This is my first proper post about Amsterdam... like I said before there's gonna be a few of these so if you're not interested look away now! Seeing as me and Martin were only there for four days I decided to do a photo post of each day, otherwise I'd have a stupidly long post and no one can be bothered with that. I do have some videos, but I need to edit the clips together so they probably won't be going up for a few weeks yet... I'll let you know though. Presuming any of you guys are actually interested in seeing them that is! Click the link to find out what we did on our first day in Amsterdam.

We arrived in Amsterdam at about 10:30am, so we checked into our hotel and grabbed some breakfast. I didn't get a photo but it was a bacon and brie toastie with honey - delicious! After that we decided to walk around the city to get a feel of things and find out where things were in relation to our hotel.

This was quite a long way from our hotel... almost as far as you can go to be honest! This is the Hermitage Museum, which we did end up visiting as it is the temporary home of Vincent Van Gogh's artwork. These "I amsterdam" signs are everywhere, it's a very touristy thing and you can't avoid climbing all over the letters if you see them!


This was a few yards up from the previous photo, this was the smaller of the two "skinny bridges" on the river Amstel. These are really iconic so I couldn't resist snapping a photo or ten! It sounds a bit dull but there's so many types of bridges in Amsterdam, and as you can imagine there are a LOT of bridges!


Bridges again... I'm not usually boring I promise! I just love the detail that that Dutch put into everything - the buildings especially but I do like these signs for the bridges a lot. Again there are probably hundreds of these in Amsterdam, I don't think all of them are named though.


Another shot of the so called "skinny bridge". These ones do move up and down to let boats through, but I never saw this one move. I would've liked to see these bridges lit up at night as they look incredible, but we never came back down this end of Amsterdam in the evenings.


These were everywhere! I don't remember seeing these pillars when I was last in Amsterdam but I suppose they must have always been there. We knew about the move already, but it was nice to see that they'd put so much effort into "spreading the word" so to speak.


I had to snap a shot of this! It made me and Martin laugh like crazy - I think it was a building company, because we saw it again in front of a building covered in scaffolding. Weirdly this wasn't the only thing Bond-related we saw whilst on holiday, as I'll mention in another post!


Again with the bridges - I don't even know how you'd go about carving stone so to actually create lettering is pretty bonkers to me. I know this is everywhere but y'know... it's pretty cool! I couldn't help trying to be all "arty" and include some of the ever-famous bikes that trundle around Amsterdam.


I think this is still along the River Amstel, as we were walking back into the city and towards the hotel. Pretty much all of the buildings look like this, as you probably already know - they're just beautiful and so distinctive to Amsterdam. It does get a bit confusing though when all of the buildings look the same!


Trying to be all arty again! I have no idea what this particular sticker was for but pretty much all of the traffic lights in the city were plastered in stickers, adverts, graffiti and who knows what else. It's not like how it looks in this country though, weirdly it looks pretty cool and it fits right in with the vibe.


This is the Munttoren tower, which is just off a canal/street called Singel. The street is famous in the city because it is almost entirely a flower market - mostly tulips but there's all sorts including weed to grow yourself - yes, really! I don't anything else about the tower, but it's nice to look at, wouldn't you agree?


After our massive wander around the city, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up and headed back out to Hard Rock Cafe for our tea! We had to wait to be seated for our meal so we had a cocktail each - both Electric Iced Teas. Martin's was in a cocktail pint glass (thicker and heavier than a usual pint glass) and I had mine in a Hurricane glass.


For a few euros extra we got to keep our glasses - or rather pick up new ones from the shop after we'd eaten. We both had nachos to share and a pulled pork sandwich (there was a pic in my last "Week in Instagram" post), which were incredible but I couldn't finish the sandwich! It was the best pulled pork I've ever had in my life, though.

That was pretty much it for our first day - after the meal we waddled back to the hotel at a slow pace due to eating far too much. When we eventually made it back we fell into bed and went to the land of nod, ready for tomorrow - which will be the next post!