Friday 17th September 2010
Everything starts in Amsterdam. Actually, it starts at Birmingham airport where we meet around 4am but however hard I try I can’t write anything exciting or interesting about the airport, sorry. Oh, maybe just that I was faithful to my tradition of having a muffin and hot chocolate for breakfast there and also that we started are new Malarone regime (once a day with or after meal!)
So let’s go back to Amsterdam. We arrive early in the morning (around eight). After a little bit of waiting for Paul’s luggage we briefly stop in our hotel, Sheraton, which is situated straight at the airport - just to leave our (very heavy) bags there. And then we set forward to explore Amsterdam, starting at the Centraal Station. We don’t have an exact plan; we just walk the streets and little alleys, cross the bridges and breathe the atmosphere of early morning city life. The streets are very colourful, full of interesting and sometimes weird shops, massage parlours, bars and cafes.
Although our wandering seems aimless, we visit several interesting places. First, it’s the famous Dam Square in the heart of Amsterdam, with beautiful old buildings. Unfortunately the Koninklijk Paleis is covered with scaffolding which leaves us the National Monument, hotel Krasnapolsky and Nieuwe Kerk to admire. We continue through narrow streets and after some searching find a little shop called Wijnand Fockink. It’s currently closed but we later come back and find out it’s some kind of home-made liqueur bar. As all the menus are in Dutch I don’t dare to order anything.
One of the things I wanted to see was a Flower market (Bloemenmarkt) which was supposed to be floating too (wasn’t sure what to imagine as “floating”). In my head I saw a big hall full of flowers of all kinds – tulips, roses, carnations, lilies, you name it. Maybe that’s why we (or let’s say I) couldn’t find it and when we finally did it was a huge disappointment. The market was basically a raw of small stall which predominantly sold bulbs and seeds. Never mind. Afterwards I gave up giving directions!
So then we continue walking along Rokin and the streets around it, briefly visit Café Hoppe which apparently has been in the business for 300 years now!, and then return to the Dam Square to the restaurant called Majestic for some lunch and beer. The plan afterwards is to visit some of the places recommended by our guidebook – De Bierkoning, XtraCold, Puccini Bomboni, Tibet. Tibet is apparently a very good place to go for food; it’s located in the Red Light District though so we will leave that for the evening. De Bierkoning is a shop – not a pub as we hoped – where you can buy any beer from around the whole world (we should have checked if they had Kilimanjaro!!!). XtraCold was supposed to be a bar made of ice, it turns out that yes, one part of the bar is made of ice and for not exactly small amount of Euros you can spend half an hour in there and get two drinks. Pass! Not far from there though we come across a Czech-Slovak pub called “U Josefa” so we stop there instead and rest with some very good beer. And finally, Puccini Bomboni is a little shop selling heavenly chocolate bonbons of different flavours like white rum, Drambuie, cinnamon, nutmeg… We treat ourselves to five pieces each, ending up with a bill of twenty Euros. Delicious chocolate definitely is not cheap!
We then go back to the hotel to finish the check-in, have a nap and prepare for our evening adventure. Paul wants to go to the Red Light District but first we stop at the Czech-Slovak pub to have a beer. One beer then leads to another one, purely because it started to rain outside and it’s very cosy in the pub. The pub is owned by a Czech guy called – surprisingly – Josef; we chat a bit (I find it difficult to chat in Czech language), he’s been living in Amsterdam for quite some time now. He’s very friendly and at the end wishes us a good fun in Africa. By now it’s dark outside so we go looking for a place where we could have dinner. There were many places along the Rokin and other streets we walked but funnily enough we ended up in a small “kind of” Italian place – I call it Pizza and pasta place – just at the fringe of the Red Light District. (We never made it inside Tibet, it didn’t look very appealing). Having a pasta carbonara with a view of a sex shop and a lesbian cinema poster was a whole new experience! As was the district itself – all the women of different ages, shapes and sizes, romantically set along a canal inhabited by a flock of swans… Our visit of this part of Amsterdam was concluded by stopping in a small pub which name I cannot remember, unfortunately. Very cute place serving local and not so common beers. There we have realised it was well after eleven and we should be thinking about getting back to the hotel and having our last night in the Europe for next few weeks.
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