Christmas Vacation - Part 4 (Final) - Netherlands

On New Year's Eve, we took our final train to Amsterdam. I've been excited about Amsterdam for awhile and, aside from being a little cold, it did not let me down. I am absolutely infatuated with all the canals, and the Dutch houses, and all the bicycles... even though I may have almost gotten run over by several of them in 36 hours.

We got in around lunchtime and went to the Hilton Amsterdam to check in. We took a tram back into the central part of town to look for a restaurant for lunch. It was a place called Metropolitain, and it was recommended by the receptionist at the hotel. It was very cute and they served late breakfast/brunch which might be my favorite thing ever. Upon perusing the menu (and eavesdropping on other diners' conversations), I realized most people speak English. Dutch is the official language and I'm sure most people speak that as well, but the overwhelming majority of speech and menus was English. I loved Amsterdam even more for that after weeks of language barriers and Italian gesticulations trying to get my points across.

At lunch, the gentleman sitting next to Dan struck up a conversation. He was very nice, if not a little weird, but it is Amsterdam. Come to find out he's a musician who was in a famous band back in the 80s and created a keyboard riff that is used in tons of music. He called the rhythm "Daddy's little pension" Haha. After fueling up on some food, we roamed around checking out some potential areas to explore later that night during the festivities. Once we felt like we got a lay of the land, we headed back to the hotel for a nap.

Normally, New Years Eve is all about getting dressed up and prancing around. Not this year. For me, it was "how many layers of pants do I think I need?". We layered up and went upstairs to the Executive Lounge for some food and drinks before going out on the town. We took one of the last trams before they shut down for the night at 8pm. It was still very early so we went pub hopping from one Heineken-serving bar to the next. We met some very nice/fun people along the way. We unintentionally walked through the Red Light District which was... well, it's everything you read that it is!

Since it was cold, we decided to stay inside as long as possible and then try to find a spot on one of the bridges over the canals to watch the fireworks. Around 11:45pm we got a spot on a bridge and waited. We knew we weren't in the center of one of the main fireworks displays but it was kind of cool because, when they started going off, they went off in every direction around us. Some were the city's shows, others were individuals setting them off. We watched the show and then wandered a bit. It became apparent that drunk people with explosives is not a good combination so we went on a 2am run to Subway (yes, THAT Subway) and walked all the way back to our hotel.

On New Year's Day, we walked to the "I amsterdam" sign, ate a pretty tasty breakfast and went to Rijksmuseum. There are LOTS of museums but, supposedly, this was the one that could not be missed. We were unimpressed. We've both been to better museums, so we lost hope in the potential of the others. We made some stops for souvenirs and then Dan wasn't feeling great (he had been fighting off a cough for a few days by this point). He asked if we could go back to the hotel and rest. We had been going, going, going this whole time so, as much as I wanted to see more of Amsterdam, I was exhausted too. We took a nap and ate downstairs at the Italian place in the hotel. Hopefully, we will make it back to Amsterdam as there is so much remaining to see and do. We shall see.

Early Saturday morning, we started the trek back to Accra. We flew a budget Spanish airline called Vueling. The tickets were half the cost of our usual fares, so we overlooked the 7 hour layover in Barcelona. We've been to Barcelona before, 7.5 years ago while on the study abroad trip where we met. So last time we were in Spain, we were more like acquaintances. We took a bus into town, got some tapas and sangria, roamed the Ramblas shopping street and pointed out all the things we remembered from 2008. We hunted and hunted for this place where we watched Spain win the Euro Cup. We recalled in detail what it looked like and where we thought it was but we couldn't find it. I'm convinced it's no longer there. Either way, it was a fun way to spend a layover and enjoyable to roam some of the same places now as husband and wife.

One more long flight and we were home safely on a Saturday night. Sunday was a lot of laundry and football and getting back into the swing of normal life after the craziness of the holidays.