8th Nov - Amsterdam

Over the last few days, we've explored several major museums by buying the Museum Card (30Euro each) which has been great value. It's valid for a year in all National or State run museums in Holland, so we can use it in Amsterdam as well as the regional towns we're travelling to.

Typical Amsterdam canal


Amsterdam canal bridge

We've already seen the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt's House, Willet-Holhuysten House including 18th & 19thC dress collection, the Dutch Historical and Jewish Historical museums.

Delft china violin at Historic museum


Rembrandt house


Tam at Rembrandt's easel


Willem Holthuysen Museum (1650 canal house)

We explored several flea markets as well, picking up a great new necklace for me in the shape of a tulip. Tulips are one of my top five flowers as my friends know. I even had a birthday at the Tesslaar's Tulip Farm in the Dandenongs in Victoria several years back.

Tams new necklace

We've also stopped in many art galleries and Mark has made his 'major' purchase of the trip. It's a collage by Chris Burns. For those of you following the blog regularly, you'll know that Mark is planning to pick up a small art piece in every city as a reminder and one major piece.

We've also explored the food - cooking at home several times using organic meat from our local butcher as well as trying Indonesian rijstoffel (a Dutch Indes speciality), gorgeous chocolates from Puccini called 'bomboni' and local beers.

We also had a lovely lunch today with Jenny. We had been trying to coordinate our houseswap with Jenny originally but it didn't work out at the time. She recommended a lovely place, Cafe de Jaren which was overlooking one of the canals and we had a traditional Broodje. I chose a cornbread roll with warm goats chesse, honey and thyme. It was divine.

Tomorrow night we go for our regular 'special meal' at a Michelin-starred restuarant called simply Sichuan Food and the speciality, not surprisingly is Chinese.

Throughout the whole week so far, we've walked for absolutely hours and hours each day (we even hired a canal bike for an hour). We're about 35 mins walk from the centre although there are trams, we wont be checking them out until tomorrow.


Mark on the canal bike

Entertainment wise, we've been to Winston's International to see 3 singer songwriters - one from Russia, one from Australia and one from America. The Russian was simply awful, the Australian quite strong and the American was fabulous. It was a great night overall for only 5 Euro each, although there was some funny business going on downstairs. It costs me 50 cents every time I used the toilet, however I could have bought a toilet membership for the night for only 1.50 Euro (unlimited use). Whilst it is common to have to pay for toilets in public around Europe, you never have to pay when you have already entered a restaurant or place that you are going to spend money at, so I was quite affronted. I underfortunately had to 'donate' 1 Euro. (I tried not to, believe me).

We also live near a place called OT301 which is a semi-famous squat that is also an art project. There we saw a Circus extravaganza on Sunday afternoon which included a violinist, clowns, gymnasts, breakdancers, traditional dancers from the Carribean, a girl doing poses on a long ribbon from the ceiling, Tomorrow we're back there for an alternative dance show and there are a few other events happening there which we may also attend whilst in Amsterdam, Most of the events only cost 4-5 Euro so it's very reasonable entertainment.

Tomorrow we head out on our first side trip from Amsterdam, more in a few days time.