I said goodbye to Paris once again for my two-week break and
headed off to Amsterdam with Jake, where he is studying. It’s hard for me to
really fall in love with cities- I tend to be devoted to certain ones, such as
Philadelphia and Paris. Barcelona was great for a vacation, but Amsterdam I
fell in love with again. It claims to have more canals than Venice, and the
main mode of transportation is by bike.
Evelyn and my sweet modes of transportation
It is also full of these “gingerbread houses” (my word for
them), houses that were all brick with white lining. Some of them were leaning
forward so much I though they would fall right in the canal. It turns out in
the Netherlands and Belgium when you do construction, you cannot touch the
original façade of the house.
Typical construction site
I was also amazed to discover that the coffee was better in
Amsterdam, and there were more options for getting it. In Paris, you usually
have to go to a sit down brasserie to get a good cup of coffee, and you usually
sit there for a long time. I missed my usual cafes where I could get a cup of
coffee, sit for a bit, and then leave whenever I wanted to. Amsterdam had
plenty of those, with delicious coffee as well.
I can also now officially say that I had a nice walk through Haarlem, because the original Haarlem is right outside of Amsterdam (yes, New York is essentially New Amsterdam). And I must say, while I have never been to the New York Harlem, I think this one was much nicer.
Haarlem looking good
Evelyn came up to visit for two days, where we went to Anne
Frank’s house and biked around the city for a bit. Amsterdam’s dinners are
(shockingly) more expensive than Paris’s, so we found a random restaurant and
ordered pasta (yes we know, not typical Dutch food. Sorry). Jake is a jazz
musician, so at night we went to a jazz gig in a really cool bar overlooking
the water. The last few days were spent primarily just biking around the city,
going to a few more jazz gigs, and eating lots of cheese. I love French cheese,
but the Dutch people have good cheese too. And they let you taste test it in
the store.
I then headed down to Antwerp (or Antwerpen which is its
proper Dutch name) by myself since Jake was back in school, and met up with
Evelyn again since it is her home city. We went to this amazing gourmet burger
place for lunch called “Mint”, where I also had fantastic speculouse coffee, as
seen below:
Speculouse is a type of ginger snap cookie, which when in coffee is also amazing.
We also walked around Antwerp along the riverside for a
while, and also went up in a museum to get a panorama view of the city. Antwerp
also has lots of old homes, and is just as pretty if not prettier than
Amsterdam. We went to a chocolate bar, since Belgium is famous for its
chocolate, that had some of the best chocolate fondue I have ever tasted.
Chocolate bar or heaven?
After a super fun train ride to Brugge that was only
supposed to take an hour and took two hours instead (no idea why), I got to
Brugge late at night and saw from my bus window that it looked like a pretty
city. I met some other girls in the hostel and we went around Brugge the next
day where we visited the fries museum and the chocolate museum. Unfortunately,
no free samples :( However we did get some delicious Belgian waffles after, and then I headed to
Brussels.
Old houses in Brugge
If Paris and Washington D.C got together and had a baby, it
would be Brussels. Brussels was nice, but I found
there wasn’t too much to do there, sorry to anyone who might love it! However, I did enjoy some nice Belgian beer with some girls
I met in the hostel at a typical Brussels bar, and then had some more waffles
and fries the next day for lunch before I left (now that I am back in Paris, I
will eat healthy again). I then finally headed home to Paris, and it was soo
nice finally returning “home” :)
Bonne Soiree, and Happy Election Day USA!
Feldy
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