What a long day, but we made it by plane and train to Groningen.

We caught our flight at an early 5:45 AM with no sleep on my part. We arrived in Amsterdam airport at 8 AM local time. We were hungry and ate at the airport before we caught the train to Groningen.

We had a very exciting trip on the trains, and because of construction we had to change train 3 times. The only problem with this is that we had only 4 minutes or less to drag all our stuff from one train to the next. If you are going to travel by train, make sure you travel light. We chatted with some locals on the trains and they were just as frustrated with the weekend schedules of the trains.

We made it to Groningen at about 1 pm and started the walk to the hotel. The Garmin 360 NAVI was an indispensable resource in helping us locate the hotel and navigate the surrounding area.

We all checked in and found that the 2 of use that paid via Travelocity.ca, ended up paying more because of the commissions they have to pay. Dave booked via the hotels website and save about 50 euros. As soon as we all hit our hotel rooms we crashed for a few hours before we ventured out for diner.

Groningen is a very peaceful feeling town, and it is going to be a pleasure to be here for 2 days. The venue that the Hip will be playing at is just across the canal from the hotel, so no more needing the GPS for the next 2 days. There is a local brewery that our friendly waiter told us about last night during diner, and we will be exploring that today. Sunday’s is the big day for shopping in the Netherlands and I will also be on the hunt for souvenirs.

We had a great diner in the main square of the town, nice to be able to have a decent meal after the last couple of days. After diner we moved into the main part of the pub, and what a labyrinth we found. The buildings on the outside looked separate, but they are all connected inside with a total of 20 bars. We also found that we had to pay 50 cents to use the washroom, but they had a all you can pee price of 2 euros. Lets just say we got our moneys worth that night.

We left the pub at abut midnight, and the boys found a donair and pizza shop. Everyone grabbed their goodies and we headed back to our hotel. Sleep came quickly and we are looking forward to tomorrow.

Groningen Day 1 photos