The Weekend, Packing, and Leaving

The Weekend and Leaving

Saturday accommodations: Lloyd's Hotel
Sunday accommodations: CitizenM Schipol Airport

Saturday was spent doing touristy things.  Carissa's big to-do was the Anne Frank house.  Luckily we got tickets for the ticketed entrance times, wait times are ridiculous otherwise.  I highly recommend not going unless you have tickets or enjoy lines that wind around entire city squares.  We hit up two microbreweries, Oedipus on the north side of the Ij river, and 't Ij, actually located in a windmill on the south side, necessitating a couple more ferries, free this time.  After that, it was to the supermarket to stock up on some beers for the return home, as well as to pick up a couple tall boy Heinekens to watch the Champions League final in the hotel room, as nothing around us was open that had the game on TV.

Prinsengracht canal

Prinsengracht canal

Not sure if still used or not....

Trains look like strip malls here

Bike parking.  As if that is ever adhered to in this town

USPS Trek anyone?

Random canal

Only some of the railway station bike parking...

Barge dedicated to bike parking

Not sure what these things are, but they are popular and legal to drive on bike lanes (like scooters)

Waiting for a ferry

Miyata and a Koga Miyata!

Oedipus Brewing, I think nearly everyone here biked

Waiting for the ferry back

On the ferry

Amsterdam in the background

Obligatory parked on a bridge canal shot

Brouerwij 't Ij is in this windmill!

Unique frame parked outside our hotel

Bike parking Friday and Saturday night

Sunday we packed our bags.  We went into town for lunch, and wound up taking a canal tour.  After that was off to Westerpark, where we stumbled across another random microbrewry that I didn't even know existed, a wonderful surprise.  There was a debate as to whether to ride or train it to the airport, and in the end the threat of rain and the lack of internet to figure out a route meant we went back into town and loaded the bikes up for the trip over.

View out our hotel

Prepping me to go home, the exact same mugs I have at my home bar!

Bike is almost bigger than the car

Brewery Troost

Outside of brewery

Finally figured out where bikes went on a train!

Thankfully, the elevators worked, and we got out and walked out bikes to the on-airport hotel.  The staff at the hotel could not have been more accommodating.  Upon asking if there was a spot I could store and disassemble the bike, they offered up a spare conference room to keep it in while we got boxes from the airport, and then let us use the room for disassembly and storage overnight!  The boxes were humongous, the only necessity was to turn the handlebars and remove the pedals, although I took off the back fenders as I knew I'd also be carring them on the back end through the airport, and ran us 23EUR each which I happily paid for the sheer convenience factor.

I like big boxes and I cannot lie!

Easy work!

For dinner, we ran into another couple from Detroit who were returning from a vacation in Cape Town, so we spent a few hours at the hotel bar with them, then it was off to bed.

Check in the next morning went just as smooth as Toronto.  Carissa and an airline agent weighed the boxes while I got our tickets: her box had grown in size to 24kg, and mine to 28kg.  That was a 7kg increase from Toronto for me, albeit with 5 bottles of beer and more clothing as padding, but I have to assume the majority of the weight increase was the size of the box.  We were supposed to pay $50CA each, as we were traveling on Air Canada, but that fee was never levied and I didn't offer the money :)

Pushing the bikes to the airport.  As expected, just slightly too narrow to fit through without slaloming

The only difference between Toronto and Amsterdam: whereas Toronto ripped the boxes apart when we dropped them off at oversize drop, Amsterdam tossed them on a conveyor without a care.  As such, Carissa's bike went on not taped up, as I had left the taping for post inspection this time.  I managed to get some tape on mine before he hit the button.  Thankfully, the cardboard tabs held the entire trip without tape.  The boxes were very sturdy.

After that, all we had was some tragedy trying to get me a bacon and egg sandwich at McDonalds, a surprisingly cheap beer from the Heineken abr next to my gate to cheer me up, me getting annoyed again because they ran out of salmon on the airplane and I was stuck with veggie pasta, a couple more Molsons to make me happy again, naptime, and landing in Toronto.  We did the same process as we did in in Belgium, as the new boxes had no chance of fitting in my car, and put them together on the sidewalk outside enough to wheel the luggage around and put in my car, I took the shuttle to retrieve my car, brought it back, packed up, and made it home in time to watch the end of the Tigers game!

At Toronto.  Again, told to just leave boxes out for someone to pick up.

All in all, a good trip!

Started out with 34 miles on the clock, so 234 miles total with this running (not all the time)