Sunshine

Bruce with the Vondelpark Picasso. The artist said it was a bird; the locals call it a fish;
I thought it was a bull's head. You can see all three.

We've gone past the 120 hour mark on our iAmsterdam cards*, so we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves besides poking around in museums.

The forecast promised a decent morning, so we tacked through residential neighbourhoods and made our way to Vondelpark. 

 

On our way, there were spring flowers. In the park we found a tree that had been knocked down but it got up again.

Immediately after we left the park, the rain came. We ducked into De Spiegel (sinds 1907) for a decent lunch and waited out the storm. Bruce tried some "young" gin and I had a "Van Gogh" toasted sandwich with chicken, pineapple and curry sauce. What you can't tell from that last sentence was how tasty the sandwich was.

Bruce had food for lunch, too, but gin makes for a better story than a clubhouse sandwich (even if it had an egg in it). 

We had no hope for a fair afternoon. But, the weather gods smiled upon us. We saw more sun this afternoon than we've seen all trip.

Combination opera/city hall. The locals call it Amsterdam's false teeth.

So we went to the flower market again, and then to the Bridge of 15 Bridges (so called - a bit of a bust said Bruce), and then down to Central Station to take the 3 minute ferry across to the north end of Amsterdam, where we came upon a short row of quaint tiny houses.

Bruce has been added to show scale.

 And I got an even closer look at the bike parking facilities at Central Station.

We're hoping the weather holds tomorrow because we've booked a walking tour in the morning and, in the afternoon, we're going to the Amsterdam City Archive! 

Do we know how to have fun or what?

Thanks for reading!

Karen

*At least two readers will be anxious to know if we made our money back on our iAmsterdam cards. I did the math and, yes, we did. We got 93 euros, each, more in admissions than we paid for the cards, or $266 CAD total savings.