Four days into our Amsterdam stay, and we haven’t explored our neighborhood beyond the bakery on the corner, and to and from the transit stops. That ends today! We wish we could say this was part of some grand vision of growing roots where we’re planted, but in reality, we just had a lot of pretty mundane stuff to catch up on. We needed a functional day without sightseeing…but we got lost along the way.
A simple stroll out 10 minutes from our apartment took us five hours. Along the way, we found that there is an exquisite little canalside neighborhood right around the corner from the busy street our apartment is perched on. We fully intend to go back there for dinner one of these nights. We saw a crane closer than we’d ever seen a crane:
We popped into @droog. This is a super artsy place with sparse art on display in the many big open rooms. It was nature-themed and very well-done. They had a little back courtyard, and a sunny cafe up top that looked great for working in.
We also popped into a chocolatier that might have been our favorite so far (sorry, Belgium). There were creative flavors like pepper, or thyme, and they were swoopy and elegant (and unusually large) truffles. We picked up a calvados truffle and a pepper truffle, and they were both amazing.
First actual planned stop was the Bloemenmarkt. One after another, greenhouses line the canal, and they are full of purveyors of every bulb you can imagine. Our first one was probably the best one, and the only one that featured cut flowers you could take home. It was achingly pretty.
If it starts from a bulb, they had it at some stall or another at the Bloemenmarkt. They had bulk bins of bulbs, bulbs displayed like potatoes, conventional and extremely non-conventional bulbs. There was actually only a tiny subset that was approved for shipping to the U.S., so we were limited there, but we’ve never seen such a riot of bulbs. Wish the gardeners among you could have seen it.
We headed up to de KattenKabinet. We thought it was a cat-themed store, but it was really a museum! Friends, it was a museum of art featuring cats from the last 200 years. It was a mansion filled with paintings and prints – Picasso, Talouse Lautrec, photos of artists with their cats, and a couple of real live cats who were themselves works of art.
They had an exceptional little courtyard with more art, and a little cat friend.
Overall, greatly exceeded expectations.
We took a break for lunch at the Vegan Junk Food Bar. We had our first bitterballen, a ball of fried meat, but of course in this case it was “meat.” We decided we probably liked that better than we would real meat.
Then we were off to the Mouse Mansion. Like the KattenKabinet, we thought this would be a cute place to pop in. Instead, it was a total wonderland that blew our expectations out of the water. It’s hard to describe how neat this place is. The owner wrote a children’s book, and instead of illustrations, she created mouse-sized dioramas and took photos of them. The rooms and houses are stacked one on top of another, building after building, all with the tiniest little books and pitchers and paintings and just all the tiny tiny things. They’re scenes of Amsterdam life in a very organic and sort of Harry Potter meets Beatrix Potter aesthetic. It was really incredible. Here is the library, but they all had this level of detail and I wish we’d taken more photos.
We headed back to our neighborhood the way we’d come hours before. We saw an elegant grocery with mountains of cheese and a world-class takeout counter, and decided to take home dinner, since Stef had her first evening of work that night. Pesto penne with eggplant and a spinach quiche.
After a light evening of work, we went for a stroll around Hortus Park – you guessed it, 10 minutes away. It was a gorgeous and multi-sectioned park along the canal, with a huge botanical garden that was closed, but looked intriguing with full-sized trees pressing against the glass. We have come to love ending out days with a walk in a park.
And that is how a trip to the post office and the bulb sellers takes five hours. We didn’t expect much from the day, and we sure got a lot. We are so grateful that we didn’t let a plan for a humdrum day stand in the way of having an exceptional day. Amsterdam, you keep us enchanted.
Am I to understand that the dioramas in the mouse house are displaying mouse-sized mice?
And Vegan Junk Food – great concept.
Yes! Those mice are about mouse size. I desperately wish I had storybook age kids in my orbit these days, because I’d love to get them the book of photos that launched it all. Maybe I’ll buy one for myself when I don’t have to carry it home.