Layover in Amsterdam

It's hard to get anything other than a first impression from a few hours of an overnight layover in Amsterdam, but it's definitely a place I'd like to return to.

Amsterdam is infrastructure heaven. There are dedicated lanes for buses and trams, dedicated bicycle lanes on every street I encountered, and pleasant walking paths. Everything I liked about getting around in Spain is even more impressively executed in Amsterdam.

The architectural style is beautiful. It's a lot like Brooklyn's brownstone neighborhoods, which make sense because those were built by the Dutch when New York was New Amsterdam. The more recently built architecture is beautiful, too. A lot of post post modern architecture (I think that's the era we're in now; it might be three "posts") is inaccessible. In the US it often looks as though it's meant to be ugly. In Amsterdam I saw a lot of smooth shapes that blend into the surrounding environment. Unfortunately it was nighttime and pictures didn't really come out.

It was after ten o'clock by the time I checked into my airport hotel and made it into the city center. That would have been no big deal in Spain, but in Amsterdam it meant that there was much less open on a weeknight. After I had explored a bit and found an open restaurant to eat dinner, the tram and bus I took into town had stopped running. I didn't have a SIM card for the Netherlands, so I couldn't figure out another option (apparently trains run all night) and had to take a very expensive cab ride back to the airport hotel.

I only slept about three hours before my nine hour flight to Detroit, then had a five hour layover before another five hour flight to Phoenix. As a result I was completely wiped out and sick by the time I got to Phoenix. I spent my two days there sleeping, then drove to California. I'm only now feeling normal about a week later.

Next stop: I'm leaving for Bangkok on 10/25. I've got a layover in Taipei and I'm hoping this isn't a repeat of being exhausted and sick by the time I arrive. I probably won't post again until then.

And since this post needs an image, here's the awesome artwork on my hotel key card sleeve: