It’s safe to ride a bike in Holland because the cars all give way to them.

I love this bicycle also:

I love the narrow cobbles stone streets in Holland with all the buildings in long rows. We left all our bags with the lovely lady at the hotel who gave us tea and toast, before we went out sight seeing. We were really tired but our room was not ready at that time –it was only 8 in the morning. So we walked round Amsterdam taking photos, found some Dutch croquettes (they weren’t quite as nice as the ones Aunty used to make) for lunch, and admired the many canals, museums and gardens.

Here is the Rijk Museum

After awhile we got really tired (we’d been awake most of the night:-) and went back to the hotel to see if the room was ready yet.

It wasn’t long and we were told it was ready and shown the way up 3 very steep flights to our room. The stairs were like climbing a mountain. John started off with 2 suitcases, and dropped one off at the first landing.I managed only to get the laptop up to the top! We learnt later on that they are not permitted to build houses with such steep stairs anymore. The Bicycle Hotel is very old! We crashed on the bed at around 1 pm and when we awoke our watches said 10 o’clock, but we couldn’t tell if it was night time or the next day.

Looking outside, it was broad daylight, although there were not many people around. We showered and dressed, went downstairs and there was no-one there, so figured it must still be night time.
It doesn’t get dark in Amsterdam until around 11.30 pm, then the sun comes up around 4.30 in the morning. That’s pretty amazing to me!!

We found a pizza shop for dinner, where John asked for ham and pineapple, and the cook placed a whole pineapple in the middle of the pizza, which is unusual to the way our pizzas are made in Australia. It was yummy though!

Breakfast at the Hotel was interesting, John was taken back to his childhood because they had the same things on the table as he used to have when he was a little boy. He even took a photo:

Go to next: Sightseeing around Amsterdam