Flight arrived about 10 minutes late. Passport control line was long as only two of 8 gates were open. The queue included dogs.

Scott wanted to get to the hotel the easy way-by taxi-instead of the train. It’s also the most expensive and one of the slowest. At least three trains sped past us while we crawled along the highway.

Amsterdam was grey upon our arrival. Our hotel room wasn’t ready since it wasn’t even 9 am. We headed to the Cuypmarket which was getting set up.

It started raining so hard we ducked into a café for a coffee just to dry off and warm up. I was wearing a merino wool T shirt, long sleeved shirt, blazer, gloves and a raincoat but felt cold.

After a coffee, we decided to go to the Van Gogh Museum, where we last visited in 2009. It was a kilometre walk in the blowing mist.

When we got there, we found out all of the day’s tickets had been sold. We couldn’t even go to the restaurant without a ticket. We wandered until we found a spot open for lunch before noon.

Scott wasn’t happy about the steep stairs but the upper level seats made for interesting viewing with our not very interesting sandwiches. Some cars are no bigger than scooters.

We stopped at Albert Heijn supermarket for some wine then went to the hotel because we were done with wandering in the cold.

Our room still wasn’t ready even after I went for a walk in the area, while Scott relaxed in the lounge, so we checked out the bar.

Finally got into our room. Small but cute.

Looks like a good place to store books.

The downside of our hotel room is there are few places to sit. Scott lay down for a nap. When I climbed onto the bed to read, I ended up drifting off as well. I rarely nap, luckily this time, not for long as snoring (not from Scott 😦 ) woke me up.

For dinner, we went to Dèsa, an Indonesian restaurant that specializes in rijsttafel, a multi-dish meal that was created in Indonesia to satisfy the Dutch desire for flavour, more dishes (i.e. quantity), but not too spicy heat-wise.

Scott liked their sign:

The owner/server/general-running-the-show, at first, seated us next to a family with children who did not own inside voices and never stopped talking.

She must have noticed me rolling my eyes and moved us to a table further from the din. We thanked her profusely.

The place seems very popular, and why not? Not expensive at all and very tasty.