Unfortunately, the film I was shooting the last full day of our trip there is a bust, we realized when we got to Vilnius that the film hadn’t been advancing, so I probably have about 40 exposures all over the top of each other. So, I’ll be borrowing from eva.lu for this post, and if I get some photos from Erika I’ll add them later as well, as we spent a large part of that day with the two of them.
In the morning, Erika got ready early and headed out about a half hour before us to meet a friend of hers that she knew from volunteer work in Vienna who lives near Amsterdam and came into the city to spend the day with her. We decided we were finally going to try riding from our place into the center to go return our bikes since we were feeling pretty comfortable riding around on our own at this point, and this is when it really hit me how much more convenient it is to ride a bike in Amsterdam.
We left about 30 minutes later than Erika, who rode her bike to the metro, then took the metro to Centraal Station, then rode the bike again from there to the bike shop. We arrived at the bike shop about 5 minutes before her :) Even given some time meandering or having to double back, that’s fairly impressive.
Anyway, we returned our bikes, and Erika and her friend meandered off, and we went to Dam Square again to meet Eva and just wander around the center, take photos, etc. We met up and just started walking pretty randomly, which is easy since all the streets are so small and there is hardly any automobile traffic. We found a small art market, stopped into Het Zwarte Fietsenplan (since we just happened upon one, it’s a bike shop) and I got a seat cover for my Raleigh, we went into a really cool shoe store called United Nude, which is a British company with a Dutch designer. Patrina and Eva were both sorely tempted, but in the end neither of them came away with anything. We found a perfect area to live in near the Jordaan district – quiet and beautiful – and then stopped at a really nice cafe and had some amazing sandwiches for lunch, along with a Heineken (had to have one on the trip).
The ladies both got outfit photos, and a jolly time was had by all :)
After lunch, we met up with Erika again, and headed back towards Marc’s flat to return his girlfriend Lauren’s bike, which Eva had been using while she was there, and we gave him another little gift from Portland, perfect for someone who lives in the Red Light District :)
From there, Eva headed back to her apartment, as she had to get ready for an evening train to Copenhagen, and we meandered around a bit more. We ended up back at the cafe we had gone to the day before where we saw all the party folks going by, and this time there was a gay rights parade making its way past (must be a popular throughfare). This time we were sitting inside the cafe, and there was a cat who decided it liked Patrina, and sat on her lap for about 20 minutes, then moved over to get some love from Erika :)
We headed home after that, with the hopeful plan that Marc would be able to make it out to our place to have dinner with us, but he just ended up having too much to do that evening, and since it was Sunday, he had some work stuff he had to finish up on, so we made a cold pasta salad with fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and a lot of garlic, did our checkout with the apartment owners (since we would be leaving the apartment at about 6am the next morning), and got ourselves mostly packed up.
We all said goodnight and had a bit of a hard time falling asleep, knowing the wonderful time we’d had with people there was coming to an end.
The next morning we all woke up early, made some toast and tea, washed up the last few dishes, got our luggage down the stairs and walked off to the metro. At Centraal Station, we parted ways with Erika, who had a flight later in the day, so she spent a little more time in the center before heading to the airport, and off we went on the train again. Knowing our way around the airport better this time, we had a much nicer time, got a couple of gifts for people, and off we went to Vilnius, Lithuania.
