Barcelona was very fun, the GoCar day was a big highlight and we enjoyed tapas, wine and beer by the liter during our stay.
Luckily the night before we departed we decided to check Jon's email to double check that our EasyJet flight did indeed leave at 6am the following morning. But wait a second...it turned out that we didn't have a flight booked at all. We both definitely remember talking about it, Jon says he remembers paying for it, but there was no confirmation email or booking number anywhere. And then I looked on the website and saw that in fact, EasyJet doesn't even fly from Barcelona to Amsterdam so how in the hell were we going to get there? Trains are always an option, but we weren't exactly looking forward to an 18 hour train ride through three countries we traveled through on the way down.
At the last second that evening Jon found a cheap flight on an airline called Vueling (yes, unknown name = death factor automatically goes up by 50%) so we were on for our departure. When the wake up call came at 4am though I was willing to reconsider. Near death and desperately trying not to vomit in front of my Spanish fans (not a morning person), we got to our gate and finally on to our destination: Amsterdam.
Our first order of business was to find a hotel. We loved the place we stayed when we got here two weeks ago- so we thought we would go in and see if they had a room available at the same rate as before. It turns out that it is conference week here in Amsterdam and the rate for that hotel actually tripled- that and every other hotel in fact, so we made a quick decision and chose one that was in our budget while it was still available.
Jon has been meeting with his brother and their partner about some of their touch-screen logistics so yesterday I spent the afternoon cruising the city on my rental bike.
Sometimes riding amongst the cars and the local riders is a little hectic so I parked it at some point and walked to find some paintings to buy to add to the collection. And then I got very very lost. The kind of lost that if it was nighttime I may have set a small fire and held out until morning. I didn't have a map on me and I sure as hell wasn't sure where I went wrong so I just kept on moving and eventually I made it back to my bike and then our hotel for a nap.
I'm going to check out the Van Gough Museum and I also really want to see the famous tulips so in the next 2 days I'll conquer that on my bike. With a map. and GPS.
Until then- check out the stairs that lead up to Jeff's place:
