Day 7 - Exploring Amsterdam

It’s Kara starting out again today. 

One of the ways we like to learn about a city is through its food. Fun fact, we’ve had at least two other food tours booked together, and we’ve had to cancel both of them due to delays and other issues. So, gratefully, we got up this morning to gorgeous warm weather with full sunshine and went to meet our tour guide, Roman, at 10am. (Fun Fact: It rains 266 days out of the year here, so the fact we got two beautiful days back to back is a little out of the ordinary.)

We decided to try the trams that run through the city as it was a bit of a walk to the meet up point. Time wise it would have been basically equal to have just walked and by the end of the day, that’s what we did. The trams here are clean and they seem to run efficiently. Just like in London, we were supposed to be able to use our phones to tap on and tap off. Unfortunately, we both had issues - me in tapping on the first time and Gayle in tapping off the first ride. It did work for us on our second trip of the day, but by the time we had a third option to ride the tram, we skipped and just walked. 

Gayle: Unlike the London busses, here you have to tap on and off the trams. Our Apple wallets seemed to require the Face ID and double tap on the side of the phone each time, and neither the driver nor any passengers had patience for us. 

Kara: After dealing with the trams, we made it to our meet up point outside of Asian Kitchen near Bloemenmarkt. We met our fellow tour guests as well as our guide, Roman. Roman took a moment to greet each of us, learned our names, did the typical asking about allergies, and then started the tour. 

Cheese

We walked along the street by Bloemenmarkt. This is a floating flower market that operates around the year. It’s mostly touristy stuff but I did take my first photo of beautiful tulips. We headed to The Cheese Museum which is a one room “museum” with a short film about how cheese is made in the Netherlands - and especially for this shop - which is Henri Willig Cheese Shop.

After watching the video, we went downstairs to the cheese shop where the associate had about 15 different cheese for us to try. Gouda and Eden are the two cheeses made in the Netherlands and most - and possibly all - of these were Gouda. There were asparagus, garlic, pesto, onion, beer, and many other flavors. They also had some gold ribbon cheeses they have won awards with. The cheeses were incredibly delicious and so much better than what I feel like American Gouda is. Fun fact, the average amount of cheese consumed by a resident of the Netherlands is 14+ kg per year. 

Gayle: I’d long feared some of these “fancy cheeses”, but they were all wonderful. My favorites were the Gold and Onion. They were so good, I really wished we’d gotten to taste the Beer. For those of you familiar with the soup from EPCOT’s Le Cellier, I could just imagine this making a great batch (something we’ve tried and failed).

Toasties

Kara: After finishing up in the cheese shop we headed across the street and Roman delivered our second “bite” of the day which was a delicious toastable made with Gouda, Eden, and Cheddar. It was served on a corn based bread which was interesting. It came with a mustard sauce on the side. It was fine, but I’m not a big fan of mustard so didn’t really love that.

Our "toastie"

While this tour was an opportunity to learn about Amsterdam through it's food, it was also an incredible opportunity to get a really good overview of the city's architecture, history, and culture.

Next, we visited Beginjnhof. This historic set of buildings and private courtyard captured a ton of history in one neat little package. First, the homes here are now owned and run by the city, but were previously run by the Catholic Church. The homes are now divided into apartments. All of these homes have always been for widows and single women. Now, they are also available to those who are low income (which is less than 1000 Euros a month). The homes surround a lovely courtyard that is home to two churches. We walked through the small Catholic Church, which was actually a secret church while Catholicism was illegal in The Netherlands for a time. The courtyard also allowed us an opportunity to see the last remaining all wood home in Amsterdam which has been in place since the 1600s. 

Fishes

Now it was time to head to our next stop which was Jonik Volendammer Haringhandel which is a street side fish shop serving, of course, Herring.

The herring was not for either of us. (Gayle: It was as gross as I’d imagined.) The Kibbeling (aka fried cod) we had here was tasty, although a little too greasy. 

Kara's herring experience

Gayle's thoughts on herring

Stroopwaffel

After all this savory, it was time for a little sweet. We went to Hans Egstorf which is the oldest bake shop in Amsterdam - dating back to the 1890s. Here we got to watch them make stroopwaffel fresh and eat them right off the griddle. The packaged version you get in the store are a pale imitation to the real thing fresh and hot filled with yummy caramel honey sauce. These were definitely a favorite for both of us. 

Gayle: I will dream about these, perhaps for the rest of my life.

Kara: Along the way and while we waited at our next stop we learned a little bit more about the biking culture of Amsterdam. There are 800,000 people living in Amsterdam and over 1M bikes. This is both due to theft and loss in canals (over 15K lost in canals every year) as well as to people owning/renting multiple so that they can “hopscotch” them (e.g. take a bike to the tram stop, ride the tram, pick up another bike from the tram stop to ride to work, and then do the reverse on the way home). 

Fries & Bitterballen

We had fries and bitterballen at the next to last stop. We got to eat these while sitting along the edge of the canal watching all the boats sail by. The fries were tasty but nothing special and the bitterballen is essentially fried gravy. The texture of that just didn’t work for either of us at all. We really thought we’d be fans of bitterballen after reading about them online. We definitely were NOT.

Dutch Apple Pie

We ended the tour at Cafe Hegeraad, which is in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam. It’s like a small city within a city. Jordaan is even quieter and there are even fewer cars here. We had apple pie in the back room of the cafe. It was good, although I’m not going to get tremendously excited for Dutch Apple Pie.

We walked back to the hotel to freshen up just a bit before heading back out to find the Lego store. We again made mini figs. Whether good or bad, the first print of our mini figs was all messed up so we got to keep those and they made us new ones that actually looked good. 

Gayle: Making custom mini figs has become a travel tradition for us, even though there aren’t that many in the world. Upon researching, we realized we missed opportunities on past trips, and there are likely places we might never get to. Yet, they are great, small, cheap souvenirs from locations and our times together. 

Kara: We then headed back north towards North Amsterdam to go to the “This is Holland” experience. 

Getting to North Amsterdam had us ride the free ferry across the main waterway behind the Amsterdam Centraal train station. While on the ferry we caught a glimpse of the riverboat docking area. 

The This is Holland building is clearly a tourist Mecca. You can catch hop on hop off bus tours here as well as get tickets for other touristy things. It’s also next door to the Eye Film Museum of Dutch film and the A’Dam Lookout. 

The "shop" in This is Holland. Basically the whole waiting area was a shop.

We had tickets for 5 p.m. but got there in time to get into the 4:45 showing. We first watched a film about how the people of the Netherlands have worked with and against water to shape their country through the centuries. We then watched another short film about some of the various sites we would see on our This is Holland airborne adventure. 

Finally, it was time to secure ourselves into the ride vehicle and take flight. We sought this out because there is a similar ride, Soarin’ Around the World, at Walt Disney World® Resort EPCOT® in Florida and at Disneyland® Resort in California. Overall, this was a fun way to experience the sites, smells, and even seasons of the Netherlands in 20 minutes. 

Gayle: It was a great learning experience, and when I got belted in, I felt at home. It was as close to a "Soarin’ over the Netherlands” as you could get!

We were also both entertained by the wall out outside the restrooms at This is Holland.

Kara: As we headed back to the hotel, we detoured to a local grocery store to see if we could find something for dinner. This is something we like to do when traveling. The proximity of the grocery store was noted yesterday when we checked into our hotel, and then on the tour today Roman explained that the Dutch are not really into cooking. For that reason, you’ll find all sorts of prepared meals and precut items at the store. 

Gayle: I’m going to recheck my Ancestry.com report, as these have got to be “my people”! This was also a rare occasion to use Google Translate, which worked flawlessly.

Kara: We found nice takeaway salads to eat for dinner and Gayle got a small bag of mini stroopwaffels. We returned to the hotel and enjoyed the soundtrack from the late 90s and early 2000s playing over the speakers as we enjoyed our dinner in the lobby lounge. 

Now it’s time to repack so we can board our ship tomorrow and let someone else take control of the schedule for a while.

Kara's Video Summary

Next up… Our first Adventures by Disney(r) & river cruise!

On that note… Disclaimer: I (Gayle) am a travel agent with Authorized Disney Travel Planner agency - Off to Neverland Travel. Contact me today for a no-obligation quote!

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