Amsterdam

I love Amsterdam.  It's just so charming and sweet, with an added dose of crazytown.

I've been a handful of times, and it's always a place I'm happy to return to at any opportunity.  It's only a 45 minute flight from Gatwick, plus the three hours of delays that Sleazyjet makes you endure with every single flight I'v ever taken with them.

So we arrived in Amsterdam much, much later than expected, and in a full-on monsoon which barely let up the 5 days I was there.  It was cold and wet and windy every single day.  My camera barely left the indoors as I was terrified of bringing it outside.  Umbrellas proved useless against the deluge, and I very sadly had to abandoned plans that involved me riding my bike through tulip fields while nibbling on a Gouda rind.

Happily, we were staying in a nice place found via AirB&B, which I constantly announce that I've had it with that site and then find someplace lovely, with super nice generous people.

 A centuries-old warehouse converted into lofty light-filled canalside flats, with unique features like a hammock that you can string across the living room.  I found this to be a perfect place to listen to the rain beat without break against the skylights while nibbling on spacecakes for hours on end.  The woman who owned the place was a sweet, eccentric Dutch lady who popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly the moment  our feet hit the doormat, and laughed in her throaty, pack-a-day laugh that she had poisoned all the candy in pretty glass jars in the house.

What to do?  Ironically, I had planned to go to Waterland in the North to bike around, but I could barely keep myself upright on slippery cobblestones, and the lines for all the museums looked like the place where suckers go to stand in the driving rain for three hours.

I did more than my fair share of consuming because of this.  Food, drink, you name it.  Ingested.  I made some really grand discoveries- a tiny, centuries-old distillery called Wynand Focknick in the red light district that had probably the best tasting room I've ever been to.   They serve delicious, fruit-infused liqueurs in large, flared shot glasses.  The chatty bartenders recommend something based on your unhurried conversation with them, and then they fill the little glass past the meniscus point, and force you to "nose" the glass to sip up the extra so you can carry it to your table.  They will shame you if you try to carry it off without sipping the top bit of it first.  It was a jolly place, with locals along with tourist.  I met a fantastic local prankster dressed as a tourist who was hiding from her bride-to-be friend on a sort of scavenger hunt, who showed up and spotted her instantly.  The fun was not ruined.      

I had a lot of mediocre Indonesian food, so I headed back to dependably excellent Tempo Doeloe for more incredibly spicy fare.  I had the best pizza outside of NYC and Naples at YamYam, and discovered a rather awesome Brown Cafe nearby at Cafe 't Smalle- despite it being a Saturday night after 10 pm, it was filled with casual locals, having quiet conversations, and it was old and lovely to boot.

There was one day that was a little sunnier.  I hit the newly-opened Rijksmuseum.  It didn't disappoint.  It's enormous and grand, but what I loved the most was someone put witty alternative commentaries on giant post-it notes all around the galleries.

Renting a bike in Amsterdam is a must, as long as you can keep a clear-enough head to peddle and steer.  The city can be a bit frenetic on bike, as the locals really zoom along.  You see people walking their dogs on their bikes, transporting their kids and dogs on bikes with carts attached, people eating and smoking on bikes, people holding hands on dates on bikes.  They will even hold an umbrella up when it starts to rain.  I am hesitant to scratch my nose while I'm riding.

The cold sun came out and I headed to Vondelpark for a much less stressful ride.

Despite it being cold and windy, I'm glad I went, as it was the last time things were dry while I was there.

I spent the next three days dodging hail and rain and thunderstorms.  I saw a great deal of coffeeshops and bars from the inside, and had a very chill few days.

I love my downtime, but when I travel, I feel the need to go-go-go all the time.  Any moment you aren't on your feet seeing and doing something is a wasted moment when I travel.  Happily, this trip changed all that and I was pleasantly relaxed and chill at them end of the weekend, having really had nothing to do but slow down and indulge.

I've been to Amsterdam enough to have seen quite a bit of it, so I didn't feel the pressure to really get myself too rain-drenched.  All things considered, it's a pretty good place to curl up in your living room hammock and doze off, with only hunger pains to motivate you to get out of the house.

The Dutch are quirky, fun people, and while they get annoyed (like everyone would) at apeish behaviour, I've never had someone be unkind to me here despite the fact I barely speak three words of Dutch- Hallo!  Welkom!  Dank u!  The food is excellent as long as you stay clear of the mess of frites and kebaparies in the red light district.  The prowling gangs of hen and stag parties can be a little much, but they usually don't venture out of one section of the city.  More amusing are the busloads of tourist who come here to gape at the perceived sinfulness of it all.

Maybe I should move here.

A Foodie Post

We did have some outstanding food in Amsterdam.

The gouda is everywhere. I grew up picking the red wax off it, but now I much prefer stinkier French cheeses. Gouda is just kind of bland and creamy and inoffensive. However, if you find yourself in possession of 2-4 year old Gouda, do yourself a favor and try it. It's one of the best cheese I know.

We found a market at the Neuwmarkt that had beautiful produce. They do a lot of year-round greenhouse growing here, so you always get brilliant red peppers and delicate leafy greens while the rest of Northern Europe is on a rutabaga and potato diet. This mushroom seller had so much beautiful varieties, I wished I had a kitchen to operate out of.

Oh, and you can get the coyly marketed "truffles" here as well, but from what I hear they taste terrible.

One thing that we were looking forward to was dinner at Tempo Deoloe. It is an Indonesian restaurant that was recommended to us by three different friends of ours. You can't ignore that kind of endorsement.

The move is to order a rice table.

It's a serious of dishes- vegetable, tofu, seafood, chicken and meat- that start out nice and savory.

Then you move on to the second platter, and that's perhaps a bit warming.

And finally, on to the third platter, where you turn into a snotting slobbering mess as you realize your mouth is on fire, and the really nice staff brings you lots more coconut rice to help you soothe the burn. It was a unique kind of heat that I have never experienced before. It starts out really strong, but it builds over the next three minutes and gets more and more intense and you can only sit there and squirm until it dissipates. Wow, just wow. I never felt like I deserved ice cream after a meal so badly. If you are in Amsterdam, do yourself a favor. Even if you don't want to try the super spicy food, the regularly spiced food was unique and excellent, but call a few days ahead for reservations as it was packed.

Another great find this trip was Greetje.

It was a cozy canal-side place serving fairly traditional dutch food with locally sourced ingredients.

Everything was beautifully presented and tasted amazing, in a new twists on old classics kind of way.

It was one of the most perfect meals I'd ever had.

The very first time I went to Amsterdam was the time before the miracles of the internet really made itself useful as to guiding you to the right places. I remember being decidedly non-plussed about the food there that first visit (cause, you know, what the hell does Dutch food entail anyway?) but it was really because I was flying blind, maybe picking up an odd recommendation from a fellow travler or guide book here or there. While I'm all for being spontaneous while I'm traveling, I find myself putting maps together before every trip I take to give myself some guidance. It turns out that it's a really good city to eat well in, which is exactly my favorite kind of place.