A Food and More Tour of Amsterdam - Sep 3, 2019

What better way to begin a post about Amsterdam that a view of one of the many canals.

Another very typical Amsterdam scene, and no it's not the missing chimney pots. It's the beams sticking out from the roof of this building. It's how they get things up to the higher floors. The rope is attached to the beams, the window is taken out and whatever needs to be placed on the floor is hauled up. If we get lucky during our time here we may be able to show some photos or even a video of this taking place.

When she who tells me what to do, tells me to take a picture of this there blowing bubbles, I do as I'm told.

Those of you who've been here know that bicycles are more numerous than automobiles, far, far more numerous.

The entire day we never saw a car repair shop, but we saw a number of bike repair shops.

Just a few random shots of different types of bikes and masses of bikes. This last photo was taken in front of the central train station and is only a tiny fraction of the number of bikes parked in front of it.

As past history has shown, we like to take a food tour when were in a town that were not extremely familiar with. This is our food tour guide, René, filling us in on some of the history of Amsterdam. Sharp eyed viewers might note the way he is holding the map.

Poffertjes. Think tiny pancakes with a little yeast, topped with powdered sugar and with a taste that is off the charts.

There were eight of us in the group, four from the US, two from New Zealand and the last two from someplace that neither Linda and I could remember. Unbelievably, the two from the US were born in the same hospital I was born in and lived about 10 miles from where I was raised. No matter where you travel it seems like you run into somebody from back home.

This is a site I thought I would never see. Linda actually eating raw fish. One of our stops was at a fish market where we ate fresh raw herring. And I do mean we ate it. To quote Linda "It didn't taste at all like fish." But you don't see in the photo was the napkin she had in her other hand into which it was going to be instantly spit should it taste like fish. It was unused. Awesome Linda. Astonished Bob.

On the herring front, I had quite a few pieces, then did something I seldom do, eating a raw oyster. I'll just say that in the past raw oysters and I haven't gotten along too well together and leave it at that but this time I suffered no ill effects.

Now this is the kind of store that Linda can sink your teeth into.

Which in this case she did. Happy Linda

There are bridges and then there are bridges.

This photo needs a bit of explanation. If you notice the shorter building in the middle of the photo it may look a little wavy. That's because it is. All buildings in Amsterdam are built on pilings. In the foreground is the entrance to a huge underground subway station. Buildings built on pilings, excavations below the pilings for subway stations, subsidence. Renée said they are still sorting out who's paying for what.

It wasn't just various types of foods beaver sampling.

Neither of us remembers what these were called but they were all delicious.

We even had a canal boat ride as part of the food tour.

There were a number of these types of meats that we sampled, including one that was raw (not the one in the photo). Once again Linda did something she's never done before. She took a bite then ate the rest and never spent any of it out commenting about how good it was. Awesome Linda. Unbelieving Bob.

The horrors of World War II touched everywhere in Europe.

Scenes from the canals.

This was pretty much a day of firsts for Linda. As she sat in her seat on the subway this person came aboard with their cello and turning around whacked her with it. She certainly had never had that happen to her before.

There are small cars and then there are small cars.

How you know you're in Amsterdam.

Relaxing at the end of a long day. We really enjoy staying at the hotel's in this chain, a Motel 6 they ain't.