was thinking that Sneltrain means a very very very very slow train (like a snail) but later found out Snel is fast in Dutch.

 

We walked out of the station into the city and was trying to find our way towards the hotel we were staying for that night. We passed by Crowne Plaza and asked the doorman for directions. He then gave us a free map of Amsterdam to show us the way to the hotel, which was a half an hour walk.

We reached Hotel Kooyk which seemed like a dodgy little hotel (which did not deserve being called a hotel. It was more of a motel I would say). The room was very small, an even smaller toilet and a small bathroom.

 

We then had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant. Indonesian restaurants are very common in Nederlands, a throwback from the colonial times. Dutch people had developed a taste of Indonesian food and brought it back with them when they came back to the Nederlands.

We returned to the hotel not long after a bit of sightseeing to rest and plan for the next day. We had an adventure ahead of us as we planned to cycle from one city to the other.