Coffeeshops, Red Light District, Buttermilk, and Bikes- Life is Full of New Experiences

Sorry for the late posting! Paris was busy and then for the past few days we have had no internet connection. Anyways, I'm going to tell you about Amsterdam! We absolutely loved it there.

Like I said before, we had to be on the bus for the airport at 5:30am. That was a little rough since we hadn't been sleeping well considering it never gets dark in Iceland. The flight was about 3 hours and it went well, we both fell asleep. The Amsterdam airport was so overwhelming! We had no idea whether to take a train, the bus, the metro, or a shuttle to get to the room we were renting. 

After asking two different info desks we ended up taking a metro to Amsterdam Central Station, then another metro to our neighborhood. The metro was really easy and took us a few blocks away from our apartment. Our apartment was in the 19th century part of Amsterdam, but it was only about 5 minutes of biking to the center of the city. Jasper, the guy we were renting from, was so welcoming! He is a young history teacher who speaks perfect English. After showing us where we were staying he gave us a little tour around town and gave us some great recommendations of things to do/where to eat. He even let us use two of his bikes to get around.

EVERYONE there bikes. There are so many. We heard that there are one million people and three million bikes, and we believed it!! They have separate lanes everywhere for bikes and everything is accessible by bike. Both of us absolutely loved how active the people are, it was really different.

 

For dinner that night we ate at a place called Kees. It was absolutely incredible. The restaurant was right around the corner from where we were staying, and it sat right along the side of the canal. We thought it was Italian food, but it ended up being a three course meal that the restaurant chooses for you. You just tell them what you don't like/can't eat, and they choose for you. Their menu changes every week.

The view from our table

 Kees opens at 6, and we showed up at 5:45 not knowing. So we had a glass of wine while they finished setting up. An employee's daughter, Iggy, came over and sat at the bar with us so we talked with her for a while. She is only 6, but she knows some English! Basically everyone there speaks perfect English.

We sat outside by the canal for two hours enjoying our meal and wine. Iggy ate with us for a little while, she was so adorable. They also had a pet cat that jumped right up on our table! The first course was duck with a berry sauce, avocado stuffed tomato, and a salad with grilled cherry tomatoes and homemade dressing. The second course was so incredible. We had shrimp in a curry sauce, sweet chicken breast, sea bass with a mustard sauce, white rice with veggies, and vegetables from the wok. For dessert we had a traditional Dutch strawberry yogurt-like dish, with white chocolate mousse and fresh strawberries. So delicious! I don't think either of us have every enjoyed a meal so much.

1st course

2nd course

Dessert!

The next day we went out and really explored the city. Neither of us had any idea how big the coffeeshop scene is. In some parts of the city it is difficult to escape the smell of weed. We considered going into one but they were all so sketchy looking, and we really just weren't too interested.

A nicer looking coffeeshop

All of the classic stereotypes are present

There was a huge outdoor market in the 17th century part of the city that we checked out. I bought a few little things, but we mostly just looked around. There were some great finds, but lot of people were just selling crap out of their vans.

For dinner we went to an Asian place called Wok to Walk. It was pretty good, the set up of the place was weird though. The kitchen is open and right in front of you behind glass as you walk in, then the cash register is after the kitchen and then there is a bar to sit and wait for your food. Evan had rice noodles with shrimp and sweet and sour sauce, and I had white rice with teriyaki sauce and shrimp. It was cheap too, so we liked that! We took our dinner and ate by the canal, it was so beautiful outside.

Our last full day in Amsterdam we spend exploring again. We went out and found a place that serves pannekeokens- dutch pancakes. Pancakes! Amsterdam. is the place we ended up at. We waited an hour for our food because they lost our order slip! Luckily the food was good. I had a lemon and sugar pancake and evan had a banana pancake with strawberries on top. Both were so good, we ended up splitting them!

Yum- pancakes!

After lunch we window shopped and made out way towards the center of the city. When we made it to the medieval core of the city we ended up stumbling upon the red light district! I have to say, if you are interested in being a customer at the red lights district, do not go during the day! All of the women were extremely overweight and very unattractive. Unless you are into that sort of thing of course.

View of the canal

Snapshot of a part of the red lights district

For dinner we checked out a place that Jasper recommended. It's an open kitchen Italian food restaurant called Vapiano's that has a very odd setup. You walk in, they hand you a card (looks like a credit card), you walk down two stories to get the the kitchen, you order your food and watch them make it, you hand them your card which they swipe to show what you ordered, then you find a spot to eat, on one of the top two floors, then you pay when you are finished eating. All of the food is 6 euro, 7 euro, 8 euro, or 9 euro.

While we were waiting in line to order our food we ended up running into Jasper! It his one of his favorite places to eat, but we were still so surprised to see him! He ate dinner with us, but had to leave before us in order to do some studying. Overall it was such a great experience. Great food, great company, great conversation. It was so fun learning about the differences between our two cultures and lifestyles.

We saw this ad for America Today (a clothing store) in a shopping center. Evan and I are best friends, and we are from America- why don't we share hamburgers?

Me by the canal before dinner

Evan eating breakfast, watching Spongebob Squarepants in dutch!

 I forgot to talk about our supermarket experience! We speak absolutely no Dutch, not a word. So we went to the grocery store thinking we would buy some breakfast food for the mornings- just cereal, milk, fruit, and some bread to toast. Well the next morning I woke up and decided to make myself some breakfast. The toaster didn't work, so I just decided to have bread and butter and pour myself a bowl of cereal. I quickly found out that we didn't buy milk, we bought buttermilk! Yuck, I thought it was sour. Evan got a good laugh out of watching me spit it out though!

Dry cereal and bread with butter. This is the breakfast of champions for a traveler who doesn't know the local language!

The next day we packed up our stuff and prepared ourselves for a full day of travel. Our next destination was Nancy, France, and we had 7.5 hours of train travel to get there. Will write about Nancy soon!