As part of my Benelux-stalgia these days (See here the Hague-stalgia and Leuven-stalgia) I decided to go to my bag of memories and pull out Amsterdam.
I’ve been to Amsterdam tens of times: we had day trips to walk the canals, escape room adventures, and I always tried squeezing the occasional wanderlusting time wherever I was there on business (obviously, going to AMS for business does not mean actually seeing Amsterdam..)
Yet it’s my last trip there which made the biggest difference.
Last September, because of some unexpected time off between jobs and since I was about to relocate, leaving Belgium for sunny Barcelona, I decided to jump on a train with one of my visiting friends and see Amsterdam one more time.
It took seeing the city from a different, more relaxed angle, and maybe the quasi-nostalgia that I won’t be quite as close by as 1h30 train ride.. but I can finally say it’s on my list of favorite cities now (in Europe, at least)
Vondel Park stroll
Of all the times I was in Amsterdam, I never once had visited Vondel Park.
To be fair, the weather, or timing, or simply my high heels (business meetings, you gotta love high heels..) weren’t permitting most of the time anyway.
But here I was now, happy I hadn’t done it before and let it took me by surprise.
And I enjoyed every moment of it.
Lazy in the sun, listening to a street artist playing Beethoven’s sonatas dubiously well, while an old man made kids happy with his big soap bubbles.
We spent a good few hours in the park.
I then took Vlad to try my favorite dessert in Amsterdam.
Nop, not that one. Really 😉
On most occasions, I tried to get to the Van Ness Cupcake where I first had my Red Velvet, to sneak one before leaving.
Not breaking tradition, here it is, my dear red velvet cupcake.
Oh, and on the way, I was lucky to meet and shake hands with Van Gogh himself, figure that!
You gotta love Amsterdam surprises like that.
Our train was leaving after 8, so with plenty of time left in our pockets, we did a quick tour of the red light district (men..) then went for a snack along the canals.
One more look at the beautiful Central Station, and time to put my walking shoes on.
Barcelona doesn’t have the park or the canals, but it has the sea and the beaches and red velvet cakes instead of cupcakes, and I’m loving every bit of it.
Hope to see you again in some near future, dear AMS.
Beautiful memories, nicely written, pleasant reading 🙂