Everyone in Amsterdam rides a push bike, they're absolutely everywhere. There's no fat people in Amsterdam.

The Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky where we were staying, on the edge of a large square.

River boat cruise, I highly recommend doing one of these if you're in Amsterdam. Do it at night.

What can I say...

Just round the corner from the hotel, the streets of Amsterdam always have an 'alive' feeling to them.

Euro Adventure - Amsterdam!

After 21 hours of travelling from Melbourne to Singapore, two hour stopover, Singapore to London then London to Amsterdam, I'm finally here.
The trip went well, beginning at the Qantas Club in Melbourne where I witnessed an obviously experienced traveller get his membership money's
worth out of the complimentary vodka bottle before boarding the plane.  I think his strategy was to get shit faced enough to sleep through the whole travelling part.  An idea worth investigating maybe...

Flying into Singapore was pretty uneventful.  By the time we'd landed in Singapore I'd gone through two movies (now I know why The Day After
Tommorrow and 13 going on 30 didn't rate) and got half way through my book I, Robot.  Singapore has a massive airport and I stretched my legs
investigating a little bit of it.  I came across some kind of theatrical show where two people were trying to sing some kind of godawful song.  As
bad as it was, I was not able to tear myself away from watching.  Kind of like a car crash, you don't want to see it, but you can't not watch.  Once I'd got sick of walking past the never ending perfume, electronics and book shops (don't bother with Singapore for cheap electronics shopping
anymore), I elected to go find the Qantas Club lounge and eat free food and drink free drink (well as free as the yearly membership fees make it).
 Unfortunately I found myself entering the Qantas First Class lounge where I was quickly informed that the Qantas Club Card I was brandishing held NO weight.  Once in the correct lounge I was a bit disappointed to find there was less food around than in a World Vision Advertisement and only
slightly more drink.

It was time now to reboard the Qantas 747 bound for Heathrow and another 12 hours of flying.  I selected Shrek 2 from the movie menu and loved it. Apart from the fact that the sound kept dropping out at crucial moments which brought me to the next level of rage everytime it happened, it's a great movie and well worth seeing.  If for nothing other than to see the little cat on it.

I finished my I, Robot book, which it seems is nothing like the movie.  I haven't seen the movie yet, but I have a feeling I'm right.  Good book
though.  I tried to wait until it was about 6pm London time before I tried to sleep in order to get my body clock adjusted to the time difference.  I
managed to sleep/doze my way through about six or seven hours.

At Heathrow, we had a bit over an hour to catch the connecting flight to Amsterdam.  It would normally be a bit of a rush to catch the connecting
flight but due to the early morning arrival, there was next to no one around.  On account of being early, Chris suggested we should try and get
into the British Airways equivalent of the Qantas Club.  Being that they're both OneWorld alliance partners, he thought we should have been
able to do that.  However it became apparent after being given the British Airways equivalent of F%!K off that this was not possible.

Getting onto the flight to Amsterdam wasn't as straight forward as I expected.  The short fat man checking me on obviously thought my passport
said "Osama Bin Lockington" from New Zealand the way he looked at me sideways and insisted on further evidence of my existence.

It was a beautiful day to fly, there were no clouds and if you looked up you could see the contrails of high flying jets above flying further into
Europe.  Looking down saw heaps of ships cruising through the English Channel.  Once over land you could see all the old OLD buildings that make
up this place.

Our first meeting was pretty much immediately so we went straight to the Amsterdam Hilton for that which took about three or four hours until we
were finally able to check into our hotel and have a shower.  We're staying at the Hotel Grand Kraznapolsky.  A pretty awesome place with all
the good stuff.  But at AU$600 per night per room you want to be getting some pretty special treatment.  The rooms aren't much.  Single beds, the
whole room is pretty small.  Smallest hotel/motel room I've ever been in.

We had another meeting to go to in the afternoon then went and investigated a local bar, where I pretty much had to sign a hire purchase
agreement to buy beer.  At AU$10 per pint, I was going to be making it last.

Onwards for dinner now, we were trying to find a place that would take AMEX.  I have a company credit card that we had all banked on using, only
to find that next to no taxi's take credit cards so we were all having to fork out cash which was unplanned.  Having located one we sat down and
ordered.  While waiting for that, we witnessed a fair bit of domestic disturbance coming from the couple who were obviously not having a great
time at the next table.  Somehow, I think our mate was going to be sleeping ALONE last night..

It was now Canal cruise time which I'd been looking forward to.  We spent about two hours on this boat cruising up and down the show.  This boat was about 25 metres long but damn did the guy know how to drive.  Numerous times I thought we were going to smack it into the concrete but he knew what the deal was.  I spent a heap of time hanging out with some Polish blokes which was great.

After being awake for about 30 hours, I was asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.  Today we're off to the Trade Show and have meetings all through
the day.  I think tonight one of the manufacturers is taking us to dinner, so I'll be sure to be drinking a few AU$10 pints there.

Fly out to Paris tomorrow, should be great, except I'm not looking forward to the beating that is gonna happen to my wallet!

Page Two - Paris