Travel: A short break to Amsterdam

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know a couple of weeks
ago Jim and I headed to Amsterdam. It was a bit of a throw away weekend booked
back in August as Jim had some airmiles that were running out. He’d just found out
about a beer festival he wanted to go to and  I’d never been, so he booked us the flights
for a long weekend and bought us the festival tickets.

Jim’s been over a few times for boys trips and stag do’s and
the likes so he knows the city a little bit so I trusted him to be able to
entertain me without taking me to the places they went to on those trips. I do
not need to see some of the places they’ll have been on the stag do’s. But because of this I went without a plan of what I wanted to do or see, and it was lovely to do that for a change.

We stayed outside the city, in a really cool little Airbnb with a Wurlitzer in it and a couple of bikes at our disposal. It was a lovely little place, close to the tram stops, within
walking distance of some great bars, about 10minutes away from the Foodhallen and a short ride from a little
park too. Oh and it took about 30 minutes to walk in to the centre of Amsterdam too. 

We arrived on a Thursday night and headed home on the Sunday
afternoon with a Saturday at the Borefts Beer Festival, so whilst we didn’t have
the most time in the world in Amsterdam, what time we did have, I loved!  We spent our days mostly wandering in the
crazy sunshine without a plan. Just seeing the canals and the cute houses. 


We
ate Kobe burgers, and fancy omlettes, pastries from markets and little bags of
marzipan fruits, In the Foodhallen we sampled ham cones, chicken wraps, pastry cakes ice creams and doughnut chicken burgers. We ducked in breweries and beer shops and followed the poke map on
Jim’s phone. I dragged him to The Hoxton for a photostrip, and to the cheese
museum when the queues at the Anne Frank house ticket only. And I took photos
of every cute doorway, bike and basket combo or canal I saw, and to Jim’s
credit, he didn’t stop me once.

We took a bike ride to the local park on bikes
so big I couldn’t touch the peddles properly. We sampled a lot of what the
Foodhallen had to offer. And then we headed on a little train adventure to
drink some beer! The beer festival was about an hour by train at the Brouwerij de Molen in Bodegraven. The brewery bar is based beneath an awesome windmill.

We’d pre bought the tickets to the festival with tokens but I wasn’t really drinking during the trip because of some medication, which was badly
timed I know, but I did have a taste of all the beers we had – I just didn’t drink as
much of them as I could have! I totally fell in love with the sour beers, the sourer the better for me! We also had a super Omnipollo Mango Lassi beer and a great Cascade cherry number too!

The not drinking did mean that I sampled loads of the soft drink flavours out there too! I had a few pretty awesome cherry beers, but my favourite was the Albert Heijn cucumber water! Give me more of that, every day please!

And of course I made a mini movie of our time over there. Something to show how wonderfully sunny it was, how much fun we had and how beautiful the city is. We have friends moving there this winter so I can’t wait to get back and let them show us around their favourite bits of the city too!

    

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