Back and extremely tired

The journey to Amsterdam was pretty good. I moved to a more comfortable seat on the plane so that there isn't anyone beside me. Watched a couple of movies - 5 to be exact as I can't really sleep.

The checking in to the hotel almost turned out to be a nightmare. The hotel was locked when I reached there and I had to press the bell so that the person can open the door but was told I can only checked in 20mins later. Then the lady came and said the room was not ready and I had to wait till noon. It was only 7am and what am I supposed to do for 5 hours? I was tired and really needed to rest.

She tried to search for rooms and that took almost an hour before I was finally able to get a room. I slept almost immediately after I reached the room. Woke up around lunch time and went out to Leiden, another city in Netherlands.

It is summer in netherlands and the days are really really long. The sun didn't really set till after midnight so I had to draw all curtains before I sleep.

After lunch, I walked and shopped till 5pm where the shops closed for the day. Had quite a bad experience at H&M. I didn't realise it was quarter to five when I was about to go and try on the clothes and the salesperson refused to let me try the clothes. She said they were closing at 5pm and its sunday and they wanted to go home. I was so mad, I just left the clothes there and left. Bad service attitude.

The following week was packed with presentations and meetings. But its a good chance to see all the new faces as my dept really expanded since I was there last April.

On saturday, I had a meeting with my boss around noon as it was just too busy to meet during the week. After that, he sent me to the airport where I deposited my luggage before I headed out to Amsterdam to walk around.

Did some shopping at Zara, H&M, Mango etc. I was quite surprised I got lost while trying to find the luxury shopping area. A 30mins walk turn out to be 1.5hours walk. When I reached there, I was the last customer they allowed into the gucci store. Saw the bag I wanted to get and was the last one who made the purchase too.

Then I headed the wrong way again and spent the next 1.5hours trying to get back to the train station. My shoes came off and I was exhasuted. I stumbled upon the Anne Frank House on the way though.

There was quite an atmosphere when I was in Amsterdam itself because that saturday night, Netherlands is having a big game with Russia for the Euro 2008.

Everywhere is decked in orange flags and people were wearing orange clothes, caps etc. You can see groups and groups of people on boats in the canal enjoying their national beer - Heineken and cheering...it was really fun. Too bad, they lost to Russia. The news was broadcasted by the pilot when I was in the plane.

Bought some chocolates and cheese at the airport as well as a longchamp bag. I don't know how much does a longchamp bag costs here but i bought it for 52.50euro for the medium size one.

I slept early on sunday night and only woke up for lunch the next day and then I continued to sleep till evening. Then I couldn't sleep the whole of monday night to tuesday morning and could only manage to sleep 3 hours on wednesday morning. Quite bad. So am feeling really really tired.