A picture is worth a thousand words…
…and a plane ticket to Europe. In the last few months as I settled into a new home in Atlanta, GA, I’ve often looked nostalgically at the thousands of photos I took during a 4.5 month-long cruise contract this past summer. The turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the whimsical canals of Venice, resident llamas in Geiranger, Norway…I love my Georgian sanctuary, but I miss traveling. I even miss - to a certain extent - the stress of traveling. With the pandemic in the United States reaching new peaks and the collective sense of cabin fever mounting, I felt like going through and sharing some of my photos and experiences from a time when traveling was my job! It’ll be my little way of going back to Europe and getting out of my apartment virtually this summer, and hopefully it could scratch a similar itch for you.
Our first stop after a 6-hour red-eye from New York City was Amsterdam. Bleary-eyed and illiterate in Dutch, we trudged through the airport with 4.5 months’ worth of luggage and were eventually whisked off to our hotel for the evening. Tomorrow we’d board our home for the summer: Holland America Line’s Ms. Nieuw Statendam, their newest ship promising a summer of beautiful travel memories for everyone onboard, including us! That also meant that this was our only full day to explore Amsterdam; the next nine days we had left in Amsterdam would only be a few hours long and dispersed throughout the summer months.
None of us had been to Amsterdam before, so we consulted a Googled list of places to go. Our Uber dropped us off at the Foodhallen, where we ironically got Thai food. It’s difficult to imagine such a packed venue as Foodhallen now, with social distancing measures in place and the fear associated with large groups of people. In that pack of people, however, we spotted a mutual friend and enjoyed an unexpected reunion over our spring rolls and noodles.
The next stop was the Albert Cuyp food market, where we bought our first Amsterdam tote bags and ate our first stroopwafels. There was a promising line-up for a food stand making fresh ones, the caramel being slathered onto each thin biscuit the size of our faces, so we waited with glowing anticipation. The verdict? They were only okay. When made that fast, the caramel-to-biscuit ratio isn’t satisfying, and you couldn’t feel the tug of the gooey caramel center the way you could with carefully crafted ones.
The disappointment was fleeting as we took a stunning walking tour through Amsterdam en route to the Red Light District, wanting to stop by every canal to take a picture. There was a certain quality of light that hit Amsterdam in the early evening that made the water under the canals sparkle like jewels. Every building was art, some leaning on the shoulders of its neighbors and others straight as an arrow. Some were adorned with carefully arranged florals and inside the open windows, beautifully decorated homes peeked through. On the water, riverboats glided lazily along and sidewalks wore vintage bicycles like jewelry. Amsterdam was a dream, an alternate reality where everything was beautiful and the air smelled like weed.
We frequented cozy artisanal coffee shops every step of the way as we combated our jet-lag valiantly. At one point, we thought we’d lose one of our members to sleep deprivation, but a quick cup of coffee got him on his feet again. Nearing the end of our battle with consciousness, we gorged ourselves on Chipsy King fries and bought dinner from a herring stand near Chinatown. Amsterdam’s charm had tired us out by that point, and we admitted defeat to staying up all night in the city.
Subsequent adventures in Amsterdam included a harrowing bike ride through the city, where my lack of finesse on a bike and lack of experience as a biker in traffic came to bite me in the butt. I distinctly remember a local calling towards me: “Look first, then bike!” Common sense to her, simple and effective advice to me. The Van Gogh Museum was a work of art displaying his works of art, and I devoted an entire afternoon to drinking in each painting. The Rijskmuseum I found slightly less captivating, but the beauty in the museum architecture itself was charming. Chips krakow - a mixture of mayo and curry sauce over fries - was a decadent lunch one day, and Sea Palace - the floating Chinese dim sum restaurant - satisfied my parents’ craving for Asian food another day. Taking the wrong ferry to NSDM resulted in a sweaty walking adventure of Overhoeks before reaching the original destination, A’DAM Lookout. Walking by the bloemenmarkt became my usual path through the city, and stopping into Tony’s Chocolonely stores and cheese shops for samples also became a frequent stop for every Amsterdam trip.
Even now, I can navigate Amsterdam in my mind. We spent so much time exploring on foot, taking in each street and each canal with care. Hopefully there will be another day spent in Amsterdam so I can get another stroopwafel from Melly’s (in my opinion, better than van Wonderen!)
