Flaneur Through Amsterdam

I’ve been procrastinating making this post but, with the upcoming trip with my mom, I wanted to look back on when she became my favorite travel partner. 

We went to Amsterdam as part of our group trip to England. Traveling with such a big group is complicated so we spent most of our time in Amsterdam by ourselves. 

On our first day there I wanted to go to Dutch Resistance Museum. It’s the best museum I’ve ever been to, definitely go if you’re ever able to. It makes you think differently about the city. 

On our way back to where we were staying, we started hearing music. We didn’t know where it was coming from until we turned the corner on westermarkt and saw the commotion. 

It was magical. I’ve never been so excited about the unexpected. The festival, which I later found out was the biggest classical music festival in Europe, was just starting with some local openers. I’ve never heard Spanish in a dutch accent but whenever I hear Despacito I think of that feeling. We only heard a few minutes of the music because we had a canal tour scheduled but I’ll never forget it.

The next day we went exploring more, just walking around the city is one of the best things to do. It’s so walkable, the trams are easy to navigate, and there is so much to see. The dutch have an open culture that extends to their windows. There are a lot of houses that have displays for people to see.

We also explored Vondelpark, it’s beautiful with great people watching. We talked to a lady who had the cutest dachshund puppies while she was tending to the rose garden.

We didn’t stop for lunch and had plans for dinner but there was a place we had to eat at before leaving, so we had a pre-dinner dessert. 

Van Kerkwijk is a small cafe with a menu that changes daily, which is why we couldn’t have dinner there. It was slow and our waitress was actually the owner she talked with us for a while and showed us pictures of her grandchild. The pear cake she recommended was amazing. I’m definitely going back someday.

We had quite a few conversations with locals. Verduin is a very dutch name and a great ice breaker. We even found out one of our relative’s birthplace got swallowed back up by the sea. I want to go back to explore more of our roots. When I go back I also want to get Van Stapele cookies. We saw the store on our way back from the cafe but there was a line out the door and we were late for dinner.

We went to Foodhallen for dinner. It’s a food court with options for everyone. I stuck with dutch having bitterballen, fried balls of meat. There are lots of choices though; pizza, burgers, noodles, sushi, dim sum, and falafel. When we went they had ice bubble waffle cones.

On this trip, My mom and I discovered we have similar traveling tastes, that I liked to plan, and she liked following my lead. I can’t wait to see what she thinks of the trip I have planned for us.

I’ll keep you posted!