Well we’re back from four days in Amsterdam and I’ll have to start a detox program for my body. It’s so easy to indulge in so much in that city.

This trip was incredible and a marked difference from my last one. Last time I was there was in January of 2006. My sister and I had great difficulty finding someone to speak English with and were treated to many Dutch phrases that I’m certain were insults. We also saw the seamy underbelly of the city, which in most cases is charming, but in Amsterdam it can be especially seedy.

This trip was different. I’m not certain if it was due to the fact that Amsterdam cracked down on unlicensed coffeeshops and closed a significant portion of the red light district, but the experience was a marked change. Everyone was friendly, the weather beautiful and we were never treated rudely in any interactions. Even the coffeshops seemed cleaner and weren’t full of junkies and techno music. The junkies were bad enough but the techno music was unbearable.

We arrived at about noon on Thursday. After checking in at the hotel, we indulged in the complimentary whisky decanter in our room. Then we headed out in search of a coffeeshop. Our hotel was on a canal, and as soon as we crossed that we found a punk/skateboard shop. I was thrilled.

Next were the coffeshops. We found a couple about two blocks down that became our place of choice. Then we walked about the city; the weather was great and our meanderings and stopping at benches were a nice experience. I don’t remember benches when my sister and I went.

We went to dinner by ourselves rather than with the wedding party as we wanted a bit of time away to ourselves. We went to a restaurant called ‘Knus’ (cozy) and had a great meal. They had a crazy menu, which given Amsterdam makes a weird kind of sense. They had mains like raw ahi tuna lasagna with poppadums and wasabi vegetables. I was so tempted to order it, but I stuck with stuffed chili peppers followed by roquefort croquettes. I clearly felt in a cheesy mood. Mrs. Yanqui had goat cheese on toast followed by red mullet. The desserts were equally amusing as they featured pear and thyme ice with a vodka sauce, but we skipped desserts and just drank our absinthe sours followed by coffees. Absinthe sour, by the way, is not a good drink.

On Friday we did a little shopping trip and then went to wedding party meetings. We did the canal tour of Amsterdam, followed by a Red Light District guided tour which was more than a bit weird. The Dutch pride themselves on tolerance and it’s amusing to see in action. You can stand in one alley and have the oldest church in Amsterdam on one side and a brothel on the other. Next door to the brothel is a childcare that our guide assured us was very expensive and exclusive.

Our friendly guide gave us all tips on which pot, hash and magic mushrooms to try as well as where to go afterwards. So as our tour guide recommended Mexican magic mushrooms followed by a trip to the bar known as ‘cock ring’ we had to laugh. We never went and actually excused ourselves to go look for gifts (for the families) and cigars (for me)  instead of going to the Erotic Museum. We later asked about the Erotic Museum exhibits with our Danish friend who went with his wife.

“So, what do they have?”, we ask.
“Mainly just photographs.”
“Like, porn”, I query.
“No, they’re like photos. Photos of erotica throughout the years and what people used… actually, yes, it is porn. But it’s old porn.”

He’s Danish and they’re pretty permissive with sex, so he said that it didn’t seem like anything special. I don’t think we missed out on much.

Friday night we had dinner with friends and I had a foie gras starter mixed with chocolate that was incredible. I wouldn’t personally think liver and chocolate would go together well, but they do. It was so rich that I only had a half and had to share it because it was a true bomb for a starter. For dinner I had fish, but I wasn’t trying to be healthy, I just misread the menu and expected a steak.

On Saturday we did the big wedding. It was performed in an old building outside the Keukenhof gardens. In keeping with the Dutch tradition there was nothing religious or specific in any way, rather just talking about everybody getting along. It was a nice ceremony and we all had a good time socialising and eating a great lunch. 

That night we went to a restaurant that had been totally reserved for us and got the crazy pampering again. They do the funny Belgian thing where they remove the head from the beer with a knife but I still had some good witbiers. We got to experience a bit of the Dutch wedding tradition which involves putting on skits for the new couple. It was quite entertaining.

I think the city has a lot going for it and the experience was so different, I will now actually recommend it to people. It would have been great to have all of you there with us and I look forward to actually doing that.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Life in GMT, travel, Crazy Europeans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.