Last Dinner in Amsterdam

We are home! For Mark, and anyone else following our culinary journey, here are some pics of our last meal at Seasons on Herenstraat near our hotel. Not the most memorable, and really the only restaurant recommended by our hotel that we didn't love. The food we had in Amsterdam generally exceeded our expectations of Dutch cuisine (you probably noticed - we posted a lot of pics). Our favourite meals in Amsterdam were at de Rieger (Dutch, amazing ribs), Moeder (home style Dutch comfort food and "hodge podge" brisket-style meat with rhubarb and apple sauce), Luna (Argentinian steakhouse), and Blauw (Indonesian).

Afternoon Refreshment at Museumsplein

Van Gogh Museum

Winkel's

Apple pie, coffee, sparkling water and mint tea. It is supposed to be Amsterdam's best apple pie and it really was very good.

NBA store in Amsterdam

It seems that they are everywhere! Sadly, no Raptors products were available.

More organic market fare.

Organic Farmers Market

Ken and I went to the organic market this morning. Needless to say, Ken found these products intriguing.

Amsterdam the Unsteady

This photo really defines Amsterdam to me - houses on rakish angles, looking like the only thing holding them up is the house next to them. Surely gravity must eventually win?

OK, there was ONE interesting thing at Volendam

The ships sail with black sails, apparently marking their loss of access to the sea with the ZuiderZee project.

Volendam

Sara has posted photos of nice things we did yesterday. I will post about one about Tourist Hell, aka Volendam, which we also visited. As Marken and, to a large degree, Edam have accommodated tourists without prostituting themselves, Volendam has taken the opposite approach, squeezing every tourist Euro possible out of visitors. We should have known what we were in for based on this poster, on display at their Visitors Office.

Lovely seaside at Volendam.

More charming Volendam.

Volendam at its worst.

Edam

Dinner at Moeder

Street Waffles

Local footwear

How the Dutch get to the ATM

End of the Day

And end of the bottle and chocolates. Sorry about the chocolates, Mark.

Gouda Cheese Market

Looks like I double blogged the cheese market pics. Apparently, it was THAT good!

Kinderdijk

I hope you like pictures of windmills! Today, we rented a car and drove to Gouda (cheese photos forthcoming) and then to Kinderdijk, a Unesco world heritage site. Very pretty and quintessentially Dutch scene. We rode bikes along a path and went inside and climbed to the top of a windmill. We didn't realize that people actually live inside them.

Gouda Cheese Market