Amsterdam PART 1: Things I Did, Stuff I Saw & Other Things You Might Not Care About

I recently had the pleasure of visiting that beautiful exemplar of quintessential minimalist Western European living and it was with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart that I boarded the plane back to America. This was my fourth visit to Amsterdam (get that smirk off your face) and I can easily sum up what it is about the city that is so special - the architecture, the slowed down pace and the Dutch way of life. Part 2 of this series will be all about the things I ate, but here, I will focus more on what I saw.

Typical Side Street

Red Door

The Architecture

If you've been to Amsterdam you know that the city is formed by several rings of canals and all the streets sort of radiate out from Central Station. The canals obviously make the city very beautiful and very unique. Narrow brick and cobbled streets line the areas between these waterways and provide passage for the millions of bikes and handful of tiny cars that navigate the city streets.

View of Nieuwmarkt

Happy Boat

Chinatown

Much of the architecture in the old city center (centre for you Europeans) is from the 17th century and that's what people typically think of when they see photos of old Amsterdam. These houses are very narrow - usually around 30 feet wide - and have huge windows lining the front, gabled facades at the roof and large hooks up at the top which are still used to transport large furnishings into the upper floors. This is because the stairs are so narrow you'd never get a king sized bed or baby grand piano up to the second floor... though one has to wonder if you'd own stuff like that if you lived here. I can't imagine how you'd ship it.

The streets are so narrow in parts that if a car (or moving truck) has to stop for any amount of time, it literally can block traffic for hours and for blocks because there is nowhere for people to go. I saw this happen near our hotel and I wonder if they actually close streets when a big moving truck is going to take up prime real estate for any amount of time.

Typical Canal Houses

Cool Stairwell

Different Perspective

Lamp Post

Herring Stand - Nieuwmarkt

There's a lot of great new architecture in The Netherlands as well, but this is mainly what you see throughout the city center and red light district and it's what makes the city so beautiful - like it just popped out of an old storybook.

Dam Square at Twilight

Dam Square at Night

The lack of space necessitates a sort of minimalism seen throughout these types of old European cities. I'm not talking about aesthetic minimalism in fashion or housewares although you see it there as well - but generally speaking - it seems the Dutch (and probably most Europeans) just don't purchase or consume the same amount of crap that we do. You see people leaving the grocery store and they're not shopping for two weeks. They buy enough for two days maybe - whatever they can walk with or transport on their bikes. A few loaves of bread, some cheese, fish, coffee, milk.

Laurel Wreath

You just don't see the super stores like we have here - Costco, Best Buy. People don't have two or three flat screen TVs, they don't buy mountains of plastic crap for their kids to play with. They probably produce a whole lot less garbage and they live a more simple, whole and uncluttered type of life. For this, I am supremely envious. It's something I aspire to.

The Dutch "Way of Life"

It's hard to explain but in general, people here just seem to prioritize things a little differently. It's not that people don't work hard, take their jobs seriously and focus on accumulating wealth. However, there seems to be a greater balance that forces people out into the streets, into the many grand cafes for coffee and out for dinner with friends more regularly than in the U.S. Part of that might just be the accessibility of everything. Hop on your bike and you can be anywhere in this blissfully flat little metropolis in a matter of minutes. Additionally, even with the Euro and exchange rates what they are, dinning out is less expensive - at least when compared to Boston.

Nieuwmarkt Square

But on any night of the week you can find the good people of Amsterdam imbibing at their local watering hole, getting dinner with friends or taking in local music. These aren't tourists - the city turns into a different place on weekends when throngs of Europeans from neighboring countries descend on the city for stag parties and general debauchery. But on any Monday night, the pubs are full, the restaurants overflowing and the cafes are alive with happy chatter - and this is winter. The pace in Amsterdam is just a little slower. People seem to take a little more time to sit and read the paper, enjoy a Dommelsch and some bitterballen and spend time with friends.

Peeking Through to the Damstraat

This visit to Amsterdam was different than past excursions when I have been with friends or at least had Dana with me during the day. I was on my own during the week as Dana was putting in very long days in Hilversum. He would typically leave before 8AM and I usually didn't see him again until after 7PM. This left me with several hours to occupy myself.

Dark, Blurry Photo Inside Alto Jazz Cafe

I hired a bike for part of the trip and spent afternoons cruising around and working up an appetite. Luckily, I love to read and can't get bored exploring the spiderweb of streets crammed with boutiques and independent shops. I spent hours in places like Cafe Luxembourg reading and drinking coffee or beer (depending on the time of day) and jotting down lists of things I think would improve our quality of life in America.

View From the Luxembourg Terrace; Daytime

View At Night

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List of Things We Need More of In the U.S.

• Good coffee and places to enjoy it - I'm not talking about Starbucks but smaller, independently owned cafes where they make a proper cup of coffee with steamed milk and you can sit for a few hours and read the paper; I guess the problem with this is that the vast majority of Americans simply don't make time for such an activity.

• Fresh baguettes - there's something so wonderful about just having a chunk of freshly baked bread for breakfast with a slice of cheese and a boiled egg. I live in East Boston so there are few places you can get a nice loaf of bread baked fresh - mainly at Italian bakeries but again, our fast paced, over processed culture demands bagels with a shelf life of 10 years and foods with so many ingredients they look like nuclear weapons development instructions.

• Independently owned stores - shopping is so much more enjoyable when it's an experience. With the independently owned boutique, owners take pride in how they merchandise and display their goods. We're seeing our independently owned stores make way for Target, Walmart and mega malls so we can buy more stuff packaged in plastic that will later gorge our landfills.

• Food carts & windows - I'm not necessarily talking about the NYC hot dog cart but something a bit more evolved. In Paris it's crepes sold out of a store front window, Amsterdam has places you can get vlaamse frites right on the side of the road and millions of little bakeries with open store fronts so you can be tempted by the waffles, doughnuts and savory snacks.
  

• Small, independent bookstores - I love shopping for books but I go out of my way so I don't have to shop at Borders or Barnes & Noble. These places serve a purpose and many people have no problem buying books there, but I love the small, independent bookseller who makes recommendations and creates a warm, hospitable environment for book shopping.

Outskirts - The Eastern Harbor

During the weekend I was there, we biked outside the city to the Eastern Harbor area to check out some interesting modern architecture and see an old windmill. I'll post photos of what we did the rest of the weekend in Part 2 but we went to a cool dinner/nightclub on Saturday evening with one of Dana's coworkers, did some shopping and generally just toured around.

If you go to Amsterdam, don't be intimidated by all the bikes. It's the best way to get around so rent one and keep it for a few days. I will say that cycling after a few beers is... interesting and probably very dangerous. As is letting your husband drive you around on the back of Dutch back pedal bike two times too small for him.

Sloten Windmill

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Bridge Near the Windmill

Bike Shadows


Python Bridge; Eastern Docklands Area

I Think This Is Called The Whale Residence


Cool Perspective on a Field of Crocus

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Clearly I Liked Them

Little Boat; Lots of Stuff

Public Art

Dana - Dutch Style


Swans in the Canal

Anyway... we are what we are which is less than a 500 year old culture - much younger than our European cousins and we have designed a life here that depends heavily on highly processed foods, absurd amounts of material possessions and lots of disposable goods made of hard plastic and durable cardboard derivatives.

Awesome Storefront Display

Bar Scenes

I Think This Must Be the Oldest Bar Ever

I'm not saying I'm any less guilty. There's a 50 inch plasma hanging in my living room. And it's not that I don't think Europeans don't buy this stuff too... I just think that in certain places in Europe there is a more deliberate attempt to live life simply, to buy quality goods that will withstand the test of time and to recycle rather than throw out.

Part Two with lots of photos of food and drink... coming soon.

Dim Sum Roundup! Living Like a Bachelor or How to Gain Five Pounds in a Week

"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing."

—Søren Kierkegaard, Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund, August 31, 1835

Man... those European existentialists were heady guys. I think I have figured out the answer to this question for myself of course, because I believe one can only deal with the whole crisis of human existence for ones' self. I think God really wishes me to be inspired by the things I see and find pleasure in the things I eat. Therefore, it is my mission to always seek out new and interesting things, experience different cultures, imbibe freely and taste heartily.

I have clearly been watching too much Anthony Bourdain lately and wish I could somehow rig a Freaky Friday (the original with Jodie Foster not the new one with what's her name) life swap with the guy. Anyway, if Nietzsche or Heidegger didn't think traveling around, seeing new sights and eating yummy food doesn't give life plenty of meaning, they were born in the wrong century or didn't appreciate the fine art of consumption enough.

Maceo Has Made a Bed on My Desk

Dana just spent roughly three weeks in Amsterdam working in Hilversum and before I went over to meet him for a brief but delicious tryst in one of my favorite old European cities, I spent a week living like a bachelor and eating all my meals out. At the time, I was also reading three books concurrently and aggressively interviewing for jobs so I found myself out in the city quite a bit, looking for places to kill an hour or two and knock off a few chapters.

While I'm at it, I will highly recommend The Radical Leap by Steve Farber who turns a lesson in leadership into parable and makes business books fun! As well as Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl which I have sadly just read was optioned by a major movie studio. Boo. It's a fun read (maybe a tad over stylized) that channels many great works of the Western Cannon and keeps you up late with an underlying whodunit. I also started reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie but then I broke down and bought the new T.C. Boyle book, The Women about the many sorted and tumultuous love affairs of Frank Lloyd Wright as told through a Japanese protagonist who goes to apprentice with the legendary architect and philanderer in the 1930's.

I really couldn't resist. The idea that I would wait the year until this book came out in paperback was preposterous because Boyle is my favorite and every time I passed a book store it was as if the novel was mocking me and making a joke of my masochistic exercise in self control. I'll spend $200 on a pair of jeans but I want to wait a year so I don't have to pay $28 for a hardcover book? The hardcover thing is a slight deterrent. They just don't travel as well. I immediately started consuming this book, swallowing chapters in big gulps like downing a raspberry smoothie.

Gettin' Comfortable

Boyle has perfected a genre I'll call the fictional biography. There may be an actual literary term but I don't know what it is. He constructs these vivid portraits of real people and introduces fictional characters to interact with his subject matter, whose perspective the story is told through. Of course there is fictional dialogue and many embellished facts but the result is always a facinating portrait of a truly memorable historical figure.

He did this with Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle or a little differently with John Harvey Kellogg in The Road to Wellville. The latter was also a movie starring Mathew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack and Anthony Hopkins as the aforementioned Dr. Kellogg, a health pedalling fanatic who claims to be able to cure all that ails you at his sanatorium in Michigan with a steady diet of corn flakes, colonics, strange laughing exercises and cold naps.

Lord have mercy. I am totally off topic and I haven't event started yet. Quickly then, on with the food. This will be quick, lots of pretty pictures and snappy little comments. Nothing too cerebral. I'm not joking when I say I gained five pounds in a week. Okay, it was more like 3.5 pounds in 10 days but still!

EXHIBIT 1: 303 Cafe; A Good Place to Read

So this is my neighborhood spot. It's right up the street, does a nice breakfast/brunch, as well as lunch and dinner and has a limited but fairly inventive beer and wine menu. This place does simple fare best. For breakfast, it's Eggs Benedict all the way, which I had already devoured when I took this photo. This was the day after Dana left. Notice my two books. I do that so people will think I'm wicked smaht and so they won't try to strike up a conversation with me. What you see here is the remnants of my mimosa and coffee. We like 303 but they sometimes over complicate their dinner dishes and their sandwiches are a bit heavy. I also always leave there smelling like food.

EXHIBIT 2: Ole - Inman Square; Later That Same Day

On that rainy Sunday night, Christie was still in town after the wedding reunion extravaganza at Enormous Room so we saw a movie (I will not admit which one in a public forum) with our friend Michelle and then went to Ole in Inman Square for some Mexican. I like this place. They do classic Mexican dishes very well and some more interesting/authentic stuff as well but I always feel a little bad shelling out $18 for an entree when I can get great Mexican in my neighborhood for like five bucks. More on that later. There are two meals from this week of gluttonous debauchery which I will save for its very own showcase and one is a Salvadorean/Mex joint in my hood.

Mole, Mole, Mole, I've got Love in My Tummy!

They do this giant guacamole made to order in a molcajete right at the front of the restaurant. It's good... I'd like a little more cilantro and a little less lime. On this particular evening I was famished having eaten nothing but my eggs bene and some popcorn which I brought from home in an effort to not eat the fake butter laden stuff at the theater, so I went with the braised pork enchiladas mole (poblano).

Put mole on anything and I'm happy. That blissful comingling of cacao, ground nuts and sprices makes me drool even when it's not prepared well. I guess I just like drowning my meat in chocolate. You can get their enchiladas with chicken or vegetarian and with ranchera sauce instead of mole... but why would you??? That's the one thing about the "Mexican" places in East Boston. INo one in East Boston is really from Mexico so these places are really Colombian or Salvadorean and serve versions of Mexican favorites, but none of them do any kind of mole... not a rojo or verde, but it's the chocolatey poblano that makes me salivate.

EXHIBIT 3: Old Man Bar; Another Good Place to Read

This is kind of funny and I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I love old man bars. Places with a lot of wood panelling, bottles of scotch and guys wearing trench coats, rubber shoes and fedoras. I have become quite fond of The Last Hurrah which is the bar at the Omni Parker House on Tremont. This place is super stodgy in a really nice, old Brahmin kind of way. You can almost feel the ghost of a Cabot floating around.

I spent an afternoon there reading my many books, enjoying a properly constructed vodka gimlet and gorging myself on their trademark bar snack - WARM MIXED NUTS!!!! It's pretty much the best thing ever and makes you never want to eat a boring ole room temperature nut again. They serve the good mix too with macadamias and Brazil nuts and they must have some kinda little warming machine behind the bar cause these puppies come out all toasty and delicious. Maybe it's just a microwave but I like to imagine a special, old man bar nut warming device. Hmmmm. Best of all (well, the nuts are the best part) they bring your business out on a little silver tray like you're Heloise at the Plaza!

EXHIBIT 4: Melted Cheese Skillet at Beacon Street Tavern

I'll admit it. I'm a creature of habit. I find places I like and I return again and again. Beacon Street Tavern is one of those places but I will say that my last few meals there haven't been as spectacular as previous delectable encounters with this establishment. They still mix a nice cocktail and the food is still good but I have noticed a slight decline. Certain dishes seem overly greasy, seasoned or heavy. Maybe I'm just being fussy. I hope it will go back to normal because this is just a great spot. It's a wonderful room with good, solid food at decent prices.

I was there with two girlfriends so we split the cheese skillet - baked brie with caramelized onions, granny smith apples, toasted hazelnuts and served with grilled ciabatta. Of course they never give you enough bread to dip in there, but are happy to supply more if you just ask. This is a highly addictive little starter but not on the level of the Gouda skillet the B-Side used to serve. That was the bomb. I won't talk about it though because it just makes me sad.

Looks Can be Deceiving

I had the confit chicken sandwich - Gruyere cheese, baby spinach, slow roasted tomatoes, and honey dijon aioli with some sweet potato fries which ended up being the highlight of my meal. This dish photographs beautifully but was too heavy, greasy and fell apart when you picked it up. It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't that good. Not like the fish taquitos Beacon Street used to have on the menu that were superb! I think those should be a constant...

Something Devilish Done to Brussels Sprouts

We also shared some brussels sprouts that were quite good. Shredded and sauteed and seasoned nicely. Just enough savouriness to balance out the bitterness of the brussel sprouts. At the end of this fat laden meal, we indulged in a decadent slice of tres leches cake that was insanely sweet but that's just the nature of the dish so I won't complain too much.

Tres Leches Will Make Your Teeth Fall Out

This dish combines heavy cream, milk, condensed milk, oil, a lot of eggs... plus the stuff you need to make a cake - flour and whatnot. The result is a belly bomb. This could have put 3 pounds on me alone.

EXHIBIT 5: Sushi with the Faux Asian Kid at Douzo

So, I always enjoy getting some sushi with Kenji... mainly because he knows nothing about Japanese cuisine which I find endlessly entertaining. I think he must be in the witness protection program or something cause no one can grow up in Japan and know less about sushi than this kid. He likes tuna and salmon. That's all he knows. Anyway, Douzo, like Beacon Street Tavern is a mainstay and a place I frequent regularly.

If I want something on the budget end, I head to Snappy Sushi on Newbury or Ginza in Chinatown (even the sushi cooler at Whole Foods is a good choice) but if I don't mind dropping a little dough, Douzo is the way to go. I have tried them all. Oishii (overpriced and overdone); Haru (it's a chain not worth the prices); Fugakyu (love it but a little gimicky and always a mob scene); O Sushi (like it but there's always a wait and Douzo is better)... I have not yet been to O Ya and am planning this as my birthday meal. I will report back on my findings.

There are a million places one can get sushi in this fair city but if you want the somewhat upscale experience combined with truly top notch sushi, I like Douzo. It's solid. Always fresh, consistent, and they have a great variety of dishes if you want something beyond sushi. We had my favorite starter - sashimi naruto - tuna, yellowtail and salmon rolled in cucumber, and then this AMAZING miso yaki - sea bass with a sweet miso sauce.

Sashimi Naruto - Even Kenji Likes It!

We then had a bunch of amazing maki and some king crab sushi which I just can't resist when it's available. Of special note is the snow mountain - shrimp tempura topped with lots of snow crab and the dragon roll - sweet potato tempura wrapped with eel and some unagi. Love that one. Kenji likes things that taste like Big Macs so we got a volcano roll which is basically like a California roll, toasted with spicy mayo - it's the one on the right and it even looks like fast food.

Big Mac Sushi on the Right

This was a nice meal and Kenji refused to let me pay which was totally absurd so I owe him many shabu-shabu meals at my house. Kenji does shabu like no one else and I can always count on him to polish off those last pieces of beef and bok choy.

EXHIBIT 6: Me & Sam Adams Enjoying a Beer

This was a tasting night at the Sam Adams brewery in JP. If you're a friend of the brewery, you get alerted to these events and if you RSVP within minutes, you get on the list which gets you three samples and something to eat. On this night it was a rather soggy but quite large pretzel. Thank god I had a salad at Cambridge One before we went.

They were showing off their Imperial Series so you could try any of the three beers in this holy trinity. My mother would be horrified if she knew I was talking about beer like that. I had the stout and the double bock and they were exactly what you'd think - really strong!

Artistic Inspiration at Sam Adams

I also had a red ale which they had on tap and is being sold exclusively at a few Boston area bars... places I would never go so I'm glad I tried it. It was good but after having two out of the bottle, one off the tap was nice and probably made it taste better than it really did.

The Crew - Chillin in the Brewery

Cora (far left) gave me her last ticket so I got to sneak one more beer and I'm so glad I did cause it was a special treat. One of the rooms had a few bottles of the Chocolate Bock. Wow. This stuff is liquid dessert. It's really quite amazing though you couldn't do more than a pint and even that seems extreme.

There are two amazing meals missing from my week long binge but they will get their own post on budget dining. Shortly after all this gorging I did a short fast because I felt pretty gross. I was leaving for Amsterdam and didn't want to go over there all full of food and not be able to adequately sample the local fare so I took three days off and ate nothing but fruits and veggies. I was feeling good as new by the time I got to Holland and ready to put back some delicious cheeses, heavy soups and a few beers.

But as I'm sure you're done reading or stopped long ago, I'll pick that up later.