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Amsterdam Day
Jan. 5th, 2009 09:08 amWhen I arrived in Amsterdam, on a slightly rainy morning, two degrees above freezing, I thought it was closed for the day. Well, I was wrong, it just hadn't woken up. I bumbled about the tourist requisites - the Homomonument, viewing the line outside Anne Frank House, the red light district, the Sex Museum. I gawped at giant herds of bicycles, 17th-century storehouses, canal houseboats, and 7-foot-tall Dutchmen.
At one point, dipping my nose into a hot chocolate topped with a softball-sized swirl of slagroom, I found an expatriates' free paper. Plenty of contrasts there between them and the Dutch people I've been meeting. A lot of expatriates are just leaving town until March - plenty of rooms were available on short-term sublets, and even the free paper is closing until then. The Dutch have their own winter rituals, starting with that hot chocolate.They cocooon while waiting, nay, hoping for the cold to get truly freezing enough for them to strap on their skates. They yearn for a 2-week long stretch of deep subzero temperatures to enable a spectacular multi-canal skating race.
The best part of the day was meeting up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rcfinch! We had afternoon tea at a cafe full of exquisite Jugendstil tile murals, discussed the problems of publishing niche books, and then we went shopping! She now has a zippy new sweater, and I have a new hat: a basin of polarfleece that covers my poor subtropical ears. I'll need it when I go back to Amsterdam on Tuesday, to check out the Albert Cuyp street market and have dinner with rcfinch. The locals are prepping their skates for that day, which is supposed to be extra-cold.
At one point, dipping my nose into a hot chocolate topped with a softball-sized swirl of slagroom, I found an expatriates' free paper. Plenty of contrasts there between them and the Dutch people I've been meeting. A lot of expatriates are just leaving town until March - plenty of rooms were available on short-term sublets, and even the free paper is closing until then. The Dutch have their own winter rituals, starting with that hot chocolate.They cocooon while waiting, nay, hoping for the cold to get truly freezing enough for them to strap on their skates. They yearn for a 2-week long stretch of deep subzero temperatures to enable a spectacular multi-canal skating race.
The best part of the day was meeting up with
rcfinch! We had afternoon tea at a cafe full of exquisite Jugendstil tile murals, discussed the problems of publishing niche books, and then we went shopping! She now has a zippy new sweater, and I have a new hat: a basin of polarfleece that covers my poor subtropical ears. I'll need it when I go back to Amsterdam on Tuesday, to check out the Albert Cuyp street market and have dinner with rcfinch. The locals are prepping their skates for that day, which is supposed to be extra-cold.
