Food in Amsterdam

Yes, we ate well in Amsterdam.

Besides the delicious herring

and addictive Stroopwaffles

we ate at five outstanding restaurants that Doreen picked out and made reservations for before we arrived.

In order of appearance, these were:

Envy. Very close to our hotel, and a great tasting menu with wine accompaniment. Mostly local foods, including some great raw local oysters. Expensive, but worth it.

Taiko. In a fancy hotel. The chef was called the best in town by the person who ran our hotel. He came out to say hello to us, and find out who called him the best chef in town (which he denied. But if not the best, he was probably close to it). The pacing was little off here. The wine paring (Doreen got the sake pairing) sometime arrived after the food. But the food (Asian fusion) was great.

Blauw. Indonesian food. We had the rijstaffle:

As Mark Bittman says, the worst Indonesian food in Amsterdam is better than the best Indonesian food in the US. And this is a good, very good, one.

Ron Gastrobar. Wonderful food here. They sell almost everything for the same price, and we shared, but it was not as easy to share as one might hope. Great service. I asked about a wine, and was warned off of it and given a taste. Nice job - we ordered something else.

De Kas. For our last night. A real "farm to table" place, where they were also the farm. You don't get a choice, you get what they cook. The main course was a sous vide chicken that melted in your mouth. Great stuff.

We had good coffee, good cheese, and a wealth of food opportunities.

Go for the museums. Stay for the food.

An Expedition in The Waterlands

One of the reasons that we chose to go to Amsterdam was that Doreen once flew into that city when the tulips were blooming. She thought that this might have been late enough to see them in person. We were planning on biking through the tulip fields.

Sadly, it was too early for the tulips.

So we decided to ride a little closer to the city, and chose a route suggested by National Geographic, but it is a pretty common ride for both tourists and locals.

I have not talked about the weather during these last couple of weeks. I can say one easy thing about it - 47° and overcast. For the whole trip, through three different cities.

But of course, the morning that we decide to ride it is in the 30s. We really hemmed and hawed before we decided to spend the €24 (for two bikes for all day!) and take the risk. Honestly, it was more that we were worried about freezing to death than anything else.

The bikes we got were typical Dutch "granny" bikes. What we would call "girl's" bikes in the US (no top tube) and very, very heavy. Mine was a coaster brake model with no gears, Doreen's had gears. Not sure that made too much of a difference.

But we headed out through the mean streets of Amsterdam. Keep in mind, no other biker cares if your are a tourist or new. They fuss and cuss if you break any of their (sometimes obscure) rules. I suppose that is OK. 47% of Amsterdamers cycle to work. They don't do this for fun, it is an economic decision for them.

But we eventually got to the ferry that would take us out of town.

It was so cold that Doreen had to wear my watchcap! I wore the new hat I had purchased the day before at the market. I was assured it was a Dutch design. It fit really well, and I like it.

I like maps and understanding the logistics of an operation. Doreen is much more of a "seat of her pants" type of rider. So I never really knew exactly where we were going, but I don't think it mattered much. We didn't (really) get lost, and we saw some great things.

Once out of town, we even saw windmills.

and more of those great double leaf bridges that they have in Amsterdam

A lot of the ride was on dikes that kept the sea out of the land. It is sort of hard to capture, but you can see it here:

Notice that the sun did come out.

These are all agricultural fields, and in some of them, they were crazing geese:

We eventually made it to Broek in Waterland, where there is an old, old inn called The White Swan, where we had lunch. Pancakes. Ham and cheese pancakes.

Outside of Broek, we rode across a very small double leaf:

and made it all the way up to what used to be the Zuiderzee (but it was dammed out of the country) and it is now called the Gouzee. 

There are plenty of those white swans here in The Netherlands, and sometimes they showed up with rabbits:

We rode on the Gouwzee dike:

This was the far point of the ride. Up to now, we have been riding into the wind, and I can say it was hard going. I was ready to get the wind at my back.

But it was worth it. We saw all sorts of birds, some of which you can see here:

And we finally started heading back.

It was getting little warmer, so we had to take off our gloves and scarves:

It was a pretty day

and quite a ride:

(I know our real biking friends will mock us for being proud of a 22 mile ride. But you know what? I don't care. We are proud of the ride!)

I will make at least one more post, where I will talk about food. All I will say now, is that the Heineken we drank when we got back was well earned. 

Expeditions within Amsterdam

Amsterdam is crowded. The city is small, the streets are small, and there are a lot of people.

The museums are crowded. If you want to go to, for example, the Ann Frank house, and you don't have a timed ticket, then you had better be prepared to wait in line for two to three hours. Of course, if you plan just a little, you will be able to get a timed entry for €1, and that will solve that problem.

I didn't really want to go to the Ann Frank house, so that was no problem for us. (Doreen has already seen it) but we did want to see the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum. So we had to plan ahead.

It was easy to get an entry to the Van Gogh when we wanted, and they use something called "Passwallet" that loads the ticket directly onto your phone. Magic! It worked great. It is really something to see a line at least two hours long at the museum, and then just walk on by. Plan for this, if you come here.

We bought a Museumcard, which lets you into something like 45 museums (including all the ones you want to go to) and also generally lets you cut the line. It is good for one whole year! So when you come here (Mark and Becky) let me know and you can borrow it.

How about some photos?

These are crowds trying to see The Nightwatch. That is the most famous painting (by Rembrandt) in the museum.

and this:

is the crowd around The Milkmaid by Vermeer.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of paintings of boats. And some models, too. This model is from the 17th century.

(You can see Doreen on the other side of it)

There are plenty of antique shops near the museums. We didn't buy anything.

This has been a good trip.

More Amsterdam. Expeditions with Dutch Uncles.

Amsterdam is a funny place. Not funny, amusing, so much as funny, odd.

You need to go back to April, 1973 to see what I mean. That is the year that National Lampoon (yes, back when it was funny) did an expose on the Dutch Threat to America:

You get a feeling of German efficiency coupled with English individualism. Take their bikes, for example. Many, many people ride bikes for transportation here. So many, in fact, that they are running out of places to park their bikes! There are strict rules of the road, which if you violate you get scolded by everyone around. And strict rules about where to park your bikes. There were 73,000 bikes removed from illegal parking spots last year! And rather than retrieve their bikes, it seems that many Dutch would rather just buy another.

The rules of the mass transit are rather opaque as well. You can buy a (very expensive) one hour pass for the trams, a very expensive (empty) "chip" card for storing value, or sort of expensive 24, 48, 72 or more "paper" passes. You can buy some of these passes on the trams, but not all of them. The official site for the trams says you can buy these at grocery stores and tobacco stores. But, in reality,  you can't. So we wandered about Amsterdam looking for a place to buy these. After much consternation, we found a machine that would sell us one for cash (most machines here don't accept the antiquated US Swipe and Sign cards, they need the European Chip and Pin) and tried to buy a couple of passes. But the machines don't take €50 notes!

We were finally able to get the passes at a money exchange kiosk (for a €1 fee) only after the attendant got her coffee.

So when you come, be prepared to get fussed at.

In Amsterdam

We got into Amsterdam about 5:00 PM (or so) and made it easily to our hotel.

It is quite nice. The Miauw Suites, even though there are no cats.

It is rather dreary here, but very photogenic.

Many of the canal houses seem cattywhupus.

The books say that sometimes the houses would be built out over the street to facilitate loading material into the warehouses.

You can see that in our hotel:

On the way to Amsterdam

The Eurostar.

(This is mostly a test)

An Expedition to London

I had some work in Weybridge, England, so Doreen came along and we spent an extra day in London.

We stayed in the Shangri-La at the Shard on the south bank of the Thames:

The Shard in the background

and it had a great view, even though it was cloudy, misty, and rainy the whole time we were there:

We were on the 46th floor.

The hotel is located very close to the Burroughs Market, one of the old food markets in London.

where we got food for lunch. Very good.

We didn't have all that much time in London, but we did go to the British Library to see the exhibit on the Magna Carta (Parts of the show were rather silly - a rap battle between King John and the Dukes, for example) but it was worth the money over all.

And we saw the John Singer Sargent show at the British Portrait Gallery, another show worth seeing.

And other than that, we wandered about.