Headed to Georgia

So once again we are on the road or in the air. We are headed to Tbilisi via Amsterdam and Istanbul.  We will have a full day in Amsterdam, but will only be in the airport in Istanbul so maybe that doesn't count.  We'll be writing this as we go along and so the verb tenses in might be off a little, but we'll try our best.

Amsterdam

We arrived shortly after 7:00 am which means that with the time change between there and the US we got little sleeping done on the plane (that is assuming that anyone can really sleep on a flight and feel truly restd upon arrival unless you have flown Business or First class).  Our first tast was to get boarding pass for out next flight than find lockers so we could leave a few things behind while we explored th city.  We found the lockers, but figuring out how to pay for it was another problem.  Just as we were nearly totally frustrated to the point of nw return, the payment process worked and we wre able to secure the locker.

Our next adventure, after a quick cup of Starbucks coffee, was to get a train ticket into the city.  We went downstairs from the main level of the airport to the train station to find workmen putting out of order signs on every single ticket kiosks dictating that the machines were unable to accept credit cards!  So we along with hundreds of others headed to the ticket windows where we needed cash to be able to buy our tickets!  The attendant seemed unimpressed with "technology" and unhappy that it had failed.  However, th line move quickly and we wer able to rush down to th tracks and immediately board a train into the city.

We got the train you see above which is a double decker and really there are not bad seats for seeing the landscape between the airport and the city center.  We were once again impressed with the wind generation that is present all along the way in and really right in the city.

The central train station is quit a lovely building and has about 15 different tracks for incoming and outgoing trains.

Once outside th station you are right on the edge of the city center and there are bicycles or motor scooters to rent and water taxies and boat tours between the station and the downtown buildings.  Trams coming from all directions along with the bicycle riders and a handful of cars keeps you on yr toes when crossing streets.

Our goal for sightseeing was just to see more of the city and we decided on the Amsterdam Museum as a must see for this time around so we worked our way down streets along with Saturday shoppers to the museum.

On our our way we passed the beautiful Town Hall and National Monument (both shown below).

 

There are lots of interesting buildings in the city and some lovely large churches too.  The buildings away from the canals are larger and without some of the architctural elements of th canal structures. 

All the photos we took will be postd on Flickr and we'll give you a link at th end of this entry.

We must say that this was a very interesting museum with some unique ways of sharing information with visitors speaking different languages.  When we entered the museum there informational pamphlets with a bar code.  There was a separate pamphlet for each language.  When you entered a new exhibit area there were stands with a scanner and ear phones attached.  One simply scanned ther brochure's DNA and the proper language was selected for you and you then saw short videos about the section of the museum you were in.

We found this approach to be most effective as a way to deal with multipl languages.

Of course there are many more photos of the museum for you to see as well as canals, but we'll just show you a few more for this entry.  Below is a shot taken inside a button store.  Really such a fascinating store with many buttons in glass tubes organized by color.

And the sights along the canals... Always Interesting and it is easy to imagine this city 300 and 400 years ago!  

On the iPad I didn't seem to be able to come up with a URL for the Flickr gallery.  So try searching for MartyT and looke for 2013 Georgia via Amsterdam