<<<Day 1
Goedemorgen folks, and welcome to Dag Twee of the trippie, or Day 2 to you and me.
My phone alarm goes off at 7 and I head for the lovely bathroom to try out the rain shower. It’s my first experience of a ‘wet room’ with no shower curtain or anything to partition off the shower from the rest of the room, and I do find it a little disconcerting trying not to get water absolutely everywhere! Then I wake Peter up and investigate the TV while he’s getting ready. There are a couple of BBC channels as well as Dutch, German and Italian ones. I also try to make us a coffee, but I must be doing something wrong with the machine, as it doesn’t seem to pierce the coffee pod properly and the results are undrinkable! Soon we’re both ready and sorting our stuff out for the day. We didn’t bother unpacking last night, but now we make use of the lovely old-fashioned wardrobe which also has plenty of shelving space. We also unpack our extension lead which has UK sockets and a European plug – very useful for charging all your gadgets. We stick the camera and video camera on to charge while we head downstairs for breakfast.
There’s no sign of either Rachel or Pepjin when we go downstairs into the breakfast area. Instead we are greeted by the third member of the team, a Ghanaian guy called Gabriel. He shows us to our seats in the small breakfast area and sets about making coffee for us, and taking our order. As well as the usual continental breakfast of meats, cheeses, bread etc, we’re also offered bacon and egg, which we gratefully accept. However, for me at least, the star of the meal is the little plate of local cheeses and ham which we’re served along with home made bread. I do love the whole ‘meats and cheeses for breakfast’ thing when I’m travelling in Europe, and these are really good quality. We’re also given fresh croissants and a choice of spreads including local strawberry and quince jams. One nice touch is that fresh cherry tomatoes and strawberries are served too. There are also various mueslis, yoghurts etc if we want them, but we don’t have room this morning!
After our plentiful breakfast we negotiate the narrow staircase once again to pick up our things before we go. Unfortunately the charger for my camera doesn’t seem to be working, so any further photos in this trip report are probably from my phone. However, the video camera is juiced up and ready to go, so we head back downstairs, where we find Rachel and Pepijn getting ready for the day. We tell them we’ve decided to go for the iAmsterdam cards after all, as we plan to do quite a few things they cover; so they bid us a good day and we head off to find the tourist information centre opposite the Centraal railway station.
This turns out to be about a 15 minute walk, past Niewmarkt and through what looks like the Chinese area – lots of the businesses and restaurants along the canal are Chinese-owned. As we walk, it starts to rain steadily, and by the time we get to the area around the station it seems to have set in for a good while. We soon find the tourist information centre, where there’s a small queue ahead of us. As we reach the front, we’re unsure who – if anyone – is going to serve us. One woman is walking around behind the desk area, and another is staring into space at a point to the left of us. No one smiles, says anything or indicates that we should come over to be served. It’s ironic that of all the people we’ve met in Amsterdam so far, the only unwelcoming ones work in the tourist information office!
Anyway, we know what we want – two iAmsterdam cards, oh, and I’ll have a tacky souvenir umbrella with the iAmsterdam logo on it please. Hey, it may be 6 Euros but at least I’ll be dry. So we get our FairFx card out to pay for our purchases, and put it in the card reader. Now, we used the FairFx card several times back in March at DLP and it worked fine. The only surprise was that we needed to use a five-digit PIN instead of the usual four-digit one. So we’ve reminded ourselves this morning – don’t forget it’s five digits for the FairFx card. But when we go to use it, the card is refused. We’re not sure why, as we know there is plenty of money on it, so we try again, this time with four digits. But that comes up as wrong too. We give it another try with the five-digit PIN, and this time we get a message we can’t decipher, but which obviously means the card doesn’t work. We ask the girl what to do. She says ‘Do you have another card?’ Well, we do, but it’s back in the hotel safe. She shrugs and suggests we go to a bank. When we ask where there is one, she mumbles something about the station. Gee, thanks for the help.
We go outside into the rain, and head into the station, where we search fruitlessly for a bank. Eventually we ask at the information desk in the station. The lady there suggests we find an ATM, and says the nearest one is about ten minutes’ walk away. Since our card didn’t work in the card machine, we’re doubtful it will work in an ATM, so now we’re not sure what’s our best move. We do have some Euros in cash, but not enough for the whole trip, and both of us want to get this sorted.
So we walk back to the hotel in the steadily worsening rain, in moods which match the weather. We go up to our room, get the iPads out and get the FairFx website up. Once we log on, we can see that the card has been locked because of too many failed attempts to use it. OK, so what now? There are various automated numbers for different things, but we can’t see what to do in this situation. We try several numbers, and find that either they don’t connect, or they lead us to an automated line that doesn’t give us what we need.
Eventually, tucked away in the FAQ section, we discover what to do. We call and get the number unlocked, and then go through the whole automated rigmarole again to get a new PIN number (which, by the way, has four digits! Confused? I know I am…) The whole process has taken about an hour. Not a great start to the day.