SUNNY DAY IN AMSTERDAM!

 We had only one sunny day in Amsterdam so far, other than that rain, rain and more rain!  The lovely day was the first day we arrived, and poor Raf had to work most of it indoors.  I took advantage of the weather and walked a bunch near our hotel.  My main goals were to go to the flea market and to eat frites.  I succeeded at accomplishing both :)  The Waterloopleinmarkt was first on my list.  It is a mixture of vintage items (clothes and housewares), regular second hand clothing (in piles, it's crazy), new, locally designed clothes and jewelry, touristy stuff (clogs, windmills, cannabis themed goods, and red light district/sex themed stuff),food and I guess just a mish-mosh of other randoms.  It was really, really fun to look around.  I ended up scoring the perfect vintage sweater!  It is from Northern Austria and is from the 1960's.  I LOVE it!  I think I got some pretty good photos to capture the essence of it all.  :)

A variety of religious doo dads.

Delft pottery-style clogs, wind mills, etc.

Your standard tourist wooden clogs.

Antique dog door stoppers, salt and pepper shakers, and signs.  And you know, your standard phallic bottle openers.  Ha.

Tons of second hand shoes on the ground.

Frites!  Basically thick cut fries with delicious Dutch mayo.  And I really don't typically like mayo-- this stuff is not like American yuk-mayo.  More thick and cheese like.

Menu with variety of sauces for your frites.

So many yums!  I opted for the Dutch mayo AND ketchup.  I like how they come in a paper cone with a tiny fork!

Pretty wooden tulips.

Basket of random stuff.

Clothes pile.  LOTS of good stuff.  Lots of vintage.

Hooray!  My new sweater!

Close up of this beauty...sigh...

HOTEL REMBRANDT.

We are in Amsterdam.  It really is a very beautiful city!  Holland is the first country I've visited where I don't know the language at all-- Dutch sounds very foreign to me!  Raf is working the first two days, but then we get a few to spend together exploring the city.  We are staying the first two nights at the Hotel Rembrandt, only blocks away from where Rembrandt lived and worked here in Amsterdam.  It is a very cool, small boutique hotel.  It is in a 19th century residential area with lots of cafes and trees and parks.  We are in a very special room: the one with a life size copy of Rembrandt's most famous painting "The Nightwatch".  The best part of the hotel though, is one of its hardest workers, Bink.  Bink belongs to the hotel and he is the sweetest little mouser I have ever met.  He escorted us upstairs to our room when we first arrived, let himself in, and proceeded to take a nap on our bed.  :)  If you know me and Raf, you know how happy that made us.  Raf had meetings during the day and I walked around our neighborhood.  When I got back before dinner, Bink walked me back up to our room and cuddled with me for a bit.  It was the best.  You think I could convince him to move to California with us?

PUNTING!

Amos striking a rock star pose.

 A popular thing to do here in Cambridge is punting down the river Cam.  I had never heard of this before living here.  "A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting refers to boating in a punt. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole. A punt should not be confused with a gondola, which is propelled by an oar rather than a pole."

Sweeties.

There are many punting tour companies in the city, and when walking around, you will most certainly be inundated with offers for a tour.  We are lucky though because our new friend, Amos offered to take us punting recently.  He was a student here at the University and has an affiliation with Trinity College, so he is able to use their boats.  We had a beautiful and sunny fall day, so five of us headed out on the river for the afternoon.  It was lovely and so relaxing!

I love this shot of Amos :)

Poor Ian with sun in his eyes.

One of the many bridges.

Again.

Part of Trinity College.

No docking your boat on their fancy pants property!  Okay?

Near collision.  A common occurrence, along with actual collisions.

They really don't want you on their lawns.

Pretty bridge (of one of the colleges) and the tops of Greg and Ian's heads.

Yup.

Isn't this building beautiful?  The leaves on it were so strikingly red.

I believe it is part of St. John's College.

This friend was circling our boat, quacking away, looking for a party (or maybe just some party food).

Around to the other side of the boat...

Raf at the helm!  He did a good job (only got his head stuck in a tree once, and only almost decapitated by a bridge).  I shouldn't even tease though because I didn't even try and it is hard!  Especially with all of the other inexperienced punters to dodge...

Woo hoo!

Just a couple of dudes, relaxing on a sunny day on a boat on the river :)

Pretty.

King's College.

King's College again.  The prettiest of them all.

NEW FRIEND.

This is our new buddy who lives across the street.  He is kind of obsessed with eating (grass, leaves, tree branches, whatever he can chew up and swallow).  I'm pretty sure he only likes me because I feed him the tall grass that he can't quite reach on his own under the fence.  Totally okay with me.  :)  Raf and I have been discovering a lot of little special things (like this guy) and places (like the tiniest village with a really old beautiful church and a country pub) really close to home.  We love our mini-adventures!

GERMAN BLACK FOREST CAKE!

 

I made an (authentic German) Black Forest cake for the birthday of our (authentic Austrian) friend and housemate Peter.  I don't think I would have ever thought to have made this type of cake if it weren't for his request for it, but I love baking pretty things and I love a challenge.  It had a lot of steps and it was boozy!  :)  And very, very delicious.  I used this recipe.  I really liked that it used fresh cherries and not icky, syrupy canned ones.  I also bought Kirsch (cherry liquer) at the liquor store.  It gives it a really nice cherry/almond flavor.  I ended up having one happy accident happen with the recipe:  I forgot to put the sugar in the chocolate cake.  Like, totally eliminated it!  And you know what?  I think it probably turned out way better!  There was enough sweetness from all of the other components.  So, if you try this recipe, I would HIGHLY recommend eliminating the sugar or reduce it majorly.  xo.

Birthday "frog game" tournament.

Peter may be a bit obsessed with this game :)

Birthday dude.