Amsterdam

[Neville Chamberlain]

Go to a tulip dressed as a windmill on drugs.

[a duncandisorderly]

watch out for the fucking scooters & the fucking trams. they neither of them take any fucking prisoners.
lots of shoe shops. lots of places where you can buy life-size plastic arm/fist dildoes.
museums, galleries, pancakes, music venues.
I think the arse has gone out of the dope caf business, but you can still get a decent blowie, people tell me.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

you can still get a decent blowie, people tell me.

Danger Man lives in Amsterdam?

_{# dooh-dah, dooh-dah#}

[philanselmo]

Body World exhibition on Damrak 66.

Will blow yer mind.

[Blinder Data]

DON'T hire a bike. You're basically fucking up thousands of people's commutes. At least that's how I felt when I was crashing about on mine. A much more stressful experience than the "fun tourist activity" some would have you believe.

[Paul Calf]

Yeah, don't hire a bike unless you know what you're doing. If you've never ridden a bike in Amsterdam, you definitely don't know what you're doing.

[Calistan]

Well, that was a decent holiday. I won't use the word 'enjoyable' because there was too much avoiding bikes, heat and rushing around, but better than doing nothing it must be said. First of all, lovely city with lots of nice canals and buildings obviously. Then you get to the busier parts and it's fucking nuts. This was my first time going on holiday in June and lordy it'll hopefully be the last time. I'm not cut out for 30 degrees heat or countless eejits blocking bridges by taking selfies the vain selfish cunts. I imagine the crowds are a bit more tolerable in winter so I'd definitely come back some October or November in a few years time. Anyway, all that annoying stuff was offset by a lot of lovely Dutch food, Dutch beer, museums and some amazing bars.

Didn't do any weed though. Or hookers. Fucked it.

I started to write about my trip in tedious detail. Here it is:

Day one. Our flight was slightly delayed due to too much traffic at Amsterdam airport so we were stuck in the airplane an extra half an hour which wasn't too much fun. Luckily, I found a massive article to read - a tough 70-minute read about a recent murder in Ireland. Not the most cheerful way to begin a holiday but it passed the time sufficiently. Arrived at the airport, collected our travel passes and got on a train to the Duivendrecht region where our AirBnb was located. That was a really nice peaceful area scattered with livestock. AirBnB host was a nice middle-aged woman who showed us to our room on the third floor which was decent enough and had a great balcony. We had a wee rest here for a bit and plotted our course of action for the evening. Since it is closed at weekends we decided to see Museum Vrolik before our pre-booked canal tour at 7pm. At this stage we were peckish though so we chose a North African restaurant not too far from the museum. Arrived and the bloody place was shut though, the opening times on google weren't right. We decided to power through and go to the museum first and just find food somewhere in the city centre.

Museum Vrolik is dedicated to human and animal anatomical deformities, featuring a lot of mutated babies in big jars, so obviously the first port of call for many tourists when they arrive into Amsterdam. A lot of it is quite stark as you'd imagine - jars of cyclops babies, Siamese twins, etc. Equal amounts interesting and discomforting. David Lynch would fucking cream himself here. Plenty of mad animal skeletons and bodies too but I got my fill of that in the Grant Museum of Zoology in London. After an hour or so here I was getting very hungry so we hopped on a train into the city centre. We had no time for restaurants so my girlfriend had bookmarked some street food to try out, the famous raw herring sandwich. Basically the fish, some pickles and onion in a roll. Lovely stuff. We had twenty minutes before the tour started so we rushed to an ice cream place for some unreal ice cream between wafers before rushing back towards the meet-up area for the canal tour. Apparently we rushed through the red light district during all this but I didn't actually notice! Those women were in the nip! The canal tour is organised by a company called Those Dam Boat Guys who encouraged that you bring drink and snacks on board. We quickly checked out the off licence right beside the meet-up spot. It was a narrow building with bottles stocked everywhere so the clerk kept telling me to be mindful of my rucksack even though I was bloody mindful. He showed me what discounts canal tour buyers were entitled to and because the beer choice was absolutely dreadful I asked if we could get some cider, just to be polite. Got to the desk and the bottle was fifteen fecking euro. I bought it, again to be polite. I don't even drink cider. After a couple of minutes raging and complaining to my girlfriend it was time for the tour.

Some Aussie man was conducting the tour and from the get go it was quite intense. Not sure if he was coked up or if this is just typical Australian fare but he just kept talking and talking as if he'd drop dead if he were to stop. In fairness, he was very informative and his rehearsed jokes were occasionally funny. He also stroked my ego a bit when he lauded my pronunciation of Van Gogh. I relaxed a bit more towards the end and as it turned out, the cider was quite nice. It was pretty cool once he exited the canals and entered the actual river itself, some lovely scenery. Near the end there were a few lulls where no one had any questions so out of curiosity I asked if he'd ever had any mishaps on the boat. He said he'd one or two but didn't want to talk about them (prick) but that the drinking often had people dying to stop for a piss. On cue, one of the English lads put up his hand and said he urgently needed to relieve himself. The guide steered us to a dock with a public urinal and joked that we would all film the English man there. English man no longer wanted to pee there. So the guide just took us to the final destination and your man hopped off the boat, stumbled over two locals and ran off to find a pub. Quite comical. Overall the canal tour was fun albeit a bit too intense for my liking.

We were a bit drained after all this (and getting only five hours sleep the previous night) so my girlfriend asked me to take us to a pub. I had bookmarked several and the nearest was Het Papeneiland. It's picturesque from the outside and the inside was lovely too. You imagine it hasn't changed much since its opening in the 16th century and it's all the better for it. It's quite a cramped spot - I'd say you could fit fifty or sixty people max but luckily for us the upstairs section was empty save a girl giving another girl English lessons and the stag's head that looked out from one of the walls. Went for the t'IJ dubbel, it was glorious. We also ordered the dutch platter - a heavenly feast of cheese, pickled onions, sausage, ham, some sort of raw meat, pate, pickles and a large dollop of mustard. Google reviews mentioned their apple tart too so we got one to share and it was damn good. We spent over an hour here just relaxing. The bar gets huge bonus points for not playing any music whatsoever, so it's a proper haven from the hustle and bustle outside. On the way out the barman gave us a postcard of the place and I felt justified leaving him a two or three euro tip. I think we arrived home around eleven and I had one of the best sleeps of my life.

Our accommodation had a balcony so we made use of that by having breakfast there in the sun.  We had tickets booked for the Van Gogh Museum at 11am so we were to take the bus there. Left the house and arrived at the bus stop only to realise I'd forgotten my travel card so I had a sprint back to the house, up the two flights of stairs and retrieve it before sprinting back, heroically getting back just in time for the bus. We took a stroll through Vondelpark on the way and it was buzzing with people and cyclists. The museum was excellent - it had scores of old Vincent's paintings and the audio guide did a great job in explaining his works and the context in which they were painted. I'd recently watched At Eternity's Gate so was a bit disappointed the museum didn't offer any time to the different theories surrounding Van Gogh's death but I guess that's to be expected. In all we happily spent a good two hours wandering about and then a good half an hour buying postcards and other tat from the giftstore (I considered buying a Sunflowers tea towel for my mother but instead plumped for a magnet, saving me a cool five euro).

Next up a trip to the Foodhallen, a massive indoor market place with a plethora of stalls selling different specialities. I went for some Spanish stewed beef with potatoes dish which hit the spot nicely while my girlfriend chose something from the Chinese stall. Loved that there were a couple of bars too so I enjoyed a lovely Bock beer to wash down my grub. My girlfriend identified for desert a place that sold waffles thirty minutes walk away so we started waddling in that direction. It was bloody hot at this stage and I was struggling. We had a fairly stupid misunderstanding over this that led to a sour hour or so of mutual resentment. I thought we were going to sit down and eat waffles as in waffles and ice cream but it turned out to be a shop that sold stroopwafels and I only realised this after she'd ordered for herself and came out a little pissed off that I didn't get anything. I was too tired to climb the crazy spiral staircase and didn't really want any stroopwafel anyway. Oh well.

Next up was some souvenir shop where I got pissed myself at the length of time I had to queue for the tatty windmill figurine I wanted to buy. That was down to another tourist skipping the queue in front of me and then the cashier delicately giftwrapping my windmill only to realise she'd forgotten to scan the bloody thing so she had to do everything again. Next up was Pathé Tuschinski, an art deco cinema created by a Polishman of the same name who was later murdered at Auschwitz. It's definitely the most beautiful cinema I've seen. We had a little snoop inside too and it was glorious. After this we doddled over to the Portuguese synogogue which was unfortunately closed so we decided to walk out to the Brewery 't IJ whose fine beers we had already sampled the previous night.

The brewery is situated beside Amsterdam's biggest windmill, so not too hard to find. It was about 7.30pm on a sunny Saturday evening so naturally the place was packed. I ordered a nice amber ale while I can't remember what my girlfriend got. We only had one each because the brewery was to close up soon so we hopped on a tram to Damme square and found Wynand Fockink, a 17th-century tasting room where we would satisfy our urge to sample Jenever, the Dutch gin. Another small place, we found our way to the back of the queue and waited patiently our turn. One of the barmen revelled in his work as he graciously talked his customers through the different jenevers and asked them about their lives. Sadly we were served by his grumpy sidekick but he humoured my lack of gin knowledge and gave us three samples of what we could get: a mild jenever, a stronger one, or a smokey one. He reminded us that the correct way to take the first sip of jenever was to bend over and drink without touching the glass. I was relieved I didn't fuck this up being the bumbling bastard that I usually am. We paid and finished up our drinks, a worthwhile stop. Our spirits suitably elevated, we ambled the short distance to 't Aepjen, another ancient brown café. Apparently it's one of the few remaining wooden buildings in all of Amsterdam and its name, 'In the Monkeys', comes from the old tale that sailors of the Dutch East India company used to pay for their drinks with monkeys brought back from their travels. Accordingly, every nook and cranny is filled with monkey ornaments and posters, the most noteworthy a large wooden sculpture of three monkeys perched on a branch. Being the hairiest man in Europe I felt right at home. I asked the barman for good local beers he had and he told me he had one on tap he brewed himself, a brown ale. On further interrogation it turned out Gulpener was behind the beer but it was too late, I had already paid up and had to make do with what sadly turned out to be a fairly bland beer. Still, it's more than a nice place to sup a beer and we had a decent time here even with a swarm of tipsy English women who came in and sat beside us.

Normally, I'm all for doing pub crawls on my travels to try the local beers and find cool bars but usually this ambition is foiled by my girlfriend's lightweightedness. Surprisingly, she wanted one more bar so we could try some bitterballen, the Dutch meatballs. I was happy to nominate one of Shoulder's recommended bars De Pilsener Club (Engelse Reet - the 'English Arse'). We found it down some quiet alleyway with a smattering of people sat outside enjoying the nice coolness of the evening. Inside, it was another excellent brown bar. (One of the nice pecularities of the place is that it has no actual bar inside, you scan the blackboard and the barman takes your order and fetches the drinks from another room.) Surprisingly, there was only one man inside besides the barman, an older man who was probably a regular. I was fairly tipsy at this stage so can't remember for certain what I ordered but I think it was a tripel from La Trappe. We ordered some meatballs as a snack and while my girlfriend went to use the bathroom I sneakily put in an order for some cheese too. The combination of big chunks of cheese and trappist beer never fails to satisfy me and this was no exception. Some pickled onions and a great dollop of mustard completed the feast. After finishing up I went to pay and piss and managed to get talking to the barman. I wanted to know why it was called the English arse and he explained there was an English church nearby and that the street is narrow and like a crack. Upon finding out I was Irish he gave me a bicycle seat cover with Engelse Reet written on it, saying I could put it on my bike next time Ireland were playing England in the rugby. I told him I didn't have a bike but could wear it as a hat. He chortled a bit and I was convinced he was my best friend but I badly needed to pee and he had things to do.

We completed our small pub crawl in fine fashion with another tiny bar not too far away called Cafe De Dokter. I believe it's the smallest bar I've ever visted and also the dustiest. It was also surprsingly quiet with just two bar ladies and a couple of their friends for company. Definitely the most atmospheric of the pubs we visited with all the medical accouterments scattered about, the dim candlelight and the jazz being played. Can't quite remember what I drank or how it tasted but I have a sneaky suspicion after checking out their website it was a blonde beer from Limburg. We were having a great night and I was even happier that I managed to go to the toilet via the metal staircase without falling and clonking myself. After Dokter, we were happy to call it quits (well, I wanted to check out Hoppe but I accepted that we were probably shitfaced enough) and go home. After a short ride on the train and a fun stagger to the house we quietly let ourselves in. It being 1am and our host probably fast asleep there was complete darkness in the house so I cautiously led the way up the narrow staircase, opening the door to the landing of our bedroom. At least that's what I thought - instead it must have been her bedroom because we were greeted with a confused "hello???" from someone which stopped me dead in my tracks. I quickly apologised and closed the door and scurried up to our actual bedroom full of shame and pent up piss. Fuck.

There was a third day but I've a headache so might update later if I can be arsed. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

[Danger Man]

lovely Dutch food

WHAT????

[Paul Calf]

AKA "Indonesian food".

[Neville Chamberlain]

AirBnB host was a nice middle-aged woman who showed us to our room on the third floor which was decent enough and had a great balcony. We had a wee

I always like to have a wee when I arrive in new accommodation, too!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Sounds ace. Glad to be of assistance.

[Dex Sawash]

WHAT????

1. Stroopwafel

2.

[seepage]

Had a ragu with some nutella bunged in which was very good.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Going for Surinamese, Indonesian food or from whatever random other ex-Dutch colony is a great way of eating affordably in Amsterdam.

Otherwise its 15+ euro mains or Fished Out Canal Turds in Mystery Gravy from whatever canteen serving remnants of working class life remain.