Amsterdam, Holland, Europe

Today had a well deserved easy start to it. We got to sleep late and then had nowhere to be until early afternoon. That was a very good thing for me since I hadn’t started packing yet, and Ryan’s suitcase seemed to have exploded in my flat. So we spent the morning getting ready to take off for mainland Europe stop #1: Amsterdam.

We stopped in at the world famous Preacher’s Patisserie for lunch before heading to the airport. It wasn’t until after we showed up at the airport and checked our luggage that we found out that our flight was going to be delayed by an hour and a half. No big deal though, we weren’t in a big hurry.

We ended up taking off about an hour late in the end, but it was a smooth flight over to Amsterdam from there. After decrypting the train ticket machine and tram maps of the city, we made it to our hotel. It seems like we got lucky with my first hotel choice, as it’s in a great location. We’re right next to Leidse Square which is full of bars, Argentinian steak houses (I don’t know why) and coffee shops.

We decided to take tonight easy and just go out for dinner and a few drinks. When we made our first stop at an Irish bar (Hoopman’s) in Leidse Square, I recognized someone having a drink just outside. I don’t normally do this, but I went up and asked him if he was actually who I thought he was. Turns out my instincts were correct this time, and we got to talk to UFC fighter Clay Guida and a couple of his buddies for a few minutes. That was pretty awesome for me because Clay is one of my favorite fighters, so the fact that he turned out to be a really nice guy only made me more of a fan. So that was a good end to the night. We had another couple of drinks before calling it a night.