After a few long days full of adventures including the epic one yesterday, I decided I was going to take it easy today.

I came into today having no plans.   I knew I’d start the day late and, honestly, I figured I’d just hang out around the little town of Haarlem where I’m staying.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t

I actually woke up at 8:30 this morning, which considering I went to bed at 1:30am last night, is actually pretty early to be getting up.

I keep waiting for other shoe to drop.   At some point the jetlag should be setting in and one of these days I’m just gonna sleep right through the morning and all of a sudden wake up at like 1pm.

Today, however, was not that day.

Even though I had nothing planned for the day, I still got out of bed bright and early and headed to the hostel patio.   I mean yesterday’s blog wasn’t gonna write itself ya know.

After spending a couple hours on the blog (yes, two hours – I hope you enjoyed it!), I tried to figure out what I was going to do today.

I ended up deciding to head into Amsterdam today instead of just hanging around here doing nothing all day.

So I put together a plan.   It included lunch, a street market, a canal cruise, and dinner.

Now, of course my plans kinda got rearranged throughout the afternoon but at the end of the day, I did actually do all 4 of those things.

Albert Cuyp Street Market

Let’s start with the market.   It runs every day from 9:30-5:00 except for Sundays.

I arrived at 3:00 and the plan was to just walk through the market looking at the different stalls and then heading to some restaurant nearby for lunch.

Lunch was soon thrown out the window as I came upon stall after stall offering up different cheap little meals.   It actually fondly reminded me of visiting the street markets in Chiang Mai in Thailand when I was there.

Here was my lunch today:

A canal cruise

By 4pm I was heading back to central Amsterdam.   I walked around the harbor for a bit looking for a canal cruise until I figured out I was in the wrong part.

Once I had gone to other side there were easily a half dozen companies offering up cruise averaging around 20€ ($30).

I just picked a random boat because I saw it had no roof and the last thing I wanted to be in was a hot box for an hour cruising around the city.   Oh yeah, I should mention that today was the first day it actually felt warm since I’ve arrived.   I still wore pants but my jacket ended up in my backpack for most of the day.

The boats holds 30 people and runs every 20 minutes and the ride is for an hour.   I got lucky as I was the last one to step aboard the board so I didn’t have to wait another 20 minutes for the next one.

It was actually really nice to be able to explore the city without walking.   Just kicking up your feet, listening to the calm waves outside and taking in the city.

I took alot of photos and videos of course cause, ya know, tourist mode and all…

We disembarked just after 5:30 and now it was time to figure out what I was going to do for dinner.

Four courses

I had the choice of either staying in Amsterdam and having dinner there or heading back to Haarlem and finding a place there.

I actually walked around Amsterdam randomly down a few streets looking for a place would catch my eye but all I got instead were tons of tourists, smoke shops, Argentian steakhouses (don’t ask), bars, and burger joints.

Hell nah, time to leave the craziness of Amsterdam behind me.   Off to Haarlem I went.

By the time I got back to Haarlem it was already past 7:00 and, honestly, my first thought was just to pick up some Kapsalon again and take it back to the hostel like I did last night.

Thankfully I decided to veto that idea and kept walking towards the center square of the city where all the restaurants are side by side with their outdoor patios.

After looking at a handful of menu boards I finally found the Governor restaurant and options for a 3, 4 and 5 course meal at 39€, 49€, and 59€ respectively.

This was what I was looking for and I opted for the 4 course meal.

I love a nice meal.   Back home I rarely go out to eat but when I’m traveling I live for this.   It wasn’t quite as epic as the 8 course meal I had in Iceland but this meal was pretty damn good.

I sat down around 8pm and didn’t actually leave the restaurant until 10:30.   It was a long meal.   For some reason there was 20-30 minutes between courses so I just kind of sat there on my phone flipping through social media while I waited for the next course.

I should also say that I told the manager and server at the beginning that I had a gluten allergy and they quickly told me it would be no problem and they’d create something for me that was gluten free.

Anyway, the meal came out to 76€ or a whopping $110 but of course that was also including a 3 glasses of wine and an espresso martini so, yeah, money well spent.

Here was my dinner:

A spur of a moment plan

While I waiting for one of my courses, I decided to look up stuff for my day trips to Rotterdam tomorrow and Utrecht the next day.

I was looking up cultural things like plays or opera or stuff like that.

Then I decided to look up something a little less cultured – football.

To my amazement there was a Utrecht/Ajax game on the afternoon I was visiting Utrecht.   It was only when I went to look up how much tickets were that I discovered the game was actually in Amsterdam and not in Utrecht where I’d be.

Serendipity thwarted!

Or was it?

A quick little putting together of pieces and I figured I could go on the early walking tour in Utrecht at 10:30am and then head on a train at 1pm to Amsterdam where I’d arrive just in time for kickoff.

Serendipity activated!

Anyway, long story short – I bought the ticket for 70€ and went back to my meal with the biggest smile across m face you’ve ever seen.

This is what I love about traveling.   Just randomly coming up with plans for new adventures and pulling the trigger and saying “what the fuck, I’m doing this”.

So, yeah, that’s happening in two days.

Tomorrow will be another easy day, although plans change obviously, as I’ll be taking a train down to Rotterdam to do either a 10:30 or 1:30 walking tour depending on when I get up tomorrow.

Two more days in the Netherlands… let’s go out with a bang!