Amsterdam holiday 2013 (Day 4).

Thursday 15 August

Unfortunately Katy was not feeling too well this morning, so after checking out we sat in the hotel lobby playing knockout whist.

Once Katy was on the mend we went out for a walk to Begijnhof, which used to be a refuge for pious women. Maybe there are not so many pious women around these days, as these houses are now occupied by low-income female senior citizens. This is a rather odd tourist attraction, as it brings in loads of tourists, to what is effectively someone’s place of residence.

After exploring this pretty area, we went to The Amsterdam Museum. This massive historical museum is on the site of a former orphanage, and, as you would expect, tells the story of Amsterdam. This museum would interest locals more than tourists, but still has plenty to fascinate any casual museum-goer. It’s bigger than it looks, and we all managed to lose each other. Where would we be without our mobile phones? We eventually met up again in the courtyard, and went in search of somewhere to eat, and found ourselves in Tomaz, which is promoted as being an oasis of calm in the bustling centre of Amsterdam. It was, in fact, a very fine café, although as with most cafes in the city, service is rather slow. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, had we not booked a taxi to the airport from the hotel at 4.30pm. The food arrived at 4.10pm! With just ten minutes to eat, and ten minutes to scamper back to the hotel, we all ended up hot, bothered and breathless, although the taxi driver was quite laid back, so we had time to cool down before setting off back to airport with time to spare for our 7.15pm flight home.

We arrived back at Leeds/Bradford at 7.30pm local time, after four magical days in Amsterdam, a civilised, cultural city which I would recommend to anyone considering a city break.