October dawned as another early day on Saturday, October 1st as we were up early to make the 15 or so minute walk to the RER (Réseau Express Régional’ or Regional Express Railway) station at Cité Universitaire to make another visit to Gare de Nord. Today’s destination is to be Amsterdam. (I still got to go there after all.) I loved having reliable and rapid transit to use in Paris. It was only a 1 ticket ride to Gare de Nord so it cost less than 2 Euros 1 way; a lot less than the 27 Euro cab ride last time. (And much less than our gypsy cab ride back.) and no more time than taking a taxi.
Unlike our last train trip; this time we weren’t leaving the EU so we just had to go through security and not passport control.
We were about an hour before the train was scheduled to leave and we checked out the train station a little and got some food to take on the train.
Soon our train pulled up and I took my camera out to get a photo or two.
I was concerned to have a rather serious looking security guard come over to me and tell me there are no photographs allowed in the building. Now normally I’m a sarcastic smart ass and would of pointed out that everybody and their dog has a cell phone to take photos with; but not being nearly as dumb as I look; I just said I was disappointed in hearing that as it’s such a beautiful old building and I would adhere to that.
It was just over a three hour trip from Gare de Nord to the Amsterdam Centraal station with quick stops in Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and the Amsterdam airport. We never got off the train at those stops but I’m counting it as visiting Belgium, lol.
It was about a 15 minute walk and even though it was only just noon, we stopped at our hotel; Hotel Pagi to see if we could check in early to keep us from dragging our luggage around. Luckily, they let us check in. Curtis and Lucille’s room wasn’t ready so we put all the stuff in our room and headed out to look for food.
This being the Moffat’s 4 trip to Amsterdam, Curtis has mapped out a plan for food.
We meandered for just over a kilometer as we made our way south toward our lunch stop; De Carrousel Pannenkoeken.
I had heard nothing but great things about the mini Dutch pancakes so it only seemed appropriate to have them as our first meal in Amsterdam.
I had the cherries with mine. I love cherries and they are never an option on the breakfast menu so it only seemed natural.
And I must say, they were fabulous.
We started walking across the canal over towards the Heineken Experience to see what we could find from there.
I loved the architecture I saw along the way and took photos of what seemed like everything.
Soon though we found ourselves at Albert Cuypmarkt; Iconic street market since 1905 with lots of stands selling clothing, local foods, flowers & more.
It looked a lot cooler than our local market so we decided to check it out.
Lynda and Lucille found a few things to purchase (big surprise) and then we came to a stall/store that caught both their eyes.
I’m not much of a sandal wearer but the pricing was very good so I bought Lynda a pair she liked.
Since we now had things to carry; that was enough shopping for now and we started walking over to the Hard Rock Cafe just over a kilometer away to see about getting Curtis a shot glass. (And a drink or two for us.)
It took us over half an hour to make our way to the Hard Rock as I had to point my camera at a thing or 10 along the way.
There were no shot glasses for sale in Amsterdam but we decided to have a drink while we were here.
Lucille and Lynda wanted a lemon drop shot and the 3 of us shared a large strawberry margarita.
It was getting close to supper time so we started back to our hotel to drop off the shopping bags.
We dropped off the shopping and Curtis moved their stuff up to their room before we headed out for supper.
We’d walked just over 1/2 back towards the train station when we got to our destination; Gandhi Restaurant.
Curtis has travelled quite extensively and had told me that the best Indian food he’s had outside of India was in Amsterdam. I love Indian food so this was my whole reason to make the trip to the city.
I must say, he wasn’t wrong as far as I can tell. (I haven’t been to India but it was the best Indian food I’ve ever had.)
We had to walk that fabulous meal off so we headed out to check out Amsterdam at night.
Apparently we did get over to the red light district. I wasn’t paying much attention as I just took photos of everything.
We made our way back to the hotel and I took a last couple of photos from Curtis and Lucille’s room. They faced the main street where we faced a side alley.
Considering we’d spent about 4 hours travelling today it was quite surprising to get just over 20 thousand steps in.
Hank's Blog - Musings of a Wandering Mind 