Amsterdam day two

The second day, Tay found us a great breakfast brunch place in the middle of the city called Gartin. Even though it was Wednesday, at 11 am, it was still suggested we make reservations. I'm happy we did- everything was delicious. A cosy but bright space with a few tables, fresh house made jams and jellies, luxurious coffee and teas. I ordered the Eggs Benedict Royale which is basically eggs Benedict on a bed of rucola, and smoked salmon instead of ham. Incredibly delicious, it ranked for all of us as one of the best meals of the trip. We bought two jars of canned jams to take back with us.

It was chiller than we had expected, so we made a slight detour to do a little shopping first. I bought a loop scarf on sale from Espirit while Tay picked up a pair of jeans from H&M.

Tay also picked the Amsterdam museum which was just around the corner. The first part of the museum is a really good and thorough introduction to the city, with very well done multimedia presentations which begin with a nearby artwork or historical map, and bring it to life and tease it apart.

We saw the courtyard of the Beguines, a pleasant and tranquil little community of row houses which used to house a charitable group of pious unmarried Catholic women.

We shop shop shopped all over, but mostly in the Nine Streets area and around the ring canals. Actually, most of our trip we just walked around a lot and popped into various Olliwanderish boutiques, twee antique shops, and trendy clothing and houseware stores.

For dinner we had an excellent Indian meal although it was difficult to order without a common metric of what constituted medium from spicy. I was harshly cautioned against ordering the lamb vindaloo. But it all ended up delicious and spicy enough for me.

After dinner we wandered around some more and tried to go to one of the famous gin bars around the city, but for some reason, probably the proximity to the red light district, it closed at 9 pm just as we were walking in. Undeterred, Tay ferreted out a great beer bar for us, where we found a table and several excellent beers from Holland and Belgium. Once again, we all returned to the house a little tipsy from our endeavors.