**Click HERE to look at pictures from our time in Amsterdam**
Both: Hey, everyone!
Jen: It's Jen and Greg with an update on our travels.
Greg: This update, we are talking about our visit to Amsterdam.
Jen: Pretty much the entire time we've been in Europe, we've been disappointed by the weather. I think we had in our brains that it was going to be, like, springtime and beautiful…and it hasn't been. It's been unseasonably cold.
Greg: Yeah, the weather was disappointing because the temperatures were getting even colder than before. And I think a couple of days it was down in the low 40s. So down jackets, thank goodness we packed those.
Jen: So, other than the cold weather...
Greg: Yes. We almost did not make our train.
Jen: Yeah…So, up until this point, we had been using digital tickets the entire time. Hadn't been a problem because everybody that we had encountered before was manually scanning them with a ticket scanner. When we got to the Lyon train station, we had to use one of those automated ticket scanners.
Greg: Every time we put the phone down, Apple Pay would pop up with credit information and get rid of the ticket that we had up.
Jen: And no matter what we did, it didn't work. We tried so many different things and couldn't get it to go away. We even disabled Apple Wallet, still kept popping up.
Greg: By this point, we're literally the last two people. Everybody's well up the platform. Fortunately, this lady is like, give me the, the ticket on the phone. She manually scanned and opened a side gate. You know, normally there's 15 minutes before your train. We were down to, like, less than five. So we ran up the platform, but the signage was awful. And we saw a sign that we were pretty sure pointed to the train right next to the sign with our train number and destination. So I said, “I think this is it.” And we jumped on that train.
Jen: And I look up and finally see a screen on the train that says this is not our train. So I said, “Greg, I don't think this is it.” And so we get off and the platform still says that it's our train. Well, I saw a lady that works there and I asked her and she pointed us in the right direction.
And it is about two minutes until the train is supposed to leave, so we run where our train actually is and jump on whatever car we can find. We were sweaty…and exhausted…and annoyed, but we were on the train.
Greg: Overall, it was not our finest moment, but we eventually got onto the correct train. And we got off at the airport and took a regional train five minutes to Hoofddorp.
Jen: So we decided to stay in the little town called Hoofddorp because it was basically a lot cheaper than Amsterdam and more importantly, it was also the closest to our main attraction that we went to - the Keukenhof Gardens.
Greg: We didn't really know where to go for dinner and Jennifer found a Michelin- starred restaurant.
Jen: Yeah. So the restaurant was called Den Burgh - cool little restaurant, open kitchen, so it was neat to watch all of them. But honestly, the food was not that great. The best thing we probably ate at that restaurant was the bread. It was like a country loaf kind of thing, and they brought out some homemade butter. It was called farmer's butter, but it was good. Um, I had a sandwich that was tasty, but really nothing to write home about. But Greg had this, like, seafood bouillabaisse, which had a lot of seafood in it. It was chock full of seafood. Seafood looked great, tasted okay, but the broth itself was not good.
Greg: It had almost a muddiness to the taste of the broth and, you know, maybe they just decided, like, “Ha ha, we're gonna laugh at these Americans and make them eat mud.” I don't know. But I can tell you, however they got that Michelin star, it wasn't the seafood bouillabaisse that got it for them.
That's not to say that all Dutch food was bad. We had some good food while we were in Amsterdam. We had a baked mac and cheese. The way that they did mac and cheese, and I don't know if this is all Dutch or just this place we were at, but they take macaroni and they take cheese and they bake it into a puffed pastry. So, it's not ooey gooey mac and cheese you eat with a spoon. It's, like, a delicious airy puff pastry that has cheese and macaroni in parts of it. It was delicious!
We also had fresh made stroopwafel. Was absolutely perfect - the smell, the taste, the texture. I enjoyed the heck of it.
Jen: That was the thing I was looking forward to the absolute most when we were going to Amsterdam. I wasn't going to leave there without one. So... it was high on my list of things to get. We found this little stall outside of the Rijksmuseum that was serving them. So, I followed the smell - because it was absolutely divine - and had the best stroopwafel of my life.
So, along the lines of sweets, apparently Amsterdam is known for its pancakes. I didn't know this before. There are a lot of different pancakes you can try there. So, I tried these little ones called poffertjes, which were these little balls of pancake dough that were fried and covered in powdered sugar and loads of butter. But those were really good, and I promise that I didn't just eat sweets.
I also had at one of the little villages that we went to, called Volendam, an order of fish and chips. Which I always thought fish and chips were more of a British thing, or in the UK. But apparently this little village is known for its fish, but they were really good. The fish was fresh and the chips were good as well.
Greg: What I’d really like to talk about with food in Amsterdam is the Italian restaurant Palladio or Palladio. The menu we looked at and I just looked at Jennifer and said, “I'll take one of everything.” Jennifer ordered tiger prawns with a gnocchi in pumpkin lobster sauce, which I thought tasted very good.
Jen: It was really tasty, but I'm going to admit that I ordered it just because I wanted to order something with tiger prawns on it. (laughing)
But Greg got this bolognese...
Greg: Um, that bolognese came out and I just got to tell you, I won't say it's the best bolognese I've ever had. But I genuinely don't remember having a better bolognese than I had at that restaurant. And it was exactly what I needed at that moment, because I was still feeling under the weather. I felt a lot better after we went to that restaurant.
Jen: So we didn't just eat while we were there, even though that's what it seems like. We also went to several museums. Uh, we started out at the Van Gogh Museum. I am not a huge art history fan, gonna confess that right now. But I was looking forward to it because Van Gogh was one of my friend Amanda's favorites, so I thought it would be neat to kind of see that. His self portraits were really good. Now, granted, there were a couple that I was like, “Okay, I, I think a 12 year old could have done that.” But that's just me.
But we saw their famous painting Sunflowers. He also had one that I enjoyed that was, he just painted a bunch of books. Other than that, I was like, yeah, it's an art museum.
Greg: I'm going to say it. I believe the guy is kind of overrated. He is a very talented artist, especially when you look at his self portraits. He's done so many that you can see the evolution. And there was one self portrait he did in the style of, like, the Dutch Masters and it was magnificent. So the guy has talent. Right?
But when you see his work from his early years trying to capture the life of peasants where he was from, it's not good at all. His big piece that everybody recognizes and calls a masterpiece, was The Potato Eaters. Look it up. It is not an impressive piece of art to me. This is especially noteworthy when a hundred yards away is the Rijksmuseum, with so many works of the Dutch Masters - is the term I believe they give to those artists. There are paintings in the Rijksmuseum that look so realistic you would think that they are photographs.
And of course, the Rijksmuseum has so many Rembrandts, and I already appreciated Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters before going to the Rijksmuseum. But after going to the Rijksmuseum, I appreciate them even more.
Jen: And my favorite part of this museum was the library that was there. This huge two story space, really beautiful, but it was just really cool to see. And no surprise that my favorite part of an art museum was a library.
Greg: Overall, the Rijksmuseum was a terrific museum. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in Amsterdam.
Jen: So we also did a couple tours. Uh, we did a canal tour. Because when in Amsterdam, that's what you have to do - Captain Dave's Canal Cruises. The boat was very popular, apparently. It had been in several movies, and the Queen of Netherlands had actually ridden that same boat. So, we were royalty adjacent that day.
Greg: We saw all of these buildings along the canals that were built in the, uh, 1500s, right? Some of them in the 1600s.
Jen: And they were all crooked. Now, I guess that's what happens when you build houses on water. They even mention that people don't even really fix the foundation anymore. They just let them be crooked because there's really no point because it's just going to shift back.
So really the main reason we went to Amsterdam was to see the tulips, so we decided to make our way up to Keukenhof Gardens. It is probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
Greg: I think Keukenhof Gardens has earned its reputation as one of the most beautiful gardens in the world. I think the thing about Keukenhof that I'm going to remember the most, the effort it must have taken to plant those flowers because very rarely did you see a single tulip out of place.
Jen: Beauty all around!
Greg: So, the next destination is…Paris. I have to say, the number one thing I wanted to do in Paris was go to the Louvre.
Jen: (laughing) I'm looking forward to eating all the things. Finding out how many croissants it's actually possible for one person to eat in a week, and how many macarons I can sample.
Greg: So, thank you for checking in.
Jen: And we'll see you at the next stop!
