A Six Canal Walk to Dinner, And More

A highlight of the walking tour came when we stopped for a Stroopwaffle.  We’ve had them before, but this was freshly made and quite tasty.  Another highlight was going into the courtyard of what had been the Dutch East India company, the company in which stock was sold.  There will be pictures. . .the courtyard itself has a very interesting design.

The fact that the Dutch surrendered in the early days of World War II keep the city from being bombed to smithereens by the Nazis, so there are many interesting old buildings.  The canal ring zone of Amsterdam is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(Blogger: Remember readers, UNESCO rhymes with “you must go.”  Editor: I knew this was coming!)

The only two negatives I would point out about Amsterdam is that there is often pungent aroma of marijuana in the air.  I understand that the Dutch legalized it to fight off harder drugs, and it appears that policy is working, but the smell of dope is gross, just like the smell of tobacco.  

The other observation isn’t so much a negative as a personal preference.  Amsterdam is a cool city, especially with all the canals, but to Carol and I it doesn’t have the jaw-dropping sights of southern Europe cities like Barcelona, Seville, Florence, or Rome.  

Now, part of that it because it is a much younger city, doesn’t have Roman ruins, and doesn’t have the grand cathedrals of southern Europe.  There are no defensive walls like in some German cities, or York.  No castles like in Edinburgh or chateaus in the Loire Valley.  I think we’ll enjoy our three upcoming days in Amsterdam, but we’re not blown away by the city.  

Don’t over read what I’m saying – we like Amsterdam, just that our jaws aren’t dropping open.

After six hours into our four hour tour, Bart kindly walked us back to our hotel.  I tipped him well, in appreciation for both the great tour he gave and that he added two hours on top of the scheduled four.  

We were starving, given that we’d skipped lunch and had a modest breakfast hours ago on the flight.  So we walked along a canal to an Italian restaurant for lunch at 4:30 pm.  We went simple, since we still had dinner reservations.  The food was great.  While much of Europe is sweltering in the heat wave (even northern Italy – more about that later), Amsterdam was a cool 71 degrees.

Carol napped while I caught up on work.  We had been able to get into our hotel room as soon as we got to the hotel from the airport, so that had been nice.  I had set a late dinner at Venus & Adonis, a restaurant about 0.7 of a mile from the hotel.  The food was good, the atmosphere casual, and we had to cross six canals to get to the restaurant (and then the same six to get back).