2 Days In Amsterdam

Spring in Amsterdam - without even realizing it we happened to book a trip in time to see the tulips! Amazing, and an unexpected treat. It was a quick stop so tried to see as much as possible in a short amount of time - the first day we hired a local tour guide to give us a walking tour of the town. 

A couple things stood out: 1) the city was surprisingly dirty, trash everywhere and that really surprised us. Maybe there's a garbage strike or something? I wonder if that's how it always is? and 2) the architecture is so interesting and unusual - they have buildings that are actually crooked because of the foundations being so old and rotting away (they are built on wooden poles because the soil is so wet). Fortunately most of the houses are touching the house next door so they are sort of holding each other up - but some of them are so so crooked it looks like they should fall over! I wonder how they feel on the inside - if you drop something in one room does it roll to the other side of the house? I'm tippy on a good day so this could mean big trouble for me if I lived there...

The guide did a quick walk thru of the "red light district" - I didn't know what to expect (should have read up on it I guess). There are literally scantily clad women (all ages and sizes!) standing behind full length windows with a red light over each one trying to entice men (and women too I imagine) in. When they get a customer they close a curtain over their window indicating they are "busy". Wow. Just wow. And sad. And super awkward, I didn't know where to look! We ended the day with a canal cruise for a different view of the city which was a pretty cool way to see everything.

there are 7 bridges in a row that you can see thru looking
down this canal

pretty much every street looks the same with canals, boats, bikes, row houses...

Can you see how the house on the left is crooked? And the city's
 narrowest house is the little dark red one in the middle!

wait, I want the best croissant...

the front door of the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in
and where she wrote her diary -
now that I've seen where she lived I really want to re-read her story. 

dinner our first night was one of our favorites the entire trip -
if you get a chance go to the Restaurant Haesje Claes for
traditional Dutch food...especially the pea soup, Stampot (mashed potatoes
mixed with other veggies) and Beef Stew. Yum!


For our second day we hired a driver/guide to take us outside of the city - we went to Kukenof gardens to see the amazing flowers, stopped at a little village to photograph some windmills (don't you think of Dutch windmills along with tulips? apparently most of the windmills are gone now and they just keep a few for "the tourists". I was a little bummed to hear that!) and eat lunch,  and a visit to a touristy shop to see how cheese (my new favorite is a Gouda called "Old Friend") and wooden shoes are made...it was a little cheesy (no pun intended haha) but informative and we sampled lots of different locally made cheese - I didn't try the "hemp cheese" tho! 

my pictures of the gardens really don't do the flowers justice - they were magnificent!

lunch was "Mustard soup" - SO good!!! I have to learn how to make this!  seemed
to be a regular cream soup with the addition of mustard seeds, I will experiment and let you know...

I enjoyed seeing Amsterdam and am happy we had a couple days here, not my all-time favorite city but the food was great, people are nice, and it felt safe...After 2 busy full days we flew to Edinburgh, Scotland - more on that later!