After our bizarre Zombie experience I needed coffee! There was a lovely little cafe in a tradtional Amsterdam house, so in we went; had coffee and settled down. Until we went to pay. They didn’t accept cash! They expected us to pay a 3 Euro bill with our Visa card, can you image? We get charged $4 dollars for every overseas transaction plus the a percentage! So an approx $4 bill would have cost us $10. We refused to use the card and handed over the Euros and he had the cheek to ask for a tip! But this wasn’t the last strange thing that happened.
We took the ferry back to Amsterdam central station were we could catch our tram back to the hotel. The tram system is excellent and with a 5 day ticket you can get on and off as many trams as you like for about 4 Euros a day – bargain! Waiting at the main station for the tram to leave, I glanced down outside the tram at the shelter, to see an abandoned back pack, a very full, almost bulging backpack. After the morning of weirdness my immediate thought was not good – bomb! Not an unjustified thought in our modern world. I could not wait till the tram got moving and we got away from the mystery backpack. Obviously it didn’t explode, more than likely someone who had been to the Coffee Houses had left it there in their haze! But I can tell you I sweated a lot for the 1 minute and 22 seconds that the tram sat there.
So that was our very weird day in Amsterdam. Next… a Porno movie and a red umper lumper man in Berlin.