Arriving at Amsterdam Centraal, and then coming out of the grand station entrance to views of canals and traditional Dutch houses was a very special experience... but I'll get to that in my next post!
After finding some food near the station, we managed to navigate the public transport system and find our way over to Amsterdam Sloterdijk station in the west of the city, where our hotel was. We unpacked and got settled into our room, and then had to decide what to do with our first evening in the city. As we were going to go back into the centre the following morning, I thought it would be a good idea to go somewhere outside of the city.
Then a thought came into my head: I remembered once seeing a picture of an extraordinary building near Amsterdam (I think I probably first saw it in Jack's Flight Club: The Detour a few years ago, and I kept it in mind for whenever I would finally visit the Netherlands). The building was massive and appeared to be made up of lots of traditional Dutch houses stuck together. A quick Google told me that it was a hotel called Inntel Hotels Amsterdam Zaandam, and that it was located in Zaandam, a small city to the north west of Amsterdam. I then discovered that Zaandam was just a short train ride away from Sloterdijk station!
So a short while later, we arrived at the weird and wonderful hotel.
It was so cool to see it in real life!
What I didn't know before going, was that the rest of Zaandam is also built in a kind of fairytale style and is incredibly pretty.
We had a very nice evening strolling along the picturesque high street, with its canal and various Christmas lights. It was the perfect start to our stay in the Netherlands!
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