Drunken houses

Today we started our holiday. We walked down to the station and took the TER to Rennes and then after a short wait the TGV to Paris. We managed to use up a pair of old Paris metro tickets up and then took the Eurostar to Amsterdam. When we arrived in Brussels we were told that we weren't going fast to Amsterdam but going via slow lines and a different route - so plenty of people had to change train.

We arrived in glorious sunshine at Amsterdam central station slightly later than planned and made our way to the B&B (no breakfast) where we dumped our stuff. We didn't know what to do but the owner suggested a boat trip in an open boat would give us a good perspective. The main picture are some typical houses which are rather wonky as their wooden piles rot and the buildings move - they are stabilised now in their drunken state.

The extra is the MV Ventura which was in the harbour and we passed underneath as part of the tour.

After dinner we wondered around a little and missed the supermarkets as they all closed early it being Good Friday. We did have a passable pizza though which was okay.

First impressions of Amsterdam are that no one speaks Dutch - we heard everything but... It's pretty smelly (marijuana really stinks) and pretty dirty - but I suppose with all the tourists it must be a nightmare to keep anything clean. There were a lot of bikes, trams and people and thankfully very few cars - though even then too many.

It has cost quite a bit to get here, it would have been a LOT cheaper to fly from Rennes to Schiphol, than take the TGV and Eurostar. In fact the flight would have been cheaper than the train to the airports at each end... The CO2 footprint of the train is a lot better than a plane though, and I do like to take the train anyway.