Ciao, Bella! Blog: Day 2

The funny thing about best days is that you have no idea when you’re about to have one. But at the end of our trip, after a week of very good days, both Brendan and I looked back on this Friday as being one of the very best.

Day 2 ended up being a great mix of museum-ing, learning, exploring, walking, shopping, touring, boating, and climbing. And any day with that amount of actions is a recipe for success.

We started the day with breakfast at our hotel, which was your typical European breakfast of cold cuts, eggs and fruit. Nothing special, but enough to get us started. After breakfast, we freshened up and started walking to the city museum, about 10 minutes from the hotel. If you’re a reader of this blog, you know I lovvvveee starting any new place with a visit to the city museum. I <3 city museums! They’rethebest!

Anyway.

This one was pretty good, gave an interesting overview of the city and was located in a building that had housed the city’s orphanage. Which was somewhat depressing when you start to think about it.

You know the best pick-me-up after seeing a former orphanage? Fries!

We stopped by one of the many cafes serving fries-to-go with a variety of sauces – seriously, why isn’t this a thing in the U.S.? – and picked up a paper sleeve of French fries with sweet onion sauce.

After running a couple quick errands – including putting our names down for a reservation to climb the Westerkirk Tower (they only take walk-in reservations for the same day) and picking up our canal tour vouchers at the Hotel Pulitzer – we started wandering the nearby De 9 Straatjes (The Nine Streets). This area, known as “Nine Little Streets” is full of cute and trendy boutiques and cafes – a far cry from the loud and crowded shopping center near Dam Square.

After a little shopping and a quick lunch, we headed back to Westerkirk to make our tower tour reservations. This ended up being one of the most interesting tours we’ve ever been on – they only take about 10 groups of six people daily so it was also one of the most intimate tours we’ve experienced. First we checked our bags in their coat closet and quickly realized why – this tour wasn’t joking about the tower “climb.”

We started climbing the steep stairs, steeper than the Vatican in places. Good thing there was a rope to help balance yourself and railings as needed. Our knowledgeable tour guide stopped at two or three landings to point out features of the architecture or other artifacts on display, such as a medieval organ and bells. When we made it to the tower’s top lookout, just below the clockface, we were treated to one of the best vistas over the city center. Our guide spoke about how the dam and canals were created and she proudly repeated a popular local phrase: "God made the world, the Dutch made Amsterdam."

Shortly after the tower climb we headed to make our Canal Tour. After our friend Frank recently visited Amsterdam and came back with recommendations, we decided to forego the standard tourist boats (which could seat 50+ and didn't exactly feel or look special) and instead reserved a spot on the very small and very historic Pulitzer Tour. Our pretty canal boat was 107 years old and had actually be ridden by none other than Winston Churchill soon after WW2!

Our charming guide proudly relayed this fact and then said, “Winston Churchill was our most special guest – until you, of course.”

On our tour, we were joined by four other couples including a mother/daughter pair. The teenage daughter couldn’t have looked more unimpressed – which definitely made me even more determined to instill a love of traveling into Declan. My kid better appreciate experiences like this! :-P

The tour was about 75 minutes long and we traveled all throughout Amsterdam’s canals. We even saw a bride and groom swinging above a tall tower, a new attraction that opened just days previously. Little did we know then that we would be doing the same thing in a few days! The tour also passed by our hotel, where we learned we had a view from our room of the mayor’s canal home. (I had just thought this particular canal house was pretty, didn’t realize it was also important!)

After the tour ended, we did a little more shopping since we hadn’t strayed far from the 9 Streets. We found mom a necklace thank-you present and I found a dress to wear to a friend’s upcoming wedding. I mentioned to the saleswoman that I was a little sensitive about new clothes since I was a new mom, and she said she had gained 30 kilos (not pounds, kilos!!!) while pregnant. So that made me feel much better, haha. (She looked great, though, by the way.)

After stopping back at the hotel to drop off bags and freshen up, we picked up a recommendation from the concierge for a nearby pizza trattoria. The mostly sunny day seemed like it could rain any minute, but we decided to risk it and sat outside along the canal – and ended up having the patio to ourselves for most of our meal. When it started to sprinkle after we finished our pizza, we moved to an indoor table for dessert and to finish our drinks. Luckily, the rain held off enough for us to finish at the restaurant and enjoy the walk back to the hotel, soaking in the view of the canal bridges lights at night.

It was about as lovely as a second day can be. <3

Jeweler who made mom's necklace

Goofing around at the pizza restaraunt. One of the ladies sitting on the inside of the window adjacent to us tapped on the glass and gave me the thumbs up after this pose, haha.