Vondelpark

This day V and I had our own day in Amsterdam, starting with another beautiful tram ride but this time stopping at an earlier station near Vondelpark and close to a randomly selected, well-rated cafe. We stopped in for the obligatory morning coffee now we knew there was nice coffee available, and once more we were commenting on how much better the coffee was in Holland as opposed to the UK - “of all the coffees we’ve had this one is the most like a NZ coffee” I was saying….right as we heard a kiwi accent coming from behind the counter/coffee machine. Of course it was a kiwi on the tools! We briefly stopped to let him know we appreciated the taste of home and got an immediate “Yo cuz, how’re you?” “Where in NZ are you from…?” etc - plus we were sent on our way with extra recommendations for where to find good coffee should we stop again on our planned walk through Vondelpark.

From here we walked to Vondelpark and enjoyed the sun, the shady trees, and the many many dogs. Oh my god, the dogs! There were so many good dogs playing around because there was so much space to run in Vondelpark. It was beautiful, and we walked the length of it. Around lunchtime we grabbed another Jumbo supermarket lunch because the variety for the lunch stuff was so good from the day prior. We even shared a charcuterie platter of mini sausages, cheeses, dip etc which was better than it looked (except for the olives - I’m looking forward to olives in Greece). We then walked around and checked out the stores and many streets before heading to the canal cruise we’d booked last minute via a good discount site “Social Deal” (trust me, I will always find the deal website!). We had a very discounted ticket on a cruise which included a few glasses of rosé that we sipped as the captain and guide told us some interesting facts on the life passing by - including a story about one raggedy house boat/section we passed that met historical conservation standards but the person buying it didn’t know this (half a mil euros spent already, mind you)…when they began to disassemble it to build a fresh boat, the council stepped in to require them to undo the work they’d done, remake the raggedy old boat and then enforce that the old boat be maintain as it was because it is of historical importance. Nightmare purchase.

Anyway, by the time we got off the boat, I was pretty tiddly considering I hadn’t drunk all that much alcohol for a long time, and as we strolled the streets the sore feet didn’t seem so sore as they had earlier…
We stumbled into a coffeeshop, and I suppose with a drink or two under the belt, I said “when in rome” and had a bit of a brownie… by NZ standards, not much at all. I planned to be pretty sober so that I could cook a dinner that evening for Tom, V and a few of Tom’s flatmates again. Well, about an hour later I was having the best time in a hyper focus state, making a full dinner for 5 people while blasting Beyoncé’s Homecoming live album (it was not my house, but I thought the nice dinner hopefully made up for any disturbance I caused). Either way, it was an enjoyable dinner with Tom, V, Stef and Alex 😅Read more