Travel to Amsterdam

[PNGMK]

WD40 - you're a slippery fellow but there's NO CHANCE you'd get an upgrade on KLM. (In fact I'd wager they probably almost never upgrade unless your from the Dutch Royal family or similar).

[x9200]

But there is a good chance they may lose your luggage if this is a code share flight and operated by AF.

[JR8]

Hope the flight went well, and very much looking forward to hearing your impressions once you are getting settled in

[Primrose Hill]

Yeah me too

[ecureilx]

But there is a good chance they may lose your luggage if this is a code share flight and operated by AF.

Should be NON Stop SIN-AMS.

[Wd40]

Yeah non stop, flight was as smooth as it could get. It's very cloudy here and was drizzling in the morning but stopped around 11 PM. Still no sun very cloudy. I took the train and went to the central station and walked along the canals and the museums. The architecture of the buildings is awesome. All buildings are antique, roads made of bricks, feels like back in 19th century. Lovely experience just walking and standing and gazing along the canals and the buildings.

Funny thing I noticed though, there was not a single mall I came across. Only Hema, Albert heijn and H&M stores. I found it so difficult to locate a toilet. Those belonging to mc Donald's, Hema etc you need to pay 30-40 Euro cents, which is something I found different from Singapore.

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[sundaymorningstaple]

You didn't live in Singapore long enough. It used to be 10 cents per entry and if you wanted toilet paper you had to buy a packet of tissues from the toilet attendant (usually ladies but occasionally old ah peks).

[JR8]

'Antique buildings' Reminds me of when my parents took an American friend to visit Cambridge. Apparently she put her arms around one of the pillars at the entrance-way of a college and exclaimed 'Oh my gaaaawd, this is older than America!'

p.s. Paying for use of public toilets in Europe in common, the primary aim is to keep junkies out.

[x9200]

Yeah non stop, flight was as smooth as it could get. It's very cloudy here and was drizzling in the morning but stopped around 11 PM. Still no sun very cloudy. I took the train and went to the central station and walked along the canals and the museums. The architecture of the buildings is awesome. All buildings are antique, roads made of bricks, feels like back in 19th century. Lovely experience just walking and standing and gazing along the canals and the buildings.

It's very similar across many old European cities but not everywhere the large enough city sections were preserved. Look up with the google images Hanseatic cities for example.

Funny thing I noticed though, there was not a single mall I came across. Only Hema, Albert heijn and H&M stores. I found it so difficult to locate a toilet. Those belonging to mc Donald's, Hema etc you need to pay 30-40 Euro cents, which is something I found different from Singapore.

Very correct observations. No free toilets and not too many bigger shopping malls. Albert Heijn is middle priced chain, if you want to shop cheap, find Aldi (unlikely in the city center), but the choice will also be very limited.

Edited to add: If you discover you like stroopwafels and want to bring over some back to SG, it may be worth to find Aldi anyway. They should be 4x cheaper in Aldi comparing to AH and still very good. At least this was the case when I lived in Holland (long time ago).

[Primrose Hill]

awww antique buildings

[PNGMK]

It's like watching a movie such as "The God's must be crazy" in script form by WD40....

[ecureilx]

It's like watching a movie such as "The God's must be crazy" in script form by WD40....

The most silliest and funniest movie that was

[JR8]

Vicarious travel, what a hoot

Good tip re: Aldi. Check their website to see where their branches are. Same goes for Lidl too. Their pricing tends to be very good.

I don't know about AMS but in Berlin there are few 'shopping centres' as such. But their retail offering still seems to arranged between individual retail operations. With the big players apparently having a lot of muscle. There are a few department stores, and they can be all-in-one, open-plan, from frying pans to in-house champagne oyster bars (KDW, Karstadt etc). Similar to say Selfridges in London.
There might be another x-over (it's a N.Euro thing) where the pharmacy market is monopolised/regulated. So you have the likes of Watsons/Guardian, but for pretty much any kind of medicine, even a pack of aspirins, you have to go to a pharmacy and expect it to be $. It works the same way in Scandinavia.

Mmm stroopwafel. How to explain to someone who hasn't seen one? Like a very dense 2-layer wafer biscuit with a layer of almost dried syrup in the middle, then in one variant the whole thing coated in chocolate? They're so rich I find the big ones (c8cm?) rather OTT, though my wife loves them. They also make smaller ones which are c4cm across. They come in attractive individual packaging too, so a box of the latter would make a simple/novel/inexpensive gift to take back to SG.

Now, beer You should be spoiled for choice, not only local, but imports from Belgium and Germany, Czech Republic and so on; and after SG it's going to be cheap-as-chips! In your shoes I'd be looking out for a good beer shop, the range available might well shock you... in a good way!

[JR8]

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profil ... ew=ratings
A very centrally located beer shop, and Beeradvocate reviewers rate it '100 - World Class', wow!
Their site is in Dutch, but after a few beers that might matter less hehe - http://bierkoning.nl/ They say they stock over 1500 kinds...

[Primrose Hill]

Stroopwafel yes