They All Went Down to AmsterDAM

We went to Amsterdam over the weekend for a pre-birthday celebration. That is one cool place with the architecture and canals, plus the transportation system (bike lanes, buses, trams) is awesomely easy and convenient - no one drives. HEAVEN! Dave even said he would go there again even if there wasn't a red-light district and a very liberal drug use policies. Uhm OK.

We didn't want to over schedule our weekend, especially since we knew we would be back again. The flights are really cheap and convenient from London. So we went to the Van Gogh museum, the obligatory-but-cheezy sex museum (scary), and the resistance museum, but otherwise we generally wandered around between bars and cafes and checked out the city. There is some great people watching and beer drinking! However, our wandering was severely hampered by RAIN and generally crappy winterishly freezing conditions. The rain also meant that the museums were so freaking crowded, I could barely deal.

Everyone was very nice, tall and blonde, and spoke English; so much for those 8 words of Dutch I learned. That is one tough language, thank you is Alstublieft - if that gives you an indication of the difficulty of that language for English speakers. It is a bit like German I suppose but sounds to me like Swedish, but what the hell do I know about Swedish. It isinteresting to hear pretty much any language spoken by tall blondes though:)

We stayed at The Collector because they had awesome reviews on TripAdvisor.com (my travel bible). The owner (Karel) was so cool, and he has chickens for fresh eggs - and you all know my egg obsession. The only "problem" was that the hotel is a bit out of the city center, which meant a lot of walking in the rain for us. We could have just learned about the buses and trams, which are everywhere and easy to use, but nah.......we just walked and tortured ourselves.

We had excellent dinners at Brasserie Vlamming (vaguely Belgian) and Envy (we could have been in SF at that place but the wine was cheaper). Thanks friends for the restaurant recommendations!

In summary, a lovely trip had by all. We will for sure be back in the fall, and hopefully the weather will be better!

OK remember that annoying Amsterdam song from girl scouts and Camp Ondessonk, where you could say "DAM" really loud and it was hilarious. JG and AM help me out here. We used to sing it in the car on drives, I guess that was before DVD players in cars for kids:

There were three jolly fishermen, fishermen

There were three jolly fishermen, fishermen

Fisher, fisher, men men men

Fisher, fisher, men men men

There were three jolly fishermen, fishermen

The first one's name was Isaac-- I, I, sic sic sic

The second one's name was Jacob-- Jay, ay, cup cup cup

The third one's name was Abraham-- Abra, abra, ham ham ham

They all went down to Amster-ssh-- Amster, amster, ssh ssh ssh

I must not say that naughty word-- naughty, naughty, word word word

I'm gonna say it anyhow-- any, any, how how how

They all went down to Amster-DAM-- Amster, amster, DAM DAM DAM