Today is a rest day, if you can call walking nearly 17km a rest! Took the tram into Amsterdam to walk the sights of the city and to buy a cycling map to cover the ride to the ferry on Wednesday. When we booked this tour I told Anne it was about 10km to the ferry so no worries. That estimate has been revised up several times and currently sits at 40km because (a) the first figure was a wild uneducated guess, (b) we are in the east of the city and Ijmuiden is to the west, and (c) because we want to stick to the signed cycle route which meanders round in a leisurely no-hurry-to-get-there sort of manner. So the pressure will be on and fingers crossed there are no *u******s to interrupt the journey!! We are now close to UK so the weather is getting like home. Very, very windy today, not that we felt it during the canal boat tour, but it sure blew us around whilst walking round. Maybe we are getting a bit jaded with cities, or maybe we've visited so many to compare this trip, but Amsterdam is way down the list of best cities as far as we are concerned. It's a bit grubby, very crowded and manic, and expensive without the quality of service to compensate. For the first time ever, Anne was nearly refused a glass of tap water with her lunch because there was no money in it for the cafe; the waitress had to 'clear it with the boss' before the water materialised. We were shocked. Beer is almost at Swiss prices for a worse product. AND they don't seem to grasp the fact that if you pay that much for 50cl of tasteless fizz you'd actually like 50cl of liquid and not a massive foam head that goes waaay lower than the graduated mark. Rant over. We are now watching to see how tomorrow's weather pans out as there's a chance we might just go for a cycle ride!
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