June 1, 2012
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(written on 14 February 2013)
So, remember how I mentioned that we went to the De Bekeerde Suster pub last night? Where we had some beers? And how we'd had some whiskies at home in advance as well? And how we went to Wildeman afterwards where we also didn't just drink mineral water? Well, especially in De Bekeerde Suster I kept warning Andy and Colin that the beer that gets served there, Manke Monnik, is as delicious as it is heavy. And that it should be drunk, not like a lager, but more like a wine because otherwise you'd not be feeling too super the next day. So all in all it's quite cynical that I was the one who wasn't feeling too wonderful this morning. Sure, I went through the motions of setting the table and making coffee and tea... but then I could quite manage to eat my breakfast and I kept breaking out in a cold sweat. While Andy and Colin seemed to be perfectly OK, I excused myself and sat on the couch for a while. And while they got dressed and then went out for a walk through town (bumping into Anthony somewhere along the way) I lied down on said couch and closed my eyes just a bit. An hour and a half later I got up... and felt fine. It was quite strange, not feeling super one moment and feeling perfectly fine a little sleep later.
I called Andy to find out where they were and we met not long after on Leidsestraat. They had eaten already so we just continued walking through some of the streets in the ring of canals that surround the oldest parts of Amsterdam. Shop owners in nine of the little side streets between the big canals have decided to do some united marketing so these streets are now called 'negen straatjes' (nine little streets) and they do have some really nice shops. We walked through about six of those streets and even had coffee and cakes in one of them, at Pompadour, a wonderful little coffee house with exquisite cakes.
Through some other streets (such as Haarlemmerstraat) we walked back home at the end of the afternoon, only to leave the house not much later to take a metro from Nieuwmarkt station to Zuid station, where the office is. It was just after 5 on this Friday afternoon when we took an elevator up to the 26th floor so that Colin and Andy could admire the wide views over the city. There, they met Caryn as well, my colleague from Cape Town who is in Amsterdam for two weeks and who will be joining us tomorrow for food and film. "I don't know how you can work with such a view!" said Andy and it's true that it is still an awesome thing to be able to look out over the city from this high up.
We left the office and had a wine in the bar opposite the office and then made our way to Ian's new place (just a tad bigger than my place) for a super evening of lovely wines (champagne included) and Japanese style food. We even sat outside for a while because the weather today was just a bit better than yesterday. It was a really nice evening that lasted to about midnight when we got on one of the last trams towards the city centre. Even though the day had quite a rough start (for me at least) it still was a very successful day in the end.
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