amsterdam 4

live in a houseboat on one of the canals? why not. that would be pretty sweet.

more cool buildings. i could do a million of these drawings.

i’m sure we were shopping. or leaving or going to a bar or eating a sandwich from a street vendor...it doesn’t really matter, i wasn’t in a strip mall and that’s about all that matters.

went to one of these in london so there was probably no need to go to one in amsterdam except that the place has kickass food and we wanted to check it out. the first time we tried to go it was late at night and the place was packed with a huge wait and they cram you into big community type picnic tables and the crowd was really young and we didn’t feel like dealing with that so we came back the next day right when they opened. it was great, the place was dead and we stuffed our faces. good stuff.

we ate our wagamama soup and watched these two dudes dual it out over a game of chess. it would have been more fun to watch if i knew anything about chess, but i don’t, so it was impossible to telling who was winning.

we were walking one day with no clear idea of where we were going which is always the best way to see stuff. i think we were looking for or headed in the direction of the arboretum and we never made it. but we did see this cool old brown stone building. i like how one side of the building is not an exact mirror image of the other side. buildings that don’t repeat themselves are very cool looking. i’m sure there’s a fancy architectural term for what that’s called but i don’t know what it is.

came upon this dudes little shop when most everything else was closed and he was working on a bunch of stuff that looked too good to pass up. we got some sort of lemon bar and it kicked

pretty serious ass. we told him so too and he seemed pretty pleased. i guess when you name your place CHEF! (with a banger) you believe in what you’re doing.

a small art gallery closed up for the night.

being an old city there are tons of old hardware store type places around that are mostly there for the locals looking to replace something old with something old in their apartments. that’s a gold mine for people like us because back home the shit is labeled an antique and the price is jacked to match it...besides the fact that this guy had stuff we would just never find at home; cool toilet paper rolls, old bathroom lights and regular stuff like that. of course pam had to buy shit that would be really heavy and very breakable and a nightmare to carry on a plane. oh well.

how cool is that building? man. what a way to welcome people to your city; “welcome to amsterdam! we’re badass...check out our train station motherfucker!”

nowadays we welcome people to crappy airports...hmmm.

this guy was awesome. he took his seat across from us, got comfortable and pulled out a bigass can of heineken beer from his leather bag. he sat there sipping his beer looking out the window and he looked really happy. man. that was cool. he inspired me to get up and get my own beer...but they didn’t sell the big tall-boys on the train. i guess it helps to be in the know.

this guy was on another train across the tracks from our train. he didn’t look nearly as happy as the guy sitting across from us...he probably didn’t have a beer.

amsterdam must have 100’s of these little bridges crossing all the canals in various places. some were fancier than others, but even the non-fancy ones were pretty cool.

palm was another beer we saw everywhere we went. in the “saloon lunchroom” (nice name, huh?) the bartender insisted i give it a try. it was good. sort of tasted like all the others i had. we did have great food at this little place though. pam had a salad that ruled the world...it was a weird combination of bree cheese baked in honey if i remember correctly. we saw it at a few other places and she liked it enough that she ordered it wherever she saw it. she tried to make it when we returned home but it just didn’t live up to the real deal. i like the dude peeking in the window of the bar wondering if he should go in for a round or two.

dude riding his bike along the canals.

i could just see them thinking; “stupid american tourists and their digital cameras taking pictures of everything that moves!” true. they did have a dignified feel to them though. maybe on a stroll to the opera?

i saw a lot of old people out on the streets...moving...doing things. not just sitting in front of tv’s growing old. that’s cool. that’s another reason i want to live in amsterdam. she had the look of trying to find just the right chocolate shop.

every city has them. they are just a little more interesting overseas. this was in brussels on a day trip we took to get a feel for that city. i love that bigass guitar or whatever it’s called. i felt like an idiot though because i gave them money and than took their picture and they posed for me...like they felt like they had to because i gave them money. i felt like an ass and i didn’t like that image so i took this one when they weren’t looking at me.

i’m not sure if they call it “little italy” over there, but that’s pretty much what it was. i’ve never seen so many italian restaurants crammed into little cobblestone alleyways. they all had seafood on ice out front for display which was pretty cool, but every place was exactly the same. there was no way to tell one restaurant from another and they just went on and on. i actually got sick of looking at them and didn’t even want to eat at one so we had something completely different to eat and skipped the italian.

man they know how to do candy over there. i guess this was in antwerp. chocolate shops as far as the eye can see. great stuff. this lady in this particular shop was pretty bitchy. she had a job to do and we weren’t sure what we were ordering and her english wasn’t very good so her explanations as to what each blob of chocolate was was completely lost on us. we just pointed at whatever looked like something we might like and she put her cotton glove on and went to boxing them up for us. i think we ate them all within 2 blocks of leaving the store, man that chocolate was good.

old dude checking out

a rack of postcards. he looked like a local, i wonder what kind of postcard he would buy?

a stroll through alleyways. off to dinner? a little shopping maybe? a sex show? you never know.

a table of cool old electronics at a flea market we went to and found absolutely nothing to buy. note: the amsterdam flea market is nothing like the paris flea market...unless you’re collecting obsolete electronic equipment.

this church was really really tall and it was one you go up in and walk around the outside. i’m usually one that avoids churches at all costs but that seemed like a kickass way to see the city, and i bet it was but by the time we got there the place was closed. they probably saw us coming and shut the place down!

see what i mean?..old people out walking everywhere! it’s great. this woman was probably 90 and out with fido walking the alleyways. i wonder if the dogs live long and active lives too?...i’m moving there for sure if that’s the case.

pam found this in a travel book and it was one of the few places we knew we really wanted to see. very cool place. it’s in brussels by the peeing boy statue that’s so famous. we got

there before they opened the place but they sat us down anyways. the food was pretty good...i wasn’t too hungry so i didn’t order much, but pam had some killer french onion soup and

she knows a thing or two about french onion soup so it must have been good.

i stood in this square and my jaw dropped at how beautiful the buildings were. i’ve seen quite a few european squares and this was the coolest one i’ve even.

no drawing in the world can capture that...and this is just 5 buildings of the 30 or so that lined the square. amazing. we saw a bulldog in this square too...he had a sweater on and the lady seemed pleased that i wanted to take the dogs picture.

chalk that up as yet another reason why i want to live there someday. i read about this jazz bar in the guidebook so we decided to check it out one of our last nights in town...turns out it was the same jazz club we hit our first night in town. it was a great place so we didn’t mind hitting the same place twice. it was full of young people listening to this dude jam on the sax. he was pretty great. i never got a good chance to hear or see him really well because there were so many people in the joint. i actually had an amstel (no such thing as amstel light) at this bar, it pretty much sucked. it’s not the amstel light i know and love from back home and by this point i was getting pretty sick of strong beers and just wanted a good old fashioned “american lawnmower beer”.

this little bar barely sat 8 people, but the bartender chick was spinning some really good tunes. she had 2 ipods hooked up to a mixing board so she knew what the hell she was doing...i think she even played a motley crue tune. i drank a really strong beer called ‘dival’...translates to DEVIL...and after having a few of those i could see how someone would think that beer was the devil. ouch.

...come again some other vacation. i guess it’s my fault that i planned the trip in february so i can’t complain too much, but the rain really did suck. we hardly saw the sun at all but it didn’t kill the trip or anything...it did kill this umbrella though as this person got sick and tired of fighting with it and stuffed it in the trash and walked away all pissed off.