This Summer, we decided we needed a real break - rather than just heading to England to visit friends and family. I've had the target of visiting a new capital ever since I went to Paris two years ago so it made a lot of sense to head to Amsterdam by train the day before my railcard expired and fly on to England from there so I have lots to update you on after the last two weeks. I will go into Amsterdam and our week in England in more detail but first of all, I wanted to pass on the highs and lows of this new city.
+ Amsterdam is the flattest, smallest city centre I have seen in a capital which made it really easy to get around. The city that has been least taxing on my feet so far.
- The two twin 'features' of Amsterdam - cafes and the red light district. While I find both of these concepts totally acceptable in principle, they attract certain groups of tourists that I'd rather not be around. The number of groups of rowdy male stags or students made the centre a slightly uncomfortable place to be at times. While this is not unique to Amsterdam, it certainly seemed to be on a wider scale here.
+ We visited the city from Monday to Friday and while there are still things I would go back for, I felt like I had 'done' the city to a certain extent. In anny other capital city I had visited, I felt like I had missed out on something. Here, I completed my wish list (Anne Frank House, Van Gogh Museum, canal sitting / people watching).
- Our hotel was nice - good value and cheerful and in a relatively quiet area of town - despite this, our biggest problem was the noise - right next to the zoo and a tram line and with doors that seemed prone to go bang in the night, neither of us slept especially well. I have to admit that I did cope better with this and it was extremely satisfying to slam our door as we checked out before six am.
+ This may sound strange but in every capital I have visited to date there has always been a time and a place during my stay where it stank of sewage - something I think is hard to escape in a large city - this is one thing I didn't experience in Amsterdam.
+ The amount of people speaking English. It always feels uncomfortable to me to be somewhere where I can't communicate properly. I always feel tremendously guilty to rely on my English rather than to try some of the local lingo. It felt good in Amsterdam that the language is in some ways similar to English and in some similar to German but overall, when we asked one waitress what she preferred, she said English, so we didn't feel so bad then.
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