We're home from Amsterdam, and overall, the trip was a bust, rather disappointed, as was my wife, probably more than I was. We both had heard it was a neat city to visit, and being a major European city, it was high on our list. It was BY FAR the worst city to visit IMHO in Europe of the places we've been. By far. After the second day we were really turned off by several things, somewhat minor perhaps on their own, but cumulatively ...
First, we had issues with our hotel, which was over $400 a night. That wasn't the fault of the city of course but set our feelings down. It was centrally located and easy to reach by train from Schipol (which is another bad story in itself). Our daughter came up for two nights from Marseille which was fine of course, she had mostly her own plans, so we set off walking about. The city frankly is a major dump, there was litter everywhere blowing about, cigarette butts almost covering the ground, we get hit with the smell of marijuana about every ten feet which neither of us like. The houses and canals are, well, quaint, but after a few blocks that gets repetitive, and the canals were filthy and smelly in places. On top of all this was the heat wave which hit Europe. We were taking two showers a day, and going out in the morning and mostly staying in the hotel in the PM, going out for dinner. We did find one restaurant that was excellent called Lastage, we went twice, it wasn't cheap, but food was quite good.
After our daughter left, we had tours each day, the first was a food tour. It was OK, my wife liked it, I thought it was mundane, Dutch food frankly is boring. The food tour we had in Vienna was excellent. We did walk around a lot, and the guide was OK. Then we did the obligatory two hour canal boat tour. It was one of the hottest days of our visit, I guess it was OK, but again, block after block looks the same, and smelled bad in places. Maybe that was me, I was sweating like crazy. We did a tour to Buges on a bus, long day. The town is, well, "OK", my wife enjoyed it, I thought it was mildly interesting for about 10 minutes. I've seen "historic" towns in France. This place reminded me of a larger version of Helen, GA, overrun with tourists. Again, if you're in the area I guess it's a must see. Highly highly over hyped in my view.
Then we did a "three cities tour", which would have been OK except the guide was horrible, he droned on and on about minutia and then repeated in Spanish. My wife at one point walked a few steps ahead of the group to take a photo and he got in her face saying she had to stay with the group, which led me to get in HIS face rather loudly telling him he was an asshole, in front of 60 in the group. We avoided him from that point, the cities included The Hague, which looked OK, Rotterdam which had much less trash around, and Delft. I've never had such a bad guide before. Needless to say by this point my mood was not good.
We had one more day and I booked a guided tour of the Rijks Museum, art stuff, which turned out to be pretty decent. It was still really hot outside. We came back and showered and stayed in the room the rest of the day. It was too hot to walk somewhere to eat so we ate in the hotel, which had mediocre restaurants.
So, we take the train back to Schiphol and have to wait for the signs to update to tell us where to go to check in, that was unpleasant. Finally we see Check in and 12-15, OK, we see a sign to that location, and then walk, and .... no more signs. We looked everywhere. Finally my wife asked someone who told us we were in the wrong terminal. Still, no signs, but we finally get to their check in area, and now go through Passport control, and my passport wouldn't read, so I had to stand in line, my wife mistakenly thought I had gone on ahead and went trying to find the KLM lounge, again a sign pointed to one, but then ... no signs. Long walks to nowhere. Moving sidewalks belts no working, AC barely working, it was probably 85°F. I finally clear passport control and set off searching for her and finally after a long walk find the KLM lounge, which is HUGE, but has ... one bar open, and one area with really bad food. I pound down three G&Ts and eat some carrots and something else I couldn't recognize that was mediocre. We finally leave for the plane, which of course is delayed, but we get on, seats are OK etc. The announcements kept saying the plane was full and we had to check our carry ons, but the plane was not full, and nobody checked anything. My opinion of KLM dropped a lot. And the food on the plane was pretty inedible.
I did manage to sleep a bit, got to ATL and cleared customs in no time, the International terminal was packed, but we snagged a taxi and got home. I've never seen that terminal so busy, someone said some kind of football thing was afoot, but it ain't football season. So, I feel rather jolly now. The whole trip cost quite a bit, more than a cruise would have been, so lesson learned. Copenhagen was terrific, I expected Amsterdam to be on that level, it wasn't anywhere close. It was nasty, filthy, dirty, littered, with terrible expensive food, and boring. Other than that ....
