First Stop: Amsterdam
After the flurry of getting ready and out the door, it was nice to have an easy time in a city that Jason and I know fairly well.
Our flight was easy, if a bit bumpy. At Alice's suggestion (she's become something of a film buff in the past year) we watched Aftersun, written and directed by Charlotte Wells. It's a slow-paced, intimate movie that Alice especially liked for its depiction of a child's perspective. We also had a surprisingly tasty cold meal of sesame noodles with chicken, couscous salad, and cucumbers in creamy dressing, created in collaboration with Dig, a restaurant in New York. And we slept, in varying amounts.
We decided to go ahead and have lunch in the mall at the airport, since we wouldn't have been able to check into our hotel, and then we took a cab into town, since our bags are pretty cumbersome and public transit would have included a change and a bunch of walking, not to mention taking three times as long.
Our hotel was the Nicolaas Witsen and we were very happy with it. Our rooms were compact, but not cramped, and obviously renovated fairly recently.
We followed the jet lag protocol that Jason and I developed while living in London: nap for no more than an hour, get outside in daylight so your body learned what time it is, stay awake until at least 8pm, and get up the next morning at a reasonable local time.
Captain Jack's Amsterdam came highly recommended and docks across from the Rijksmuseum, just a ten minute walk from our hotel.
It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed getting an introduction to the city with minimal effort and unlimited drinks and snacks, including stroopwafel!
After the 90-minute cruise we wandered slowly to Venster33, where we'd booked a table for an early dinner.
We stumbled back to the hotel, which was very convenient to tourist destinations and public transportation, but tucked on a quiet side street, where we gratefully fell into our beds.
Jason wanted to spend this week working, so after a bit of breakfast together at bakkeri louf, just across the Singelgracht from our hotel, Alice and I headed out to explore. We started by wandering through the Albert Cuyp Market, several blocks of stalls offering seemingly everything: home goods, fabric, handbags, luggage, records, comics, fresh produce, flowers, cheese, meat, fish, clothing, souvenirs, and a street foods from a wide variety of cultures: meat pies, gyros, rotisserie chicken, empanadas, arepas, dim sum, pizza, ice cream, and more!
When I was very little, my parents had the Time/Life Great Museums books and for some reason the one about the Rijksmuseum was always my favorite, so a visit there always conjures the memory of lying on the living room floor engrossed in the most amazing picture book. Getting to share this special place with Alice was a real treat for me and she seemed to have fun!
In the evening we made our way to Scheepskameel, a highly recommended restaurant located in the Marine Dockyard area. We had a very nice meal--particularly the venison loin and sausage--looking right out at the IJ.
Alice has developed a taste for chai, so we continued exploring the “best chai near me” results the next morning at Back to Black, on our way to the Van Gogh Museum, where Alice hoped to learn why she should love Van Gogh.
She really enjoyed seeing so many of his less famous works and I was struck by their highlighting of the role of Vincent's sister-in-law, Jo, in building his reputation after both he and his beloved brother, Theo, died within six months of each other. And we both were interested to see the red tackle box where Van Gogh kept the skeins of yarn that he twisted together to explore need color combinations without wasting expensive paint.
After a break for some food in the market and a stop back at the hotel for what we refer to as a “flop,” we headed out again to visit the Royal Palace Amsterdam, in Dam Square, where the dam that gave the city its name was originally constructed.
The palace was built as a magnificent town hall in the mid-1600s and filled with extraordinary sculptures celebrating Amsterdam's global trade empire, then transformed into a palace by Louis Bonaparte in the early 19th century.
Making our way back to the hotel we found lots of fun shops one of which had this anonymous poem painted on the window, which might make an excellent cover photo for this entire journey:
In the evening we strolled over to Restaurant Watergang, a tiny and delightful restaurant where we had an amazing five course meal.
On Friday, Alice took the train to Rotterdam while Jason and I had a quiet morning and then met up with a dear friend from Brussels who was able to come have lunch with us and catch up.
In the evening we went for a rijstaffel at Restaurant Blauw. With giant bowls of steamed and spicy fried rice we were given a dozen or more small dishes of chicken, codfish, beef, goat, eggs, tempeh, and eggplant in flavorful Indonesian sauces, as well as a variety of salads and sauces.
For dessert we had strawberry sorbet with a very moist cake topped with durian caramel sauce, which was delicious and entirely without the famous durian odor.
Our walk back to the tram took us through the Vondelpark at sunset.
For our last morning in Amsterdam we wanted to have the famous Dutch pancakes. Jason and I got the savory crepe-like ones, but Alice got proper poffertjes with strawberries, Nutella, and whipped cream.
Amsterdam was a wonderful place to start our travels, but now we're excited to head on to somewhere new to all of us: Sicily!
I also love Chai and have tried it many, many places locally. The best source is the Belmont Caffee in Belmont, MA!!! There's a lovely terrace there as well. Happy travelling. It will be fun to have a gathering when you all get back.