A Weekend in Amsterdam
Still feeling a bit of a high from the excitement generated from my adventures in South America, I was telling one of my friends that I could not wait to get back out on the road. Eager to get her own dose, she suggested we plan a weekend trip to some place exciting. Although it was winter, we decided that Amsterdam was the perfect destination. With Schiphol being the home of KLM, Delta’s partner, there were plenty of direct flights, making the trip easy to do with a just a few days.
Although some may think that December is not the ideal time to vacation in Amsterdam, it is actually the perfect time to visit the Venice of the North. Amsterdam is full of exciting museums, which typically have hour-long lines in the summer. During the winter months, the lines are nearly non-existent. And when is there a better time to spend hours inside an exciting museum than the middle of winter?
Since we were only going for a few nights, we thought we could afford a cute hotel. We chose Canal House, which is a boutique hotel in, you guessed it, a restored canal house, located in the Jordaan district along the Keizersgracht canal. The historic house was near enough to the Central Station that we could walk (perhaps not if we’d had a lot of luggage), but also on the quieter side of the main strip. The hotel was beautiful; I could not have been happier with the choice we made.
We spent the next few days wandering the city with stops at the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh museum and a tour of the royal palace. We wandered through the trendy shops on the Nine Streets, the holiday markets full of warm, winter socks and hats, the famous flower market showcasing the vast variety of Dutch tulips, and a farmers’ market. We snacked on waffles and purchased several blocks of Gouda (all different types: aged, herbed, goat, cow…). On our last night there, we had dinner at Moeders, which serves authentic Dutch cuisine. I had a potato and Gouda hotchpotch, which was absolutely delicious.
Over the course of the weekend, we kept marveling at how cute and cozy Amsterdam was. Although the days were cold, we always felt so warm and comfortable wherever we went. It seemed the Dutch have mastered the ability to create the perfect atmosphere. We learned they have even coined a term for it: Gezelligheid.
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