Amsterdam | We have friends!

We were really looking forward to a few days in Amsterdam, mainly because we were meeting up with my best friend Lori and her husband, Eric. Lori and Eric are like family, so having a little familiarity in an unfamiliar city was a treat. On top of that, we discovered we’d overlap a couple days with our friends from Richmond, Seth and Lauren. Bring on ALL THE FRIENDS!

Mike and I kept our agenda short for Amsterdam. And by short, I mean non-existent. Aside from our reservation to Anne Frank’s house (which Eric completely handled), we arrived in Amsterdam with no plans. In fact, our only plan was to take full advantage of Lori and Eric’s plans (thanks, guys!). Fortunately, the four of us were always on the same page.

DAY ONE

Hey all, I need to interrupt Anna’s blog post for a quick second. Our full first day in Amsterdam started off a bit shaky and unfortunately, I was the only one to immediately experience the drama. We had a pretty long night and I had an unplanned early morning… I woke up to what sounded like banging at our door followed by buzzing on the intercom. I thought, maybe Lori and Eric got up early to grab something and now they are locked out. Not in a hurry to jump out of bed, I waited until I was sure whoever was knocking was not going away and that I did in fact need to answer the door. So, after five minutes of repeated banging and ringing, I headed to the door. I opened it to see two middle-aged gentlemen. They immediately presented two Dutch badges, explaining they are from the housing authority of Amsterdam and wanted to ask some questions. (Keep in mind this is our first morning in Amsterdam and we are staying in an Airbnb, so I am a little sketched and really not sure what the play is.)

They start asking if I am staying in the apartment and how long I will be in town for. After a minute or so, I am starting to think I should never have opened the door and I most likely should not have answered any of their questions. Just as these thoughts start bubbling up, these guys ask to come in to take pictures to ensure it is in accordance to the regulations. It’s 8:30 in the morning, everyone else is asleep, and I have no idea if this is a scam. I tell them there is no chance they are coming into the apartment. They proceed to pull out more documents and state they have a warrant to come in. Doing my best to hold my ground, I told them that police deliver warrants and they are not coming in. They start telling me I don’t understand because I am a tourist from America and that they are on official business. Now out of witty ideas, I told them to come back with the police and shut the door (in hindsight, rather abruptly). Everyone is now up, and we are pretty confident we were almost scammed. And then fast forward 20 minutes, the police did show up... it turns out that Amsterdam has strict rules for home owners that Airbnb their apartment. Whether or not our host was following those rules remains to be seen. The police were extremely understanding of our skepticism (even admitting that they would not have let them in either if they were in our position), but they did say that if they do come back, we are obliged to let them in. Who knew. Okay, back to Anna.

^To avoid another encounter with those two men, we immediately rushed out the door to start our day. We started with pancakes. This is important for everyone to know because they were so. damn. good. We each ordered a savory Dutch pancake (pannekoek) and, because we couldn’t resist, sweet American pancakes for the table. Everything was so delicious and well worth the wait (but not really worth the $100 bill… pancakes should always be cheap and water should always be free).

The sun was shining and because we knew our sun could be limited for the week, we unanimously agreed that it was a boating day. After all, did Amsterdam even happen if you don’t boat through the canals? (This rationale is also how I justified eating a baguette with every meal in France. It just helps.) After doing some research, we decided that renting our own boat would be the cheapest option and the best experience—we could cruise the canals for three hours (most boat tours are just one hour), pack a picnic, and stop for coffee or a drink along the route. We picked up the necessities as we made our way to the rental: baguettes (okay, so as it turns out, I use that rationale for baguettes all over Europe), olive oil, cheese, salami, olives, chips, and wine. We threw some berries in there for good measure (they were honestly the cutest baby strawberries we’ve ever seen) and off we went. Should you find yourself in Amsterdam deciding which way to explore the canals, we highly recommend you ditch the tour boat and rent your own. It was so nice to go at our own pace, dock in the sun for some PTRs (prime-time rays), and navigate our way through Amsterdam one canal at a time.

We walked around a bit more before beginning (and ending) our night at a piano bar. Worried that we may be fighting for a good seat, we made sure to arrive a half hour early. It wasn’t until about 1.5 hours later that we remembered it was a Monday… and we’d essentially have the place to ourselves with our own personal pianist. It was at this moment where we started to completely lose track of time…

The night included a visit from our Richmond friends, a lot of Avicii requests from the crowd (RIP), and a few performances from one of our very own. Eric just so happens to be an amazing pianist. Every visit to New York includes a nightly jam session with Lori and I requesting songs and singing along. While the vocals could use a bit a lot of work, Eric is always so much fun to listen to. He doesn’t read music but figures it out by listening, so as long as he knows the song, he can play it. The others at the bar LOVED him and began throwing requests his way (more Avicii, of course).

I wish I could say that we were being sensible adults and decided to call it a night on our own, but we honestly could no longer afford to use the bathroom. Yes, even though we were providing this bar plenty of service (and even a pianist!), we had to pay €.50 each time we used the bathroom. Eventually, we found ourselves bartering with a complete stranger to let us empty our bladder for €.30. We decided it was probably time to head home when we were searching our bags and pockets just to scrap together enough change to pee.

DAY TWO

The next morning, we had our reservation to the Anne Frank House. You’re transported back in time as you walk through the secret annex that was home to eight people for more than two years. It is impossible to imagine what life must have been like, relying on only a trusted few to eat, provide news, be your connection to the outside world. I am not sure how Anne (whose full name was Annelies—I never knew this!) maintained such a positive attitude and lively personality. I also didn’t realize how close they were to escaping: The Franks and the van Pels were on the last train to Auschwitz. Apparently, as of October 2017, a former FBI agent has opened a cold case review into who betrayed the Franks.

Since our morning was pretty heavy, we kept our afternoon light. We made our way to the Red Light District and straight into the Museum of Prostitution. Quite different from earlier, but surprisingly very interesting in its own right. (I won’t elaborate further.) Afterwards, we met up with a friend that we only met just weeks earlier during our wine and cheese tasting in Paris. Enric has lived in Amsterdam for several years now, so he helped show us a more local area of Amsterdam (De Pijp). It was nice to break from all those annoying tourists. ;) We ended our night with oversized Moroccan dishes at a restaurant called The Bazaar… it was delish!

DAY THREE

On our last day, we decided to spend the day biking through the iconic tulip farms, which are in full bloom in April. We took the train a little outside the city and rented bikes from there. We had our bikes, we had our directions, and we were ready to cruise: off we went! Two wrong turns later: back we went! (Where we were told to take a left would have taken us straight into a building. We figured this was not right.) It turns out that the woman at the bike rental who provided us these directions had never actually followed them before. It also turns out that we would manage to get lost regardless, because that’s exactly what we did once we were provided new directions. And of course, cue the rain. The good news is we did eventually make it to the tulip fields. The not-so-good news is that it took just a little lot longer.

The tulip farms were SO COOL to see. There were so many and all the colors were shockingly bright. I didn’t think flowers could make me so happy and excited. If you are curious how the tulip ended up in The Netherlands, here’s a (not-so-quick) history lesson: https://thatdamguide.com/story-dutch-tulip/.

We originally were on a mission to get to the Keukenhof (one of the world’s largest flower gardens) in Lisse, a small town southwest of Amsterdam. But once we finally arrived, we were hungry and decided we would rather spend our money on a bite to eat. We continued into the center of Lisse… and that is where Lori and I had the most delicious pannekoek. Even though I’ve only had two, I am pretty positive this has to be the greatest: brie, ham, and pineapple, which we topped with stroop (Dutch syrup) and powdered sugar. [If at this point, you are asking yourself “have they even touched a single vegetable on this trip?” the answer is no. We’re working on it, but we’re in Italy now, so we aren’t working on it too hard.]

We were enjoying an afternoon in the sun until we realized it was 5PM, we had to return the bikes by 6:30PM, and we really have no idea where we are in relation to where we picked up the bikes because we made up our own route. On top of that, our phones were either dead or about to die. What was a leisurely afternoon quickly turned into a frantic race back… against the wind. (Biking is a whole different sport when you are battling the wind.) We made it, though. Only ten minutes to spare and drenched in sweat, but we made it. And though beat from our impromptu bike race, we managed to rally for our last night together.

And that was a wrap in Amsterdam. The last day came too soon and Lori and Eric were out the door to their next destination before we even woke up. It was just the two of us again, but not for long… my younger, much cooler cousin, Michaela, recently moved to Copenhagen, so it was a no-brainer to make a trip up. And the best part? We were going for a full seven days. There’s nothing better than quality fam time!

Pit of Amsterdam: See above for Mike’s narration of our first morning. Oh also, our stairs to our apartment! The stairs were steep and the steps were especially short/narrow. It was a five-minute affair to get down those steps each time we went in/out.

Peak of Amsterdam: FRIENDS!