Planet: Amsterdam

To sum up my Amsterdam experience in one word: otherworldly.

Our very friendly (not) and expressive (not at all) bus driver stopped our overnight bus from Paris to Amsterdam at 5:55am in a parking lot next to a large metro station. Unsure what to make of his garbled speech over the intercom before he exited the bus, Zoe and I got off the bus and asked him if this was our stop. "Last stop. Amsterdam. This is it." What a cheerful response. And with that, and the 45 mins of sleep I got on the bus, we trudged to a map. Because although the bus driver told us this was Amsterdam, this definitely was not Amsterdam. Where we were was anyone's guess.

The fifteen people who got off the bus with us were just as confused as to our whereabouts. We huddled in the cold in front of large maps outside of the metro station, trying to figure out where we were and how to get where we wanted to go. I asked the tall eastern European looking man next to me if he knew where we were on the map. His response: No. But I think this is a very large map. My response: Thanks man, I figured that much as it includes Paris on it. Lovely. Another two women came up to Zoe and I as we were trying to figure out how to purchase tickets to Amsterdam Centraal Station if we knew which machine to use. Gotta hand it to us though, we were the first ones to figure it out and we wasted no time in leaving those people behind. We managed to find our way to Amsterdam Centraal and then to our airbnb by 7:30am. Thankfully our host was ready to welcome us to his apartment. We said hello, napped until 11, and then were off to explore Amsterdam!

Amsterdam Centraal

It had been a while since we had eaten, so the first thing we were in search of was food. We found a cute lunch restaurant where we sat along one of Amsterdam's many canals. Determined to try some Dutch food, I picked a sandwich on the menu that had in parentheses "very Dutch" next to it. No kidding, the menu really said that, but it didn't exactly say what was in the sandwich. So before immediately ordering it, I asked the waiter what it was, what "very Dutch" meant. He looked at me and said, "I have no clue, I am not Dutch, I don't even speak Dutch. I am Portuguese. I speak Portuguese, Spanish, and English. I figure that is enough." Well, alright. And with that, I ordered the sandwich anyways. It ended up being pretty good too, a ham and cheese sandwich with sliced egg and some sort of Dutch sauce on it.

After lunch, Zoe and I headed back to the city center and took a tour of Amsterdam's many canals by boat! It was by far my favorite thing we did during our short stay. The canals are lovely, the weather was nice and sunny, and the houses and buildings that are right up against the canals are amazing. They are colorful, very distinct in their style, and made me ready to lease one then and there. After the tour, Zoe and I continued to explore Amsterdam on foot. Our airbnb host had told us that morning that Amsterdam is the most "cultured" city in the world, meaning that there are the most nationalities represented by its inhabitants. I can't attest to the veracity of that statement, however it did seem to ring true just based on the different shops and restaurants we walked passed. There was everything from Spanish tapas bars to Thai food places to Vietnamese noodle bars. Plus there was also that Portuguese waiter.

Amsterdam canals

My new houseboat

Later that night Zoe and I met up with two of Zoe's friends from her program in Florence who were also spending a couple days in Amsterdam. Their airbnb host had suggested we take the ferry across the water to northern Amsterdam for dinner. So we took that ferry, found no good food, and took it right back. Instead we took the metro over to their neighborhood, Jordaan, and found a nice restaurant with a cute Dutch waiter, much more helpful than the Portuguese one from earlier. He spoke English with an Australian accent and when we asked him about it he said, "I have no idea where it is from, but I am full Dutch." At the end of dinner, we asked him where we should go for dessert. There are a lot of waffle places around Amsterdam but he quickly corrected us, telling us the waffles, while sold in Amsterdam, were actually Belgium, and that was not the way to go. Instead he wrote down some not so precise directions to Winkel, a shop that had "the best Dutch apple pie in Amsterdam." This place, he said, made apple pie the way his grandmother used to make it. Did I mention how cute this Dutch boy was?

Thanks to Google maps (and not the directions this Dutch boy had written on back of a beer coaster), we found Winkel. I told the man who greeted us that we were here about some apple pie and he told us to take a seat. The Dutch boy was right, that apple pie was the best I'd ever had. Not an apple gratin like I would find in France, this apple pie was full of apple chunks and cinnamon dough, topped high with whipped cream. Good thing Zoe and I had a long walk back to our apartment that night to walk it off.

Because of our lack of sleep the night before, Zoe and I slept in late this morning. I went on a run around Rembrandt Park, the park right next to our airbnb. The parks here are all so green, with full lakes and canals running through them. It is crazy to think that at this moment, on the other side of the word, California is experiencing one of its worst droughts in history. Because based on the greenery here and the fountains and bodies of water aplenty over here, you would never know.

We left our apartment around noon, had a great big brunch, and then made our way over to the Rijksmuseum. We took our obligatory pictures in front of the museum and its tulip gardens, but we did not go inside. It was hard to justify spending 17 euros to enter when neither of us were particularly interested in it. From there we meandered about the city. We explored different neighborhoods, walked through the very impressive Vondelpark, and made it back to our apartment.

Rijksmuseum tulips

Rijksmuseum fountains are more fun than the museum 

We are Amsterdam

Vondelpark

On the whole, I really enjoyed Amsterdam. However, I am happy to be moving on to Berlin tomorrow. Amsterdam is so other that it feels as if you are living on a different planet! Not only is the language enough to make you feel like you're talking to aliens, the coffeeshops on every block filled with people smoking marijuana, a red light district full of women prostituting themselves in windows, and the hoards of people taking their motorboats down canals makes Amsterdam seem as if it is total paradise, it's too unreal!