Day 2: Arrival in Europe

We arrived at Schiphol at around 10:30am local time and had no issues getting off the plane. All of our luggage arrived with us (awesome) and after a brief issue where Mark left Matt in customs with two bike boxes and one piece of luggage, we were on our way... To the baggage depot. We dropped all of our gear off (including the bikes) at the baggage depot, with no issues (all our credit cards still work, yeah!) and took the train to Amsterdam Zuid.

From there we got lunch, and then walked to Michiel's house where we dropped off our things and then went to go rent bikes for the day. (Because really the only way to travel through Amsterdam is by bike.) We didn't go anywhere in particular, except for the IAmAmsterdam sign, a bar Nate frequented last time he was here, and the VundelPark, but we did cover a fairly large portion of the city.

After biking around the city for 4 hours, we took a short nap, and then went to dinner with Michiel and Maureen. I forget the name of the restaurant, but it was delicious, and they have been very nice to us during our stay here. Even grabbed breakfast for us for tomorrow. Thank you to both of you!

Now it's time for bed. Nate's already sleeping, like a champ:

Even when offered a mattress he still prefers his own sleeping bag and pad. Literally fell asleep in less than five minutes with all the lights on, including the sun, we're all pretty tired.

Matt has a few other pictures he may post, but tomorrow is sleep in until 9 or so, then pack up, return our rental bikes, and go to the airport for our flight to Innsbruck. It will be another long day, but hopefully by then the bikes will be out of their boxes and fully built. This will make them much easier to deal with. We do not look forward to lugging them around Schiphol tomorrow, but we'll give ourselves plenty of time to do that. For now, we're just going to try and get 10-11 hours of sleep.