First point of call was the service desk in order to get our Eurail passes activated with a stamp. We had about an hour until our train to Eindhoven, so we had breakfast at the station. I had a three cheese toasted sandwich and freshly squeezed orange juice. Ulick had grilled cheese sandwich and a latte.

We then headed to the platform to catch our train to Eindhoven. Our Eurail passes are 1st class, but it looked that the 2nd class seats on NS rail looked very good also.

The train we traveled on had free wifi too. We travelled from about an hour and twenty minutes to Eindhoven, then disembarked the train, walked across the platform and boarded our next train to Deurne. This was a short 20 train ride.

We were met at Deurne by Ria. Ria’s aunt Nel is also my mother’s aunt (by marriage). I met Ria when she travelled to Australia with Nel on the occasion of my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary in 1998.

Ria drove us from Deurne to her home in Asten.  We enjoyed lunch with Ria and her husband Frans before heading to the Klok and Peel Museum.

Wow! I had no idea that Asten had such a large museum devoted to bells! Turns out, Asten has one of the largest existing bell foundry’s in the world! And the museum is a collection not only of bells created in Asten, but also from around the world, with many specimens over 2000 years old. We were met at the museum by Frans brother, who is a guide at the museum.

The museum has around 150 volunteers, with only 2FTE staff. We had a guided tour of the museum, played some bells, and I played a carillon organ!

Sara playing the carillon

A second part of the museum is devoted to The Peel (De Groote Peel National Park). De Groote Peel is a National Park in the Peel, a region in the Southeast of the Netherlands on the border between the provinces of Limburg and North Brabant. It has a size of 13,4 km² and preserves a peat bog that has remained partly untouched by peat cutting, which used to be extensive in the area.

For dinner we were treated to a traditional Dutch meal – Erwtensoep and Stamppot. Lekker!

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I wanted to get to the Rijksmuseum early (opened at 9am) so we visited our local McDonalds again for a quick bite before walking to the museum district. There wasn’t a lot open this early on a Sunday, only McDonald’s and Starbucks.

We walked the 2km (maybe a bit more) to the Rijksmuseum, spotting Adele on the way! (At Madame Tussauds)

This supermarket was closed – but they certainly have a different product range than Camperdown Woolies…

We presented our Holland Pass for entry, checked our jackets in the cloakroom and enjoyed the morning at the museum. We saw many great works by artists including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh and Bol.

The collection includes over 1 million items with about 8000 on display in the amazing building that is the Rijksmuseum.

Highlights included Rembrandt’s The Night Watch – amazed by the colossal size of it (379.5cm x 453.5cm, weighing over 300kg), as well as The Battle of Waterloo, another monster artwork (567cm x 823cm).

It was now getting close to lunch time, so we decided to find a Tours and Tickets outlet to redeem our Holland Pass for a Heineken Experience ticket. The earliest timeslot available was 2.30pm, so we decided to participate in one of my favourite activities when visiting foreign countries –  visiting the supermarket! I love to see the different products that they have and navigating my way through it all. We purchased a few items to enjoy for lunch including mini pizza and cheese and onion bread from the instore bakery. We found a park bench near a city roundabout to eat our purchases and bide our time until our Heineken timeslot. It is fascinating to see the different modes of transport in use in Amsterdam, with the ubiquitous bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, together with cars, motorcycles, scooters, buses, trams and little smart cars (and that’s just the land vehicles). The dedicated bicycle lanes work so well and traffic flows pretty well.

We presented at the Heineken Brewery just prior to our timeslot. It was good, but having been to similar tours at Cascade and Boags (and not actually a beer drinker) I found it to be more of the same for the first part. The second part of the tour was a bit more interactive which was fun. The tour includes tokens for two free beers, as well as a sampler part way through the tour. I drank about half of each. So Ulick had a few beers.

We then strolled back towards the hotel, stopping at another supermarket to grab some items for dinner and of course some chocolate.

We had a quiet night in. I started listening to Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip Through Science on BorrowBox, but fell asleep. Waking a bit later to eat dinner and go back to sleep. This, I guess, is jetlag.

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There was a long taxi to the terminal, we went through Passport control, waited for our bags at the carousel and went straight out from baggage collection to the train station – so convenient having a train station at the airport!

Used the ticketing machine to buy train tickets to Amsterdam Centraal. We had just missed the previous train, so had a 15 minute wait for the next one.

We arrived at Amsterdam Centraal and had a short walk (500m) to our hotel, where we left our bags in the luggage room so we could go exploring the city.

We started with breakfast at Starbucks. It was still very early and not much open yet.

After filling ourselves with coffee, croissant (Ulick) and Cinnamon swirl (Sara). We went on our way exploring the city. We had a nice stroll around the Centrum (the innermost borough of Amsterdam), admiring the old buildings and uniqueness of them, including how much they lean and the hooks, as well as how tall and skinny they are.

We then walked towards Anne Frank House where we had a 9.45am timeslot (these were booked three months in advance)

Because it was only 8.45am we went and had some pancakes (Sara) and poffertjes (Ulick) at a nearby pancake cafe.

Anne Frank House was on my list to visit from the first day we added Amsterdam to our itinerary. Having read the book (The Diary of Anne Frank) several times, it was a must.

It was very moving to see the place where Anne, her family and others were hidden during the Second World War. The Secret Annexe is small, and it’s hard to imagine being in such close quarters with people for so long, just in order to survive.

Following our visit to Anne Frank House, we went on a one hour canal cruise – which was very useful in trying to get our bearings around Amsterdam!

The tour pointed out highlights of the city. Amsterdam has over 100km of waterways and around 250 bridges, including the famous Skinny Bridge, and the seven bridges (pictured).

After all this adventure we decided to head back to the hotel and see if we could check in yet. It was after 1pm, but our check in time was 3pm. Luckily for us, our room was available! Perhaps not so luckily – our room was on the 4th floor (and the elevator was under renovations!)

So we collected our rucksacks from the storage room and climbed the 66 steep steps to the top of the building. At this point you might be thinking top of the building = penthouse. Adjust that though to be more like attic! ???

The hotel (XO City Centre) is basic, but centrally located. The stairways looks a bit well trodden and I was concerned about what we were going to find behind the door when we got to room 432. I needn’t have worried, the room itself is renovated and quite comfortable (also quite cosy!). There is free wifi as well as a Nespresso machine and television with something like 90 channels (mostly Dutch).

We enjoyed long awaited showers and had a lie down.

We decided to scrap the Red Light Walking tour I had on the itinerary for 8pm, as an early night was in order. So instead used our Holland Pass to gain entry to the Body Worlds exhibition nearby. In this exhibition there is around 200 “plastinates” of the human body. These bodies were donated by their owners to science and then underwent a process called plastination. It was fascinating to see body parts of display like this. After the first few you view you almost forget that they were once living, breathing people and think of them as models.

We stopped by McDonalds on the way back from the exhibition to grab a quick dinner to take back to our room, watched some American Pickers (it was in English!) Ate dinner and went to sleep. By the way, McChickens in Holland are much nicer than Aussie ones!

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We checked our bags in at the China Southern counter and then proceeded through security and onto the departure gate. By the time we had done all this, we only had about an hour to kill until boarding commenced.

There was a change of seats from what we were initially given back in March, so we were stuck in middle of middle row!

Meals: I had preselected the diabetic option, which meant I got served first! First meal was a fish & vegetable dish, the second meal was tofu and noodles. These were complemented with salads and fresh fruit, as well as a bread roll.

Plenty of drinks were on offer and offered throughout the flight. Service from both cabin and ground staff was very good.
In flight entertainment was ok. Ulick’s screen worked for safety demo – but not for any entertainment, just a bright white screen of death! I ended up covering it with the complimentary blanket! The seats were comfortable and leg room was more than adequate.

We had a six hour layover in Guangzhou, China. The plane landed miles from the terminal, so there was a bus shuttle from the landing area to the main terminal. We went through passport control, security, customs (can’t remember if that was the order). It was well sign posted and didn’t take very long.

We then hung out in a cafe for a couple of hours drinking iced coffee, before making our way to the departure gate and killing more time.

We boarded the flight on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This time our seats were one apart from one another (but nobody in between us) so we got to enjoy 3 seats for the 11.5 hour flight to Amsterdam.

Meals were served shortly after departure from Guangzhou. The first meal was chicken with vegetables, and salad, fruit and a bread roll. The second meal, about 2 hours before landing was egg and shrimp with potato, salad, fruit and bread roll.

We pretty much slept after the first meal until the second meal, trying to readjust our clocks to the time in Amsterdam.

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