All went well for the British Airways flight from Vancouver to Schiphol with a transfer at Heathrow.
We are well enough acquainted with the Amsterdam transit services that we just caught the express bus on our own, and were met by our grandkids and their Mom at the bus stop nearest their home.
They are in school this week, so Pat and I do our own thing in the day.... the first lovely warm day biking 30 minutes up the Amstel river and back, with a nice lunch at Loetje's in Ouderkerk.
Today (Thursday) was cloudy and much cooler. We bicycled the 15 minutes to Oranjebaan station and caught the tram into Amsterdam for a stroll around the canals. I had discovered on the internet, a free noon hour concert of the symphony orchestra in the famous Concertgebouw hall. It is a 19th C concert hall, famed as amongst the best acoustics in the world. The concert was actually an open public rehearsal of Tchaikovsky' fifth symphony. It sounded like probably the third movement they were playing, but I am not familiar enough with the piece.... very dramatic and difficult movement though! It was interesting to see the players and conductor dressed very casually, and also very interesting to hear them "work" a few parts after playing it right through. I will try to post a little video clip attached hereto. Nope... video didn't work, so here is a still.
In the afternoon, we just walked and walked, soaking in the beautiful city. It was raining pretty hard as we got off the tram to retrieve our bikes, so we got a bit of a soaking on the ride home. This evening we walked the dogs with 14 year old Nyah... a nightly routine before bed.
