Amsterdam - Day 1

Lisa and Felix have just finished an adventure in Stockholm, visiting his sister and we decided to take a long weekend and join them on the second leg of their trip to Amsterdam. As it seems to be the way we travel as of late, we had an early morning flight. But for the first time since arriving in Europe, we were delayed by a bit of rainy weather, which of course was not great given we arranged to meet Lisa and Felix at the hotel at a specified hour!

Anyway, we took the train into the Central station and then hopped on to the tram (no cost for us this time as we couldn’t quite figure out where to buy tickets and given that the doors just open for you to walk in, we figured we would make it up later).

We arrived at the hotel about 15 minutes later and met up for a lunch that really hit the spot. Jon made friends with our local waitress and asked her for a list of all the great places to visit while we were in town.

In the afternoon, we made our way to the Van Gough Museum, which was amazing – it was curated extraordinarily well; the museum shows Van Gough’s progress in style throughout his career and adds interesting details about his life, family and friends.

It was not the most beautiful weather today, but we were still able to enjoy some of the charm of this city – which has turned out to be a favourite for us. It is small and walkable which we love, and the canals and cobblestone paths are delightful.

After our obligatory afternoon nap, we headed to dinner at a place called “Kantjil & de Tijger,” which translates from Indonesian as the “Antelope and the Tiger.” There is a relatively large presence of Indonesian restaurants in Amsterdam, which I learned was a carry-over from the Dutch colonial era there. Of course, by now you all know that Jon and I are relatively adventurous eaters, so given the opportunity we had to try something new. We all ate rijsttafel, which is a rice table banquet with a series of foods served in small bowls. Sort of a spicy version of Chinese food if you ask me, but a delicious start to the evening!

We capped things off with a walk through the red light district, which Lisa and I tried not to be too troubled by! So my general thoughts for the moment are that Amsterdam in the light of day is wonderful and enjoyable; by night, a lot of the behavior freaked me out!