When we arrived late on Friday nowhere near our hotel was open for food! It was only 9:30pm on a Fri night, but we were a bit outside the main city and even the hotel stopped serving after 9:30pm. So we ordered a pizza online... which never arrived! Thankfully we hadn't paid for it. But we waited up, both falling asleep but jumping whenever there was a noise in the hallway in case it was the pizza man! The next morning we both slept in a bit more than we had intended, and by the time we got into the city for breakfast everywhere had stopped serving it... but it was too early for lunch! We saved a lot of money on food in the first 15 hours, because we were unable to buy anything. We eventually found a bakery and then hired bikes.
We rode up to a big square, parked our bikes and walked around. We walked through the Red Light District, which was weird. Prostitutes on display in shop windows. I didn't know where to look! Part of me wanted to take a photo, because the concept is so bizarre to me, but they are people behind that glass so it felt exploitative and wrong to take photos.
Then we had lunch in the park, felafals and beer. Very pleasant in the sunshine (we both got sunburnt!) Rode around a bit, then went to see Anne Frank's house, which was great. I've never quite been able to comprehend the geography of the house, despite having read the book and seen a recent BBC adaptation. Walking through the space made it a lot clearer. And the photos of movie stars that she had stuck on the wall, cut out of old fan magazines, was a reminder of just how young she was when she died.
We had nibbles and wine at a wonderful little restaurant, it was called something like Mama's Cafe (but I don't think that's it). The walls were covered in photos of mothers and the menu was based on the traditional recipes of the owners' mums! Very cute.
Sat night we were totally lame and just had a drink in the hotel. We got the giggles though because I was eating some nuts out of a bowl on a table in the bar, and Fliss pointed out that the other tables didn't have nuts so someone must have paid for them. We sat at that table anyway and continued to eat someone else's nuts, bursting into laughter whenever someone walked past or looked at us because we were convinced they were about to ask why we were stealing their food.
The next day we rode around again trying to find somewhere for breakfast. Where the previous day we had been too late, locals told us on Sunday we were too early - it was 10am! A local woman asked if we needed help and she rode us to a lovely coffee shop on a canal nearby (in the traditional sense, not an Amsterdam "coffee shop"...!) The only food they had was this cold apple pie thing, so we had that for breakfast. Not sure why this was such a weird trip food-wise!
After returning the bikes we went on a very pleasant canal bus ride. I then left my jacket on the boat. And I lost my sunglasses. Why - WHY??
Then our only normal meal, tapas at a lovely restaurant, and then home. The flight is only 45 mins! Shorter than Melb-Adelaide! It seems to ridiculous.
Anyway, that was our trip. I'll try to write more on the weekend about the rest of this week!
xxx
PS: When we got home, Fliss discovered an email from the online pizza company saying they had closed down! Probably should remove their website then...!
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