Amsterdam: the sites

Amsterdam Is the busiest city I've been in. I've been to a number of big cities in the world and I've never felt as cramped as I did here. This is Dam Square.

There is also the largest Anglican Church in The Netherlands.

 

The home of Anne Frank can be found in Amsterdam.

 

It has a beautiful train station.

 

We took a canal tour and my favorite part was when we learned that all the buildings has hooks for hoists outside to get furniture upstairs. They have been in these buildings since they were built. Due to the nature of building on small plots of land, straight up, they made the stair cases very compact. You can see them in the top most part of these buildings.

There were a lot of bikes and cats.

 

And of course we saw tulips!

 

 

 

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Amsterdam: the food

When we visit new cities, we Google the best restaurants, make a list, and head out. I'm not exactly sure what typical Dutch food is suppose to be, but we found food we liked, whether or not it was Dutch, meh.
After we landed we grabbed a quick burger in the airport to share, not exactly anything to write about, but it was only a snack because we knew we wanted to drop our bags and walk around as soon as we got there. We walked around, found a coffee shop, had a tea and coffee, walked some more, and headed for the first place on our list, Eetcafe "Harlem Soul Food". They had nachos on the menu and we couldn't resist. We really miss our Mexican/TexMex food fix.

They were super delicious. So delicious in fact that we went back there again on Day 3! Sometimes you just need some snack food.

A common drink in the coffee shops is fresh mint tea. It is as simple as it sounds and really good. A stalk of mint is crammed in some hot water and served with honey.

Across the street from the hotel there was a cafe called "Bagels and Beans" as in coffee beans. We went there the first day and continued to go. They had a good selection of bagels and lots of ways to eat them. We tried something different everyday. There was goat cheese and walnuts, hummus and sun dried tomatoes, and black bean patty, those were my choices anyway.

We had a not so great croque monsieur, but it was sunny enough to sit outside and right in front of the location was a crepe street cart. The Nutella and banana crepe made up for the hard and dry sandwich

Another place on the go to list was Getto. It was listed for its burgers, and I have to say, they were pretty good. What was better though, were the fried balls of gravy, mmmmm. They were served with a Dijon type mustard. Sadly I missed a picture of those. We liked them so much, that we got them for lunch again the next day.
One of the places on the list was pretty hard to get into the night we tried, so we made a reservation for later in the stay. It turned out to be our favorite! Yam Yam pizza, which means yum yum, and it was! There were a lot of truffles on the menu, truffle oil, truffle sauce, and we both like truffles.

I also had macaroons for the first time. Where have these been all my life?? They are amazing! There were a lot of macaroon shops. All in all we found a lot of food that we enjoyed.

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Amsterdam: the city

May 1st is International Labor Day and a Bank holiday in Europe. A red day as they say. I had taken a trip for work on KLM and something apparently went wrong, I can't say what, but they certainly thought so. As I disembarked the plane they were giving out €50 vouchers for flights. These two things together made Chris and I decide to take a trip. It was our first trip to Dutch land.

The train from the airport to the city center was extremely easy to figure out. Once we were at the central station we used trusty ole Google maps and found our way to the hotel. It was located on the harbor.

 

We were early for check in, so we dropped our bags and headed out for a walk. The temperature wasn't any warmer, but we did start to see some sun, which we hadn't seen for a while back home.

As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of canals. When the city was first built, the canals came in sections, and more and more were built. The houses and warehouses were built as the canals were. The whole city is still in the same layout and the same buildings are still in use. Because of how old and tall and skinny the buildings are, they've started to lean. Some building lean into the street, some lean into the neighbor and some sag in the middle. It's pretty amazing to see the structural damage and imagine that they are still used.

 

 

 

 

The canals make the traffic situation a bit tricky. Each road has a canal for a median. One side is one way car traffic, while the other is the opposite direction. The streets And sidewalks are small and super crowded. Copenhagen is known for being a city with a lot of bikes. I'm certain that Amsterdam has it beat. Not only bicycles but also motor bikes. The pedestrians and the bikes (both kinds) are then fighting for space between the canals and the buildings. It's chaos! I have gotten very used to looking for bikes before I walk, but this made me super nervous. At one point Chris had to arm bar me because I was about to step in front of a speeding moped. We were eating at a table on a road side and I caught these pics. Notice one guy just missed being smashed and the other one is about to be.

 

The canals also give the city a lot of character and make it one of the prettiest if not the prettiest city I've seen yet. When the sun came out it was beautiful. There were so many cafes, shops, bridges and house boats that added to the uniqueness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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