How not to get to your hotel...

We arrive in Amesterdam around 8:00 am local time. I don't know what time that was MT but it was very LATE/EARLY, I still don't know which.

Transatlantic flights are weird. They turn off the cabin lights pretty much right away as they hit altitude. I don't know if the psychology of the airlines is "if they think it's night, they might sleep and not be a pain in the b..." or if it's to actually helps the passengers reset their internal clock. What do you think?

It seems to me parts of Europe has a fabulous public train system. At least in Paris (our last Griswold vacation) and here in the Netherlands public transport is convenient and cheap.
Everyone we talked to told us to take the train into Amsterdam (cheaper than hiring a taxi) and there are ticket kiosks right by the bagage claim areas. Unfortunately we were unduly blurry eyed and short on brain power by the time we landed. On top of that, we couldn't read Dutch. After fumbling at the ticket kiosk, (thanks to the helpful man patiently standing behind me telling what to do) we triumphantly exited immigrations and searched for our train platform.

Here he's indicating his general opinion of my uninformed opinions...

Too bad Lee and I got on the wrong train heading AWAY from Amsterdam toward Rotterdam.

I noticed if you (or me) act very lost and confused (which we were) they will very nicely (without rolling their eyes at us) give us directions. They told us we should get off at the very next stop and head back toward the airport...

We finally arrived in Amsterdam. From their we only needed to figure out where our hotel was in relationship to Central Station. We actually stopped several fast walking Dutchman (native amsterdamians?) to ask for directions.

Central Station (pictured behind Lee) is like Grand Central station in NYC. People are in a hurry and likely to run you over (literally) if you're in they way.
I should have bought that Garmin Nuvi! It would have really come in handy. I highly recommend it if you travel to these older cities. The streets have no rhyme or reason and it's definitely very easy to get turned around here.