Today I woke up at my normal 6am and decided that I should take the Amsterdam trip that I missed on Saturday. Realistically this weekend was my chance to visit Amsterdam on this trip as it would be very far away from where I will be staying in Germany. I was able to walk down to Brussels Central and get on the 8:22am train to Amsterdam by way of Antwerp, so basically I rode right by the office but this train didn't stop at Vilvoorde. The ride took about 3 hours. It was supposed to be shorter but there appeared to be a few delays offloading and onloading people at the various stops. In any event it was not too much extra time lost.
The weather was a bit chillier than in Brussels probably because it is coastal and has all the canals. I didn't bring a jacket to Europe for this trip but I truthfully didn't feel I needed it even with all the people wearing winter clothing around here. The first thing I did was to take an hour long canal tour of the city. It was interesting and in all languages so I was able to learn a bit about the city. The guy captaining the boat was very incredible at navigating the tight passages and turns that needed to be done to get through the tour. I learned mainly that Amsterdam is a big sprawl and that there was no way I was going to have enough time to see it all and get back to Brussels in time. All the same the weather went from cloudy to sunny and back all through the day there and when it was sunny it was warm and when it was cloudy it was chilly. By the time I was done with the canal tour it was getting close to 1pm and I was fairly hungry so I sorted out finding a place to eat. I wasn't sure enough of the layout of the city so I walked randomly. Eventually I found a restaurant promising traditional Dutch home cooked meals so I decided to try it. It was called Oud Nederlands. I basically put myself in the hands of the waiter and he gave me what tasted like an Amstel Light and a mixed grill dish that was accompanied by stoemp (same as the night before), roasted potatoes, boiled carrots, spiced cabbage and a mixed salad. It was an incredibly large amount of food. The mixed grill included chicken, pork and beef with the beef being prepared in a ginger sauce of some sort and stewed. I enjoyed the food quite a bit. There weren't many customers there but the other guests seemed to like their food as well.
After lunch I set about to wandering. I managed to find what looked like a main square and there was a British kid performing there. He only had an amplifier and some mixing pedals and he basically did all his music by voice using the mixing pedals. It was not really my type of music but I have to say watching him lay down the foundation tracks and making it sound like there were instruments behind him was very impressive. I watched him do a couple songs, one in a hip hop style and one more reggae. There was a very large crowd around him and he seemed to be making quite a good haul of donations from the onlookers. Good for him. I usually don't pay attention to street musicians but he was actually good and was doing his own music rather than just playing the Beatles. From there I just spent a couple hours wandering around and taking pictures and did a little bit of souvenir shopping. I can say fully that I did not remotely get the full Amsterdam experience, but I was not looking for the coffee shops or anything like that. I did pass a few but so what...
My wanderings basically headed me back into the central station at about 3:30 and I found there was a train leaving for Brussels at 3:50 or so and decided that was my cue to head back home. I would have liked to stay later and had it been Saturday I would have definitely but with class impending on Monday I thought it best not to chance it. Perhaps in the future I will have better time to explore Amsterdam for real but at least I can say I was there at this point. Including train rides and the city I think I spent about 7 hours in the Netherlands so it counts to me as a country visited.
On arriving in Brussels I thought I might be able to get to the supermarket near the hotel before it closed but got there about 7:10 which was 10 minutes too late I guess. I decided then that I would try the hotel restaurant which I hadn't yet tried, The Cafe Parnasse (named after the street the hotel is on). I had a Leffe blond and a cheeseburger with thick wobbly bacon on it. More like British bacon than American bacon. It was quite good. They served me bread with tapanade as a starter besides. I finished with a coffee and what they called apple pie which was more like an organized apple crisp. It was not bad per se, but it was certainly not apple pie. After dinner I headed to the room to write this and crash for the evening as it was already getting toward bedtime for a tired instructor.
The pictures from today can be found here.
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