Day 21: Edinburgh, Amsterdam
Apologies dear reader, I’m checking in late for this one, for reasons that will be explained. Kicked off my last morning in Edinburgh doing some final shopping, picking up bits and pieces, and figured I should go for one last full Scottish breakfast before heading to the continent. Found a nearby place called the Ginger Coo Cafe, sadly, but they did provide a decent amount of food. Then it was pack the last few bits and head for the airport tram.
I retired my toiletries case in Edinburgh. It has served me well since at least 2009, maybe even 2005, but was quite large and I’m travelling with just essentials this time, so the case was taking up more actual room than the contents.
Edinburgh finally has a tram that runs all the way from Leith to the airport, takes maybe 35 minutes depending on the time of day, and has room for luggage. It goes via what I’m guessing are factory outlet shopping centres in the western suburbs too.
Got to the airport with plenty of time, as even though Edinburgh to Amsterdam is now an international flight (i.e. from outside to inside the Schengen zone) KLM only opens up the check in counters 2 hours before the flight. My bag weighed an even 22kg, 1kg under my KLM limit (at least my flights home run to 25kg) and my hand luggage 8kg (had a 12 kg allowance) so I was well safe there, I did just the right amount of shopping. The unusual thing about Edinburgh airport is that passengers load their own cases onto the conveyor that takes them to where I’m guessing baggage handlers do the rest.
As airports go, Edinburgh is okay, not huge, and has the usual assortment of coffee shops and duty free etc. There are worse places to end up, and places that have longer distances to traverse to get to departure gates. I’ve been to Edinburgh four times, and have left by train twice and now plane twice. It did occur to me that the other time I flew out of Edinburgh, British Airways neglected to send my luggage with me, so I was hoping KLM didn’t repeat this.
The flight was fine, took a little over an hour. Inflight snack/light meal was a cheese sandwich on brown bread, and the packaging described how the Dutch do like to carry a sandwich with them apparently. Had a little bit of bumpiness flying over the Netherlands, always love it when a flight does this on approach.
Amsterdam Schipol is a long airport, so lots of walking to get to passport control and this time the attendant wanted to know my movements. Free to leave, I did even more walking to get to the baggage carousel and waited. There were no dramas and my luggage arrived, so it was time to head for customs. Thanks to brexit, there’s now a 1L limit of spirits allowed into the EU, and I’ve got a bit more thanks to previous travels (Australia allows 2.25L). I’d done the reading and decided to be honest about what I was carrying, and headed for the something to declare lane. I promptly informed the attendant that I was declaring I had too much alcohol and my final destination was Australia, and he waved me though, I’m guessing they didn’t need the extra paperwork for such a small amount of alcohol and small return (the taxes on my stuff would barely total 49 eur.
Amsterdam has good public transport, trains and trams are easy to catch with a 2 day ticket. So I got to my hotel with a minimum of fuss once I worked things out. I’m staying a little way out of the main centre, but on a tram line, at a hospitality training hotel, so all the work is done by supervised students.
Today might be the first time I’ve caught trams in two different countries on the same day.
Unpacked and relaxed, I headed forth to see Amsterdam by evening. It’s a fairly pretty city, full of old buildings, canals, and tourists, some on bicycles. There’s also a bunch of roadwork around at present, so it’s careful when walking in some patches. I found a pub and got some Bitterballen, basically a deep fried beef casserole in a ball, and a Dutch wheat beer that wasn’t too bad, has a decent refreshing flavour with orange citrus notes.
I’d found through google a drag bar, south of the central city, and headed there. Bar Lellebel has a very small stage in one corner, maybe a metre square, a loud sound system, and possibly the best entrance for drag queens I’ve seen — it appears the dressing rooms are below the club, so the queens pop up through a trapdoor behind the bar. A definite surprise.
The performance was solid, not the most amazing but the queen, whose name I unfortunately didn’t quite catch, but her heart into it, as well as throwing in a bit of banter. I was a little concerned with the opening number being that Celine Dion Titanic one, but then came a quick reveal and it was into some Tina Turner. I’m not sure if it’s the regular format, or because it was quite hot, but the single queen performing would do two numbers and then take a 20-30 minute break, so there wasn’t any big momentum. At least tradition was maintained, the show was due to start “after 10pm”, and with it did start it was closer to 11pm. Drag shows never start on time. The venue (fortunately) did miss out on a bachelorette party, as they turned up between sets, and left soon-after in search of other entertainment. The clientele seemed to mostly be younger mixed cis-gender. Behind the bar were two lovely boys, I don’t think they’ve been doing bar work for long, as while they were friendly and enthusiastic they did seem to be challenged in making cocktails from the list of 10 euro specials. They’d also need retraining should they ever wish to work behind a bar in Australia pouring beer.
I left a bit after midnight, just missing the last trams and then sought to attempt to navigate the night busses. As I was in a slightly different part of Amsterdam to my hotel, google told me to head west, where I found myself stuck in among bunches of slow walking tourists. I think it was an area for “coffee shops”, which from what I can see are the dope dens, as opposed to cafes, which sell food and beer (I’m not sure where to actually get just a coffee in this place). While I may or may not have inhaled in my younger days, the notion of loading up on marijuana and then trying to navigate a city where I don’t know the customs, don’t speak the language, and, gawd help me, don’t want to look like all the other tourists who just seem to want to come and get loaded, just doesn’t appeal to me right now. Give me some good food and quiet drinks, or a loud bar, reasonably priced cocktails, and a flailing drag queen.
As google was telling me I’d have to wait 30 minutes, and then walk 1km, I figured I’d try the local rideshare system, Bolt. My first attempt had rides costing 35 euro. I noticed that the route suggested went almost all over Amsterdam, I’m guessing there are one way streets scattered. I could see that if I went a couple of blocks west, I’d be closer to my hotel street, and wondered if that would give a cheaper ride. Surprisingly it did, and the app was showing 11 euro. I thought I’d hit on a winner, so I clicked confirm and expected my ride to show up straight away like my phone was telling me. Nope. The app cycled through driver after driver after driver, none who wanted to pick up my ride, probably were instead looking for all the 33 euro fares. I ended up waving down a taxi, who charged about 16 euro back to the hotel.
By the time I got back to my hotel it was after 1am, and I was exhausted, probably smelling of dope and the unwashed smoking masses, so it was a quick shower before passing out.