Off to Amsterdam.

Well, it's official.

I realise there have been times in the past when many of you have had your suspicions as to whether or not I'm a complete idiot, and I'm here to confirm that your suspicions are well founded.

I'll get to that in a minute.

The plan for the day was to get to Amsterdam. Our visitors had been there the day before, and wanted to round out the visit and take in a couple more sights. Mind you, with roughly seven hundred thousand residents and seven million tourists going there every year, most of the "sights" is really just other tourists, but don't get me started.
Since there are just so many seat belts in the car, the idea was that four of us would head off in the car, and meet up with Phil and Betty later at one of the lions at the "Dam". The more hidden agenda actually involved going to the de Bijenkorf
which is right there on the edge of the square but hey, I'm just the transportation guy.
So I took the two of them to the Hengelo train station (again) for the 7:55 train (something like that) and off they went. Stopped around the bakery and then the Texaco station around the corner from the house to fuel up.

I'll now attempt to explain in a little photo show and tell what happened next:














Ah...ya.

That would be our car being loaded on the back of a tow truck, from one of the narrowest streets in Delden, as you can tell by the car squeeking by. Oh, and it's on a bus route too. What fun!


Here we are on our way to the Audi dealership in Hengelo....


Just another adventure!!

At least that's what I tell myself. That and, "at least we weren't on the highway", and "at least nobody got hurt".

Whatever.

It just so happened that one of our young passengers wanted to send off a couple letters back to Canada, so I figured we'd stop in town on the way and pick up some stamps, and get that sorted out. This was probably a good thing, since at least we didn't break down on the highway, or worse.

Note that I earlier mentioned fueling up? Well here's the thing....

Diesels don't run on gas.

There, I said it.

Now, much to their credit, the dealership had a car waiting for us, which I believe is made available through leaseplan (the company that provides our car) and we really and truly were on our way once again after say, a couple hours? So it ended up being a "half day in Amsterdam", but that's the way she goes.

We'll probably find out today how much the dealership is going to put the bite on us for my boneheadedness. I don't think it'll be a nice number. But we'll deal with it.

"It's only money"....."It's only a car..."


You go with that Bob....



As we were back on the Snelweg (highway) I said to Gabe, "Y'know, I do find it amazing that you remain calm when I do these really stupid things from time to time..."

Know what she said?

"I'm saving it up".



Oh boy.



Suffice to say the rest of the day was pretty much uneventful. Phil and Betty managed to get their bank card issues sorted out, so that was a relief. It's important whether or not your card is linked to a chequing or savings,since none of the ATMs here let you make that choice, and that's about the extent of it.

I'll throw in some pictures here just to prove that we actually were there.....


Pretty sure this bike has had it's picture taken a quite a few times, since I recognised it from somewhere on the net. Figured I'd take one more.

Where I ended up parking was a bit of a hike, but unless you're willing to try your luck on a bike, it's always about the walking.


Whatever we would have done without cell phones is a complete mystery to me, since the meeting time did get changed once or twice.

Meeting up with someone in any big city can be a bit of a challenge.