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This morning, we woke up really late, so we headed down to eat some Chinese food. This was the place where the girl from the night before from the pool hall worked at.

Found the restaurant!

The restaurant was quite nicely decorated. In fact, I can’t really think of many poorly decorated restaurants in Amsterdam.

A wall of business cards. I put my www.thecheatingcook.com business card up there :)

We ordered family style food. Here we have dumplings in soup.

Some dim sum

The menu

Group picture. I have to say, the food was pretty good, but nothing like ‘mind blowing.’ I think this speaks to the testament of how good the food in California is.

It’s not diet coke.. its ‘coke light’

We had some ice cream desert. It was really really good. I think you can buy this in the korean market.

In the restroom, there were these interesting targets, where when you peed in them, it would spin.

Cops on horses.

Go Holland!

Outside of China town was a little bazaar thing going on.

They mainly had crap in it.

Afterwards we went into some bar to watch the French Open finals. Evidently, tennis wasn’t too popular here because there was only 1 other person watching.

Beer overview

While watching, a cat crawled in the bar.

Video of the kitty

An interesting sign in dutch and chinese

A cover of a newspaper. As you see here, the US presidential elections trumps all local politics apparently.

Amsterdam is strongly a biking city, evidenced by the zillions of bikes you see in this bike parking lot.

Bikes, bikes, and more bikes.

Picture of the tram that runs around the city. It wasn’t quite useful to us since we walked around most of the city.

Beware of pickpocketers sign.

Fastfood in a vending machine. I remember seeing a lot of this in Tokyo.

A beer listing menu. As you can see here, they list the percentages of each beer. 12% is quite a big percentage.

We generally were walking around looking for a flea market area afterwards. But we would first pass through a rich area.

Rich part of Amsterdam

The flea market actually closed by the time we got there, but the sun was in a really nice position for us to take some pictures.

Rob

Peter

Dan

Laws of gravity temporarily suspended giving Ben a hard time.

Curiosity killed the cat…

Afterwords we went to de zotte bar which was a recommendation from the bartender from the night before.

It was a very nice and quaint bar. With 206 beers!

We would spend some time here just drinking and relaxing. At 5pm haha. Nice to live up the European lifestyle.

Group pic.

A really good beer. With a 10 week fermentation process.

Duivel.. another heavy beer.

Afterwords, we went walking around.

In europe, many of the canals are quite dirty (like the Seine river), but beautiful towards sunset and at night. I think the exception to this would be Venice.

Hrm.. who is red here..

While walking around, Peter was hungry for some french fries so we got some at this eatery. Also, there was some British guys outside trying to persuade us to go in a club. We were talking with them quite a bit, and I think we got one in trouble for talking too much to us (not doing his job).

The official flag of Amsterdam.

Beware of.. red carpets?

All three of us were suddenly struck with fobiseizures.

Advertising for soccer.

After a relaxing afternoon, we got some Lebanese food near our hotel.

It was quite an interesting shop. They had the old school California and a Wisconsin license plate hanging in side. It’s like.. wtf.. Wisconsin?

A possessed rob.

A bad Carls Jr. ad ripoff.

Mr. sleepy head. Next stop.. prague!

Overall… I think Amsterdam was a pretty cool city, but probably would be a city I wouldn’t come back to. In retrospect I might have planned for 2 days instead of 3, but it was nice having the third day being a very relaxing day.

The sites in Amsterdam are a bit different where they don’t allow photos in many of the exhibits. Whether this is because of the Internet or otherwise is unknown.

Photos are nice, but sometimes experiences are etched into our heads through memory. The opportunity to be there writes a memory in my head that sometimes only surfaces through a relevant conversation.

Loud bass piercing the soul. The fellowship of the fans in a crowd. Feeling the raw passion of the performer. Thousands of voices singing in unison. Putting your hands up in the air ridiculously and jumping up and down to your favorite song. Screaming on the top of your lungs.

To me, that is what watching a live band is like in person. Most of the time, you would think that the music on a cd and what is played live would somewhat be the same. But for a good band, this is so far from the case. Some things can never be replicated in a cd.

I am fortunate enough to have watched all three of my favorite bands in person: Coldplay, Maroon 5, and John Mayer. This is my second time seeing Coldplay while the others I have only seen once. For this concert, I got floor tickets, 19 rows away from the front stage.

I have to say that this experience compared my first Coldplay concert was very different. Last time, we were way up the nose bleeders, and the entertainment quality seemed to be a lot better. The first concert seemed a lot more splashy with some really well choreographed events (balloons coming down from the ceiling and popping with gold graffiti). At the time X&Y was my favorite album

This time around, I would have to say that the splashy quality of the concert went way down. I’m not sure if it was intentional or maybe because the Forum doesn’t support an environment like the first concert.

Regardless, I think this concert was all about one thing.. the music.

Coldplay started off pretty much playing their entire new Viva La Vida cd. The first thing that struck me while singing along with the crowd was that most of their songs lacked a ‘karaoke feel’.

When seeing Maroon 5, I remember singing almost the entire time. Pretty much all of their songs are karaoke friendly.

In this concert, I didn’t know a lot of the lyrics. But it really didn’t matter. When you feel the music pulsating through your body, you know you are feeling it.

Something I’ve always wondered is ‘how do concerts affect me?’ Some things in life are pretty clear, like if you reading certain books you can achieve a degree of self-realization.

But a concert I think allows unbridled expression. For about 2 hours you don’t care what other people are thinking of you and how dorky you look jumping up and down. At the end of the day, it’s all about the love and the music.

And maybe to make this world a better place, that’s something we need more of.

Shandiz and I went to Francos in Cypress for some Italian food.

Shearwater opening

Us really happy in the floor section, row 19

Chris Martin REALLY close.

And of course the obligatory video.

Tuesday is better than Monday..

This is an overview of our room in Amsterdam. We rented a hotel in the outskirts of the city center.

To start off our day, we would go to an Indonesian restaurant the waitress the night before recommended to us. Here you see Heienken Brewery which is near our hotel.

The restaurant we ended up going to.

For lunch, they had special combination specials. As you can see, it is quite pricey for lunch.

Picture of the place mat

Rob and Pete ordered the combination plate while Ben and I ordered a single dish.

Our goal at almost every restaurant is to try a new beer. This beer is umm.. I forgot.

Remember.. in europe, water often costs money, and coke costs more than beer in many places.

The place was decorated very ‘orange’ which is the color of the Netherlands according to a commenter on one of my other blog entries.

We walked down an expensive shopping street after eating, then heading to Rijks Museum. Hmm.. I wonder if its open.

Rijks Museums unfortunately did not allow any pictures to be taken inside.

The museum was quite an amazing one. It detailed much of dutch history, and ended the gallery with the spectacular Nightwatch paining.

This painting was simply amazing to see in person. It was at least 10 feet wide by 10 feet tall. I’m happy Ben was there because he would talk a lot about the little nuances of the painting such as lighting, color, detail, etc.

Outside of the museum, we ran into an “I amsterdam” sign.

I am amsterdam video.

These two people here were trying to swoon this girl. I think it was working hehe.

(Picture choreographed courtesy of Robert :)

r for ‘rob’

These were the guys swooning the girls hehe.

Next stop.. Anne Frank’s house. The real one this time.

Yet another place not allowing photos. The house was quite cool. It is basically a walking educational tour with many media spots where you can learn about how they hid Anne Frank’s family and the different people involved.

Anne Frank’s house had a really weird requirement of wearing your backpacks in the front. Eh?

Another weird restroom.

There are no starbucks in Amsterdam at all, but there are quite a few subways.

More canal madness.

It started POURING during lunchtime, so we found some refuge in a sandwich shop

Sandwich video review

I ordered ‘dutch meat’

Open wide :)

My lunch. (Dutch meat).

Fortunately for us, nobody got pick pocketed (we were wearing money belts)

A condom store we passed by

It was closed so we just took pictures outside.

They made little figurines out of condoms.

We walked by red light district during the day, and it pretty much resembled any regular street. Some guy decided to take a dip in the canal, and immediately got arrested by police.

At night, Ben saw a pool place, so we spent the rest of the night chilling there.

Ben explaining snooker

We were playing on the extra long tables. Ben was a great asset in giving us shooting tips and teaching us snooker.

Rob giving me some pointers on the shot.

Some cool pics with different camera settings.

Ben shooting with a bridge.

More beers to sample.

I hope the paper doesn’t rotate on itself hehe.

Again, like other bars in Amsterdam, each glass has its own beer.

Ben shooting with an extra long cue

Some new friends we befriended that night.

Ah our bartender Fabian, such an awesome guy. We learned quite a bit from our conversations from him. We learned that the red light district used to be a chinese area, that college in Amsterdam is really easy, and that he doesn’t like french people haha. He recommended us to an awesome bar the next day.

Overview of the pool bar

Some night canal shots.

Walking back to the hotel.

The night before we ended up sleeping at 3am knowing we had a 6:24am train to catch from Gare Du Nord Paris to Amsterdam. We set our alarm to 4:30, but we accidentally actually set it for 5:30am. When the alarm went off, we literally got ready in about 10 minutes and started running to the train station. Fortunately for us, we made it with about 20 minutes to spare.

The weather in Amsterdam was considerably warming than Paris.

Upon getting out, the first thing to do would be to drop our stuff off our hotel. Unfortunately it took a little longer for us because I wrote down the wrong address on one of the papers.

One thing to immediately get used to was the excessive amount of letter in the dutch language.

Amsterdam is basically laid out in a circular grid with a bunch of canals creating concentric circles.

The water actually is quite murky though, like the Seine River.

Simply walking around in Amsterdam is quite an experience. It is like EVERYTHING is coming out of you from everywhere. There are tons of bikers as well as cars coming out of drive ways.

The first thing I noticed was the gay friendliness of the city. All the friendly establishments have flags on top.

Another observation we noticed is a lot of ‘orange’.

Orange apparently is one of the official colors of Amsterdam?

And of course, what is Amsterdam without its legalized drugs? Whenever you walk by these shops or coffee shops, you can totally smell weed coming out like no other.

Mellow yellow haha.

We were looking for a place to eat for lunch, and we passed by this place initially and eventually ended up going back on Ben’s suggestion that we find a local place.

So we kept asking all the locals if they spoke English, and later on found out that they ALL do. We asked some people next to us what was good and they said that the croquettes are the best in town here. They also suggested vleiss (turkey?) with peanut butter.

Picture of the menu

Intro video into the restaurant

Roast beef review

Warm vleiss. I ‘hope’ its turkey haha.

We began a Rick Steve’s guided city tour walk (its the tour book we had).

As you can see here they have their own dedicated bike lines everywhere.

In one of the center plazas they had a mock beach scene created.

It is sort of odd to see a beach scene created when this is right in your own backyard back at home.

Pretty lamp post

A big shopping center. By this point, we pretty much have veered from the guidebook tour and are just checking out random things at this point.

Another canal shot.

We saw some French kids in town and we wanted to do a French cheer we learned in Roland Garros, but we never ended up doing it.

Picture of an outdoor cafe.

And of course in Europe, you can get absinthe.

In the canals, you would see boats regularly sail through.

As you see here, there is a hook on top of the building where you can load things into your apt.

We were looking into this one house, and the guy inside said, “Are you looking for Anne Fronk’s house?” (in a heavy Dutch accent). We were like “what?” and he was like, “Anne Fronk, Anne Fronk!”. We were like ohhhh you mean “Anne Frank!” He led us down through this stair case which eventually led to a dead alleyway. He eventually fessed up saying he played a prank on us telling us that Anne Frank’s house was actually across the street. The guy was actually in some type of real estate and I guess was really bored.

More Disneyland type photos.

I’m guessing this guy smokes hehe.

What we eventually learned (aside from this sign being upside down) is that each bar specializes in one beer. So here you see Amstel.

The real Anne Frank house. The line was sort of long so we decided to come back the next day.

Taking a well deserved break.

A gay information point. I went in asking questions on the layout of the town, if everyone speaks English (they do because they learn since grade school), and good bars and restaurants to go to. We would eventually take one of his suggestions later for dinner.

An explicit picture, but an example of the liberalness of Amsterdam.

A store in the major shopping center. Nothing to do with gay stuff apparently.

Another gay friendly establishment.

All coffee shops are supposed to have some registered stuff in front to show if it is legal or not. I’m guessing that means there are some unauthorized coffee shops out there. Oh yea, coffee shops mean they serve weed.

More examples of crazy street signs.

What is interesting about Amsterdam is that there are no Starbucks in the city center anywhere. Instead we went until Bagels and Beans.

This was outside of our hotel.

Another fascinating thing is how close cars park to the canal. I can totally imagine a car going off into the canal by accident.

A pool bar. We would go here the next day.

In their mailboxes you would see “NEE” and all these listings. We were guessing it only allows certain types of mail through.

A sign near the gay information point.

In a city such as Amsterdam, it was quite odd to see a Christian Bookshop.

They sold weed starter kits in the open streets.

Public restrooms.

Throughout the city there was quite a lot of construction going on.

More spiky bars

Playground

Our hotel. We found it by looking through tripadvisor and doing searches on the Internet. No air conditioning, but it had a private bathroom which was nice.

Our room even had its own sink.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, the French Open Semis were starting.

For dinner, we took up the suggestion from a guy in the gay information point.

Specials.

Rob enjoying his beer.

I ordered lamb with an apricot glaze and cous cous.

Another interesting thing about the beer there was that each beer has its own glass.

My meal

Food review

Perspective of the area

The night was quite beautiful. The sun was still setting at 10:30pm which always was trippy for us.

Afterwards we went to the red light district. They don’t allow pictures in the actual district so we took it at the far end.

So if you want through the red light district, you see a bunch of women in the window tapping to lure you in. According to the other guys a lot of the women were hot hehe. The district really is only about 2 blocks long.

Later I wanted to go hit up some gay establishments. This place seemed like everyone was old so we went to the second place.

At the second gay bar, Ben was open to having a drink with me, and the bartender suggested Grolsch Cranberry Rose which was ‘vunderfal’. IT ended up being the best beer on the trip! As you also see here, we used money belts in Amsterdam.