This morning was a bit rough as the hotel room we were in last night had some serious problems. Firstly, the heat didn’t work, which is completely unacceptable for the Netherlands during winter. We called down to the front desk and they brought up a heater for the room. That was all fine and dandy except the heater had an insanely bright light. We said that we wouldn’t be able to sleep with the solar flare produced by that heater, so they exchanged it for a different one.
Then all was fine, right? WRONG! The electricity went out and with it, the heater. A couple hours later, it was freezing cold in the room, and there was a draft coming in the window. To make matters even better, there was no hot water. So, this morning after an awful shower, I politely asked if we could switch rooms after all these problems, and that is what happened.
With the room issues out of the way, we took the tram down to Centraal Station and boarded a connecting tram to the museum district. We got off the tram before that district though, as I saw a bakery that I had seen several times previously. We went in and had a doughnut and chocolate croissant. They were both really nice starts to the day.
From there we basically did a ton of wandering around the streets, ducking in and out of little shops. There were so many things ranging from little trinkets to shirts to beautifully ornate dishes. Though we didn’t buy much of anything, it was really nice to see all of these stores and what each one had to offer.
We went to a really neat photography museum called FOAM. They had a bunch of different newage photographers’ works on display, but the main exhibit was a Russian photographer from the early to mid nineteen-hundreds named Alexsander Rodchenko. Some of his work was absolutely stunning, especially considering the equipment he used and that there was essentially no post-processing techniques developed at that time.
From there it was the walk to dinner. Instead of our original restaurant idea, we ended up at an all-you-can-eat Japanese place. They had this system that basically came down to: 1) you had two hours from the time you sat down, 2) you could order up to ten items for a round, and 3) you were allowed five rounds in that two-hour period. We made it through three rounds of ten items each, but then alas, we could eat no more. I finished off with a double scoop of vanilla ice cream, which would have been two items in round four.
Anywho, now we are back at the hotel figuring out what excellent things we are going to see tomorrow. By the way, the weather started out sunny and fairly nice today, but later in the afternoon (when we were going to FOAM), it started snowing. The snowflakes were light, fluffy, and airy, and created a neat sparkle on the sidewalks. As I sit in the room now, I realise just how nice it is to have some heat. 🙂
