Biking, Beer and Bitterballen

On our second day here, I went with our site host to find the showers (I won't get into why...) on our bikes. My bike is a green "fixie" - there are no hand brakes, you pedal backwards to stop. He showed me how to lock and unlock the bike, and I followed him to a spa a "two minute ride away" - for the sweating I did, we rode all the way to Belgium (it was more like 10 minutes). It was closed for renovations on the days we're here. So we rode to another one. It was closed too, but only because the Dutch, apparently, don't open anything in this city until at least 10 am. They must be related to the French ;-)

Biking here is not for the faint of heart...or any nubes. I never bike and it's questionable whether I should have. You have to be concerned with your speed, cars, motorized scooters, people walking, cyclists in giant sightseeing groups, cyclists on their phones (don't text and bike should be a bumper sticker here), trams, brick roads that shake you violently when you ride over them, construction blocks, paths that suddenly disappear, bike traffic lights, idiot tourists who don't recognize that the sidewalk and bike paths aren't the same thing. Basically, it's mostly a stressful nightmare the first day. And your arse is killing you because no one invested in the seat on your bike, and your sit bones decry the day you decided not to just walk.

Nutella and Banana Panekoeken

Canal de Panekoeken in the Jordaan neighborhood

I dropped off my bike, still not having showered, and walked a few canals over to The Pancake Bakery, famous for the dutch pancake, the Pannenkoeken. Savory or sweet, these thick, eggy crepe-like pancakes are the best way to start my culinary trip. I had mine with banana and Nutella, alongside a glass of fresh squeezed OJ. They gave me a little coffee-flavored candy with my bill, and I wandered back home to sleep my meal off. FIVE hours later, I woke up. Finally recovered from my jet lag and bitter that sleep had "wasted" my vacation time (anyone who knows me knows this is just the way I think - don't judge), I jumped on my bike and headed to the edge of town where the Central Library sits. The inside is very modern, reminiscent of an Ikea, including lights that look like the lava in lava lamps. I went up the 6 levels to the terrace and read my book at a table while I watched the weather debate itself about what it would do next - rain and sun trade on and off throughout the day.

Amsterdam Centraal Station is next, and I'm here for one reason - to get food out of the vending machines. I read you can get hot food from these sweet looking vending machine walls, and after getting change and debating what to get for nearly 15 minutes, I settled on whatever the thing was second from the right. It was long and rounded like a bratwurst shape, very crispy on the outside, and very mushy and brown on the inside (like baby food consistency). I couldn't tell if it was meat, or vegetable, or...mineral? I still don't know. They had hamburgers too, but what's the fun in that?!

After I found my bike (a seriously difficult task, I can assure you) among the sea of locked and abandoned bikes at the station, I went back to the flat to meet Derek, who was done with his conference. We took our bikes on the Rick Steves walking tour, which I totally messed up at some point along the way, but not before we stopped to eat the infamous Flemmish fries with mayo that is a requirement of your visit (I despise mayonnaise, but I'll tolerate spicy mayo. It is my opinion that if you visit a place and their quintessential local treat is something you don't think you'll like that you eat it anyway, unless you're straight allergic). We got them at Maoz Vegetarian on Damrak street next to the super touristy "Manneken pis" fry joint (that name needs to stay where it belongs, in Brussels). The pigeons are feisty there. You eat the fries with a forked wooden dowel.

Then we drooled all over the floors in the Cheese Inn, a crazy cheese shop with a full size cow figure and wheels of cheese the size of tires lining the walls. We had enough samples to have eaten a wheel ourselves (they had a lavender flavored cheese that was a bold blue color - my mind didn't know how to reconcile this experience), then followed the tour south, finally landing at Reynders where we grabbed two 8%+ alcohol beers and Bitterballen, a "meatball" with the same consistency as my treat from the train station, but so hot that it burned the roof of my mouth. They were good!

Canal shot while riding off the bitterballen

We finished our day off at Trattoria Caprese, where a young gentleman from Italy took our order, and both of us enjoyed our Italian risotto and pasta until we couldn't stay awake any longer.