A weekend trip was in order to a city we had heard so much about from so many people and finally were going to see for ourselves. A side note was our visit turned out to be a personally guided tour from some good friends who showed us the ins and .... actually there weren’t any outs!
We hadn’t even left London yet and thanks to Ryanair we were already 4 beers down at the airport and over 2 hours delayed. Oh well, with the good comes the bad!
So - coffee shops and the red light district aside, Amsterdam is such a beautiful city. The narrow canals and waterside architecture made strolling along the cobblestone streets truly magic. And the bicycles! Wow, is that a lot of pedal power... Can you believe that we did not once ride a bike on our weekend? Sacrilege. Mind you, in a land of giants (they are huge, like enormously tall) we don’t think we would have been able to touch our feet on the ground, safety always comes first and we know where the BFG was thought up. With the Anne Frank house and Heineken Museum under our belts during the day (Gerard, for the record, cannot pour beer), our personal tour guides took us to some not so touristy eateries and bars, to indulge in some of the many Belgium beers on tap - cheers!
While it might seem that visiting two landmarks for the weekend was a ‘busy schedule’ walking the canals and street of A- Dam was enough to keep ones heart content on a weekend break. ‘Boom Chicago’ an American comedy in a Dutch city – we’d prefer the Dutch humour in Chicago!
St.Nikolaus (the Dutch equivalent to Santa Claus) must have heard we were in town as he made a massive entry by boat from Spain on the Sunday! We found it rather amusing that he has over 200 little black helpers in tow. There seriously were over 200 adults with their faces and bodies painted black – apparently from all the chimney soot... Couldn’t get away with that in Australia that’s for sure!
Like so many places, we’ll be back!
