My Travel Blog
We had previously planned to spend the day in Amsterdam with some friends of ours from back home whose European visit coincided with ours. This was their first trip to Amsterdam and they had their two kids (aged 8 and 4) with them. After taking the tram into the city we easily found their place on a quaint, skinny cobble stoned street. (Their house was built in 1642! Boggling.) We walked around for awhile and then headed for Vondel Park - a huge greenspace in downtown Amsterdam filled with nice grass, ponds, ducks, playgrounds and cafés. We had lunch and then hit the playground. After the kids had had let off enough steam, we hit the streets and headed for the Albert Cuyp Market - a huge street market that has been around since 1905. We often visit this market and it's filled with all the traditional things; pickled herring, cheap purses, plastic shoes, stroopwafels, fresh fruit… pretty much anything you could want! Our friends bought some soft slippers that look like wooden shoes as well as some delicious fresh fruit for their breakfast tomorrow. We had to introduce them to freshly made stroopwafels which no trip to the market would be complete without experiencing.
After a brief rest in a café (recharging with iced tea and beer), we continued our exploration and eventually ended up back at their rental apartment right in the heart of the city. We decided on dinner and after making a reservation (for what we thought was an Indonesian restaurant) we took our grumbling stomachs a few blocks down the street. We sat down and looked at the menu but did not see anything resembling Indonesian food - it was a Chinese restaurant! We had quite the conundrum as we really wanted Indonesian, but we felt bad leaving because they had set up a special table for us and the kids had already played with the chopsticks and pawed all the glasses and plates. 
So, we decided to stay. It turns out that this restaurant actually had a Michelin star a few years ago so we knew it had to be good (or at least used to be good!). In any case, we ordered a bunch of things and it was a delicious meal. The staff was very attentive and the scallops in ginger sauce were amazing! Phew. We followed the meal with fantastic ice cream from a street kiosk and the night was complete.
Our only challenge in getting home was that we knew that one of our four chipkaarts (what you use to pay for the trams, buses, etc) was empty. We had tried to fill it earlier but it turns out that you need a Dutch bank card (no cash and no Visa) to do so. We don't have one, and so we hoped for the best when we boarded the tram for home. Either the guy didn't notice or he simply pretended not to notice, but the red light and strange beep obviously indicated that we didn't have any money on our card. We made it home tonight, but how we'll get into town tomorrow for our family group tour of the Anne Frank House will be interesting! We are planning on playing the dumb tourist card and seeing if it works.
Like a broken record I'll say it was another great day. Time to rest the feet, minds and stomachs and get ready for tomorrow. Tot ziens.
This hot weather is confusing me! I am so used to wearing jeans and a jacket whenever we come here and this is now the second day I've found myself hot and sweaty at the beach. Today was a gorgeous 30C and absolutely perfect for sitting with you feet in the sand and a beer in your hand.
We started out our day with a trip to the market in Uithoorn. Jeff's cousin Jan-Geert was working there today and the kids absolutely love seeing the giant Scholten truck at the market (I think it makes them feel semi-famous). Jeff also has fond memories of the place because when he was a young 19 year old he lived here for a year and worked with his uncle on the market. 
We had a lunch of all of Jeff's favorite market foods; kibbling (deep fried fresh fish pieces with some kind of delicious sauce), loempias (spring roll thingamajigs), and of course drop (black Dutch licorice). I think he was a little bit in grease heaven! We also got some amazing looking fruit from Jan-Geert and look forward to our delicious breakfast tomorrow morning. He chuckled as he told us that the beautiful dark purple cherries are actually imported from Canada!
We also drove by the giant Flower Market in Aalsmeer which is basically the world stock exchange for fresh flowers. It's huge! We watched a show on tv a few years ago that showed what happens inside; think men in suits yelling at each other and flowers everywhere. Very interesting. Thanks to Wikipedia I just learned the following facts; there are approximately 20 million flowers sold there daily, it's the 5th biggest building in the world in terms of floor space, and it's done Dutch auction style which is where the price starts high and then slowly drops. The buyer has only a few seconds to bid before it's shipped off to the new owner's business. The flowers literally come from all over the world - not just Europe but places like Columbia and Ethiopia as well. This explains why the market we went to had absolutely gorgeous bouquets of flowers for about 1/5 the cost we'd pay at home. I wanted to take them all with me!
Finally it was beach time. We drove back to Zandvoort where we had such a nice time on Sunday, and thankfully it wasn't quite as busy as it was then. We still had some difficulty finding a parking spot and we ended up paying a small fortune to park in a really nice underground parkade after trolling the streets for about 15 minutes in search of a spot. The good thing with the underground was that it kept all of our beautiful fruit nice and cool instead of turning it in to wine while we sat at the beach. Plus it was the cleanest parkade I've ever seen - it's like they scrub the floor every night!
We set up at the same little beach restaurant that we went to the other day, but this time we scored a giant area that was fully shaded and had a lot of couches and tables. It also had huge pillows you could lounge on and a bunch of hammocks. It's crazy that you can sit there all day for free if you like, but of course they prefer if you eat and drink from their restaurant. The cost is reasonable, especially considering the location, so we happily ate and drank what they offered! The craziest thing happened while we were there… I was lounging on a pillow staring at the sky when I happened to stretch and turn my head the other direction for a second. At that exact moment I saw Jeff's brother walking about 20 feet from us. We had no idea that he (and his family) was going to the beach today - what are the chances that we would run in to them? So random. The beach is absolutely huge… seeing them was like finding a needle in a haystack! They came and joined us in our luxury box and we ended up spending the entire afternoon together. Then Yvonne, the girlfriend of Jan-Geert who we just saw at the market, appeared with her son. Again, how strange! What we thought would just be a quiet afternoon with the 4 of us turned into a giant party and a lot of fun.
Lucky ducks, that's what we are.
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