It’s been a long time since I published any posts about our honeymoon last year. After the first couple of posts, which you can read here and here, the project took a different turn as I decided to turn the story into an illustrated book as a Christmas present for my hubbie.

Using the software from Blurb.com means you can set up every page of the book just as you want it. In the end I wrote about 11,000 words in less than a month and turned it into a 100-page book, illustrated with pictures from our trip. Click on this link for a downloadable PDF taster. The software is so easy to use that I knocked up a book of my cousin’s landscape photos in a couple of hours last Sunday.

But back to the honeymoon, now that I have all the text written and the photos chosen, I’ll be doing a series of posts to finish telling the story - and don’t worry, they will all be clearly marked in case you want to skip them and just read my regular rants instead. We left off just as we had finished our flying lap of the old Nordschleife track and were about to head for Amsterdam.

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After having something to eat (in an attempt to let the adrenaline from the lap drain from our systems), we headed back to our car to get on the road for Amsterdam. But when we got back to the car, we had been blocked in by a yellow racing Porsche. After standing around waiting for 20 minutes, I was getting ready to do some serious damage to it! Luckily the owners turned up and apologised profusely – apparently they had been keeping an eye on it from the restaurant balcony, but we were just out of their view! Typical bad parking, but what else would you expect from an Englishman!

We eventually got on the road and set our GPS for Schiphol Airport. We planned to drop the car there for a few days and take the train into Amsterdam, with just enough luggage to see us through. A few hours later, we pulled into the long-term car park at Schiphol. A clever system, instead of just relying on a letter and number location system like we do in Dublin, each section has it’s own animal character – much more fun and easier to remember. However, that seems to come at a price, as a 72-hour stay was going to cost us €50!

We dropped the car and grabbed the bags we needed, and decided to drop another couple into the baggage storage inside the airport for safety. I’ve heard people complain about Schiphol before, but I find it to be a compact, easy navigable airport, with plenty of facilities. I love the fact that the train station is directly underneath the main airport concourse. Train ticket machines are all over the concourse, and they even have several machines that only sell tickets to Amsterdam Centraal, mainly for the tourists. The queue for these is always long, so I head for a ‘local’ machine, which also has the option to be switched into English. A few quick presses of the buttons later, stick the credit card into the slot, and the tickets drop out. A glance up to see when and where the next ‘snelle trein’ leaves from and away we go.

Thirty minutes later, we roll off the train in the centre of Amsterdam. As we walk through the station, I check to see if I have enough strippenkaarten segments left, if not then a quick stop into the newsagents resolves that problem. The trams mainly depart from directly outside Centraal, and run every few minutes. There’s normally time for a quick cigarette and then off we go.

Amsterdam is one of our favourite short-break cities – it’s only a short flight from Dublin, easy to access from the airport and a dream to get around. This time, we needed a 1, 2 or 5 to take us to the Leidseplein, heading for the Tulip Inn Amsterdam Centre, our first hotel in Amsterdam for this trip. Below is my European Travel map, which shows several of our favourite haunts in Amsterdam.
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The weather wasn’t great for the few days that we spent here, but we wandered around to our usual haunts and spent a few days relaxing. Amsterdam has a beautiful compact city centre, which you can easily spend hours walking around without getting tired.

Our normal day in Amsterdam would consist of getting up late, wandering down to the Satellite Sports café in the Leidseplein for a breakfast of massive pancakes and freshly squeezed Orange juice. Then from there it’s off for a stroll to work off breakfast and drop into an art gallery or photo exhibit to see what is new. After a late lunch, usually grabbed from one of the numerous Chinese or Kebab restaurants, then it’s either off to the Vondelpark for a meander around and taking some photos, or perhaps a spot of shopping.

Our ideal way to finish off the day would be to head for Chicano’s restaurant on one of the small streets off the Leidseplein. They serve wonderful Tex-Mex cuisine, and our favourite has to be the unlimited ribs - you start with three racks of perfectly cooked ribs, the meat just falling off at a light touch. These come served with BBQ, sweet soy and green garlic sauces for coating or dipping. The salads and fries that come with the meal rarely get touched as the ribs are so good! We love to wash down these dinners with a bottle of Desperados lager - lightly flavoured with Tequila - sounds bizarre, but absolutely gorgeous, I can assure you!

After all this, we are usually stuffed, so it’s time for a wander up to the Red Light District - contrary to what it sounds like, it’s a perfectly safe area and you often see local families using it as a shortcut to cross the city. In amongst the clubs advertising live sex shows, you can wander up and down the canals, admiring the pretty architecture - and also the scantily clad girls in the windows, advertising their part in the world’s oldest profession…