June 23rd

This was another early morning because we wanted to get the suitcases through the metro before rush hour hit, so I went with Roger, Mike & Pam at 7:00 am down the street to the metro with the suitcases so I could help get our heavy suitcases down the stairs.  Then I headed back to the apartment while Roger, Mike & Pam got on the metro to the station were we would get on the Thalys train to Amsterdam and then he headed back to the metro station to meet me with the last bag after I checked out with the owner of the apartment at 8:00 am.  Sorry I don't have pictures of Mike & Pam sitting at the metro with the luggage and just hoping that we were coming back for them.  But I did get some at the Nord rail station while we were waiting to board the train.  The pigeon had only one toe on each of its feet.

We had a fun time playing cards on the train.  I finally won a game.

We made some new friends from the bay area.  Roger had actually taken a picture for them while we were at the Eiffel Tower.

After we arrived at the Amsterdam Central Station we had to call the houseboat owner to get a code to the key lock box so that we could get into the apartments.  Which sounds easier than done.  I highly recommend either having a cell phone or a calling card.  We could not figure out how to make a call and if it wasn't for someone helping us that was using another pay phone I don't know that we would have ever completed the call.  I had already gone and asked a couple of other people that live and work right by them for help, to no avail.

                                                                            To Pam's chagrin we decided to walk with our luggage to the houseboat.

But we were all very happy when we reached our new home for the week.

Once we got settled in we headed to the grocery store to get some food for dinner.  It was a guessing game for some of the items we purchased but it all worked out well.  What did we have for dinner our first night in Amsterdam....tacos.

Since we are further north it didn't get dark until after we went to bed at 11:00pm, which made it hard to get to sleep.