Friday 20 April 2018

After a very short flight from Gatwick, we landed in Amsterdam at 6.30pm.

We were getting a bus from the airport into the city (as we aren’t staying near the train station. A train to the city would have been easier and quicker). And contrary to what I read online, you cannot buy a bus ticket on a bus. Handily, there were no ticket machines in sight. So I quickly had to buy two tickets online and managed to do that before the bus arrived.

It took just over half an hour to drive into the city. And we got off near the Museumplein area. We were staying in a nice B&B near to here, in a townhouse.

Our room was nice – with a flower-filled balcony.

After dropping our bags, we headed back out for a walk.

It was now 8pm and very much dinner time. There was a vegan seaweed (but marketed as ‘weed’) based-food cafe nearby. The food was good. But we rather over-ordered! For dessert we had a tompousse – which is apparently a traditional Dutch dessert – but just like a cream slice.

After dinner, we had a wander around a supermarket! Always fun.

Saturday 21 April 2018

We had breakfast in our room. They gave me tomatoes, hummus, bread and fruit. It was far too much food. But was good – and pretty in our little seating area by the balcony!

I’ve been to Amsterdam before and didn’t have any real plans to go anywhere in particular. The plan for the day was just to wander around. And that’s what we did.

Past lots of canals. Townhouses. Bikes – coming at you from every angle. And Saturday markets selling everything.

Ekoplaza is an organic supermarket (similar to whole foods / planet organic) and had lots of cool vegan stuff. In particular vegan stroopwaffles! Exciting!

For lunch, we bought a take away salad from SLA, but ended up eating it later, sitting outside in the sun.

Some areas were packed full of people. Probably because it was a really nice sunny day.

We walked in a large loop around the city, up through the fancy area of Jordaan. Through the old city. And down the red-light district, full of ‘coffeeshops’ (places to smoke weed) and the red doorways. Before heading back to our room.

We got back to our room about 5pm, for a rest before heading out for dinner.

We had spotted a lot of Indonesian restaurants around. Indonesia used to be colonised by Dutch people and apparently lots of Indonesians moved to the Netherlands. There was a restaurant very close to us, so we headed there.

There was no menu. It was just a set-menu, with a choice of vegetarian or meat.

Obviously we got vegetarian – which was entirely vegan except for one dish (which I didn’t eat). We had sate tempeh, spicy tempeh, curried green beans, corn cakes, spicy potato, gado-gado (vegetables in peanut sauce). And fried bananas for dessert! It was all good.