Amsterdam day one

What a lot of great memories from Amsterdam! When a decade ago Chase and I sat down in rural Oklahoma to plan our summer Eurotrip, I campaigned against the city in or itinerary, since all I had heard about it was its infamous red light district and loose drugs policy.

What a shame I missed, but then I don't think I would have appreciated it as much as I do now. My first reaction on leaving the train station was "this is a city for people who love cities."

After recovering one day from Munich, we jumped on a Germanwings flight which, for some reason, bumped the three of us up to the "Best" class catching all of us off guard. We were in the front row of the plane, acres of legroom, and the stewardess brought us a menu full of prices first and asked us what ever we wanted, we could have, free.

Tay did a double take as he rapidly tried to figure out which was the biggest and most expensive item on the menu but pressed for time selected a can of Pringles and a beer. The hostess cheerfully asked him to let her know when he wanted another one. It was great, it felt like flying in a limo.

Anyway, flying between EU cities is really easy and fast: there is tighter id checking and security between US states. Rolled off the plane, grabbed our giant common bag, and caught the train to the central station.

Amsterdam reminded me of many cities, with the best of each: the canals, and every step a picturesque photographic moment of Venice, the vibrant multicultural urban life inhabiting old buildings of London, the piratical looseness of tiny alleys, red lights and dark wooden bars, thronged with tourists of old New Orleans, the clean and straightforward public transit systems of northern Europe.

We walked to the AirBnb canal house we were staying in, right on the canal in the old brewers area at the top of the ever hipster Jordaan. We had the entire place to ourselves, our host, Christian the carpenter, ran the place as a business. The canal house was only one room wide anyway, so he tore out the top floor partitions and installed a bathtub in the bedroom. Cute, and it opened the space up, but no privacy. No doors in the place either, apart from the front door. Privacy emerged from the separation of all the floors, by ever rickety and more vertically inclined stairs. Tay slept in a loft accessible only by a ladder above our double bed, tucked up in the apex of the roof amidst the beams. It felt a lot like living on a ship.

We shared a wall with the tiny but busy cafe next door at the corner and on the other corner, the most chill and unobnoxious [weed] coffee shop I saw in Amsterdam.

The bar around the corner where we wanted to grab our first drink we couldn't get anyone to wait on us. Life moves slow, I understand that, but I'm not going to kill an hour to put in an order for a beer.

Tay kindly acted as our restaurant consultant, picking out an authentic Dutch place for our first night, and also to check off that box since we read that authentic Dutch food is about as exciting as potatoes and sausage.

We walked along the canal rings to the restaurant, the 30 minute stroll made longer by our stopping to take photos every 90 seconds. Amsterdam is really just that Twee. It is a fountain of Twee, a hipster Disneyland where everything is as adorably aged, and the guy in the tweed vest living above the fair trade coffee shop really makes a living making barrels for the craft brewer down the street.

The restaurant turned out to be in one off the big tourist streets, filed with Argentine steakhouses (which were everywhere, everywhere, what the hell??) , "Authentic British Pubs", and American food. We were seated next to a group of middle aged Brits on holiday, who were trying to control the volume of their inebriated men.

The food was actually better than we'd been lead to believe, sausage and potatoes yes, but still good, and distinctly different from the typical German fare I'm used to.

We wandered back the long way through the red light district. Actually we had a hard time finding it at first. Upon finding it and waking through, Tay and I were a bit underwhelmed. For me at least, the Red Light District of Amsterdam was something you whispered, that brought up visions of a hedonistic den of sin, a writhing and hallucinogenic city dripping with smut. It was more like no pants day at the Olive Garden, but not as kinky. I think I was more scandalized as a teenager at the mall Spencers Gifts.

We joined the gawking tourists (actually, it's really hard to miss the red light district, given its location in the center of town) and wandered past dozens of backpacker oriented coffeehouses and a few dozen red lit windows. With the Spartan tiled cabins and the bored and listless looking women hanging out in underwear, it looked more like they were waiting for their clothes at the laundromat.

We stopped at a bar for another beer on the way back home, at The Gilded Gaper, which featured Victorian era medical illustrations and apparatus, plus tons of old carved wooden heads of turban-hatted Indians? Arabs? sticking out their tongues.

Stumbled back and took turns hanging out the dining room while we bathed upstairs with the showerless tub.