I <3 Amsterdam

We're back. I'm exhausted. I'll write a more detailed account of our trips and include a link to all our photos later this week. And I'm sure Sean will have a hilarious re-telling of the entire trip on his blog, so I'll link to that as well (once he writes it). For now, here are a few pictures and a few random comments about our vacation.

We arrived at our hotel around 9am. Were then told that guests check out at noon, which meant we couldn't check in until after that. So, after being awake for over 18 hours we then strolled the city for another 4 hours. But first we grabbed breakfast (and an insane amount of the strongest coffee I'd ever had) in order to fuel our dead-man-walking stroll through the city. This is me in front of a canal on that stroll.

The stroll was made possible by Rick Steves and his wonderful Amsterdam tour book. Rick was our honorary and invisible tour guide for the entire trip. Since it was our first day in the city and we had no idea where to go, we opened up the book and followed the second half of his "Amsterdam City Tour." It included a map and detailed descriptions of everything we saw on the walk. This is Sean consulting Rick during our second refueling stop (this time for tea) during our 4 hour 'let's kill time and stroll the city until we can check in' tour.

Finally, 1pm rolled around so we headed back to the hotel. Only to wait for another 45 minutes until we could finally check in. This photo explains exactly how we felt once we reached our room.

And here's one more picture from our trip. This was taken during one of the stops on the bike tour we took. Apparently I am one-half of those crazy-too-cutesy-tourist couples I'm apt to make snarky comments about.

(The windmill's name, by the way, is Bernita.)