The longest Valentine's day

Our flight from Manila to Amsterdam left at 11 am on Feb 14. It was a 13 hour flight - however due to the difference in timezones, we arrived in Amsterdam at around 6pm. This means we "gained" about 6-7 hours - it was an extended Valentine's day "date".

Since we were a bit full from all of those airplane meals, we decided to just have a quick (and cheap) meal somewhere in downtown Amsterdam for dinner.

We were walking around, trying to decide on a place to eat. A waitress spotted us and hopped out of the restaurant - she managed to convince us to have our dinner there. She uttered the magic words - "first drinks free." Hehehe, you know how much I like free drinks.

They had a Valentine's day special - a steak dinner for 10.95 euros. Thats still expensive for Philippine standards, but very reasonable for Amsterdam - where a good restaurant meal costs about 20-25euros per person.

We got our free drinks (water for Mav and a large beer for me), ordered 1 plate of steak ("sorry, we're not that hungry"). We cut the steak in half, and had our first "real" meal of the day (if you don't count the boxed food they serve in the airplanes).

A bottle of water costs about 3 euros, the beer was 5 euros. We paid 10.95 euros for the whole thing - that's almost 1/2 off! I guess the waitress was expecting us to order more.

To make up for this, I gave the waitress a 10 peso coin as tip - I told her that was her souvenir from me from Manila.

Score one for the cheapskates! Hehehe.

Our real Valentine's day dinner came a few days later - in Paris (naks - yabang hehehe). More on that later.