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Sarah says:

Amsterdam. David and I have two seperate sets of friends from Seattle who visited Amsterdam and fell so completely head-over-heels in love with this city that one set takes Dutch lessons in Seattle and visits here whenever they can and the other set actually moved here. Well, almost. The wife is here and is currently hosting us. The husband is on his way - he just has to finish law school first.

Recognizing that this was too much of a coincidence and fully appreciating the luck of having a friend and free bed in Europe, we just had to see what all the fuss was/is about. And, of course, we wanted to see our long-time friend, Beth.

So far on this journey we’ve had adventure, we’ve had culture, challenges, beach, heat, sun, all the craziness the world has to offer….but this. Now this is vacation.

Just a little background: our dear friend Beth did fall in love with Amsterdam, that much is very true. So much so that she decided that living in Amsterdam was her dream and, dang it, she made her dream come true. It wasn’t easy - finding a company to sponsor you in Holland ain’t an easy task, but she put her mind to it, went through some tricky interviews and then had to sell her soul to the devil that is Microsoft but, hey, she’s here. She’s living her dream and I don’t think we’ve seen her happier, which makes us very happy.

Beth is temporarily renting this lovely apartment (temporary since she’s just bought an apartment, confirming her Amsterbeth status):

This is where we’ve been living for the past 2 weeks and Beth says this is very typical of a Dutch apartment: very high and ornately decorated ceilings, huge french doors, and apparently every apartment has one of these black faux fireplaces that are art and decor enough to make any room stunning. She is very very upset that her building manager chose to have the outside of the building painted this month so her back balcony is draped in blue tarp which prohibits us from enjoying her canal view.

Our days here have been dreamy. The coffee here is wonderful and the mysterious coffee milk is even better. No one is quite sure what’s in it, Beth says it’s kind of like malted half-and-half and it’s what everyone puts in their coffee. I don’t think I want to know what I’ve allowed my body to become addicted to. All I know is that by the time we wake our lazy bones up at around 9:30am every day, Beth is already at the office (well……she’s at least on her way there. well…..she’s at least on her way out the door but she’s left for us an entire pot of rich yummy coffee and coffee milk. I start my day with creamy coffee and an hour or so of reading my book. How civilized!! In fact, it’s such a beautiful way to start my day that I could just end this entry right here and now - enough said. But, we have actually done more here than drink Beth’s coffee and read.

This city is just so cute. Every day is just such a cute day. There are more cafes and coffee shops than you can throw a stick at and they are all so damn cute that you just really want to spend your money for yet another cup of coffee or another little perfect sandwich or another beautiful pastry or cookie or something. Oh, not to forget the beer. It’s quite strong here - it’ll knock ya. And seeing as it’s bucketed rain every day since we arrived, we’ve ducked into a fair number of pubs so we know from experience. And of course there are the other kinds of coffee shops………

So we’ve eaten, too. A lot. We did feel skinny and now we don’t.

But we’ve also done more than just drink coffee and eat. We have walked I don’t know how many miles around all the famous canals and tippy houses, we’ve almost been hit by Amsterdam’s silent pariahs - trams. And if trams don’t get you, a bicyclist will. But one sunny Sunday on Beth’s bikes allowed us to see the city from the locals’ perspective and now we get it - it’s so freeing to bike around the city and we also get why it’s important for walkers to move their arses out of the way.

So we’ve drank, we’ve eaten and we’ve walked. Perfect vacation. But that’s not all.

The thing is, we’re 15 degrees farther north than Seattle is and it makes so much difference in the length of the days. The sun doesn’t set until almost 11pm. Now that will really mess you up! Beth says it’s so hard to live a normal life in this city and I didn’t really know what she meant until we found ourselves still out just wandering the city at 4am. It’s just so easy to be out so late, the city isn’t aggressive. It still retains its cuteness and charm even in the early morning hours. How many times we’ve been on our way home and have been distracted by “just one more” cute bar. Thus the not waking up till 10am….and the cycle continues.

But, a traveler travels and we are travelers. We’ve loved every second in this, well, very cute city and we see what the fuss is about but our rucksacks are collecting dust so it’s time to go explore our next city.

Having this kind of time with a friend from home is priceless - thank you Beth!!

Our next destination also involves old and very dear friends. Stay tuned to find out where!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am and is filed under Europe, Global Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.