This was Kylie’s first taste of the Netherlands, and taste
we did, enjoying cheese, ham, bread, and stroopwafels (round thin wafer-type
waffles filled with syrup, particularly delectable when rested on the top of a
hot drink so that the syrup starts to become gooey). A local delicacy which we
enjoyed less was pickled herring on bread.
At times we found it a little hard to find some tasty and
authentic restaurants, as the centre of the city seemed to be dominated by
tourist-trap type restaurants, including, oddly, a number of Argentinean
steakhouse restaurants.
Our hotel was near to the Vondelpark, a lovely park full of people
walking, jogging, and of course, biking. One day we took a picnic of ham,
cheese and bread there but sitting still chilled us through and we headed
straight for a coffee in the nearby café.
The Van Gogh museum was being renovated at the time, but we enjoyed
visiting the Rijksmuseum with impressive works by famous Dutch artists Vermeer,
Rembrandt, as well as some Van Gogh.
On our last day we trekked across town in the snow on our
bicycles to a great little market, on the hunt for delicious goodies to take
back to the flatmates. My toes felt like they were about to freeze and drop off
however, so we didn’t hang around long!
