Day Three: Recovering a Harshed Mellow

We agreed that Peter would sleep as long as he needed to in order to rid himself of his pot-hangover. I slept until 8, which is really late for me, and then spent the morning reading a book and studying Irish flashcards. (Consecutively, not concurrently, I hasten to point out.) I hung out in our room and also in the lobby.

The lobby had this cool rotating rack with little information cards on it. The cards were for local restaurants, museums, and tour places. I found one that was entitled "Hash and Marihuana Facts and Tips." The winking joint on the front of the card is a little freaky, but he has some important wisdom to report: "Using HASH or WEED can make you happy and relaxed, but there are also risks. Keep this card with you and read the tips on the reverse before use."

The reverse was, as promised, a virtual treasure trove of facts and tips. The first tip would have been most useful the day before: "Hash and weed come in different strengths. Always have a short puff and wait a few minutes before having the next." Then there is a little bit about possible side effects (heart palpitations and dizziness). The next tip also would have been handy to have in writing the day before: "Once is a while, cannabis may have an ill effect. If this happens you will feel sick and scared. This is annoying but not dangerous. Go to a quiet place and eat something sweet. After an hour the worst will be over."

Ed. Note: The above tips are direct quotes from the fact card, reported exactly as printed. Apparently, you have to pay extra for commas.

My favourite part of the card is at that bottom, where they list bad combinations. "Hash + magic mushrooms can lead to very nasty trips and may cause a trip to last longer." If you know me at all, you know that I will have nothing to do with mushrooms in any shape, form, or incarnation. I don't care if they are magic or made out of 24 carat gold. I asked Peter before our trip if he planned to try magic mushrooms (he didn't – he had no interest in hallucinogens), because there was no way I could be any part of that.

At 11, I had to wake Peter up because even sleeping-in has limits. He was in fair shape, not 100% though since the violent puking had given him muscle strain. For the rest of our trip, he couldn't breathe too deeply or suddenly because of his sore muscles. Mentally though, he was fine – no ill or lasting effects.

The plan for the rest of the day was simple – get some brunch somewhere, have a boat tour, do a bit of exploring and a bit more relaxing. We picked a pancake bakery that was rather close to our hotel and walked there along the Prinzengracht canal. It was sunny but chilly and we were just about near the Westerkerk when Peter's mobile rang. It was one of this IT-consulting clients, with, of course, an urgent computer problem. Peter settled onto a rather comfy wooden chair in the plaza next to the church while I wandered around. The sights included a shop selling postcards, a shop selling fragile ceramic things, a gay and lesbian information kiosk, a hot dog cart with two little sausage-shaped terriers tied up to it (makes you wonder, doesn't it?), a tram stop, and a bum peeing into the canal. Yeah, Peter was on the phone for a while.

Eventually, we started to walk while he did his consulting thing. To make a long story short, although we found the pancake place, we never went in. Peter was trying to clear up the problem, so I had a stroll along the canal. I found a street market and checked it out. It was the most claustrophobia-inducing street market I've ever seen. The tents were set up with virtually no space between them, resulting in narrow alleys that were completely choked with people. One person with a pram could cause a shopping traffic jam. Plus, most of the tents were full of absolute crap. It looked like 50 people had emptied the contents of their grannies' attics. There were a couple of tents selling what looked like nice bolts of fabric, but they were the exception. I had to fight my way out of the market and back to the road because the place was making me feel majorly trapped.

On my way back to Peter, he rang me and said he had to find an Internet café, right away. We met up, but somehow, the plan changed and instead he had to walk someone with minimal computer experience through a series of complex steps, all over the phone. I loitered by the canal and watched a family of weird moorhen-looking-things paddle around and eat their lunch.

An hour and a half after we'd set off for brunch, Peter was finished with his consulting. His mellow had been nearly irrevocably harshed and we were both starving. Plus, when we got back to the pancake place, we found a line out the door. Regular readers of my trip reports will know that low blood sugar, when combined with traveling, usually causes Peter and I to turn on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Not this time, though. We enjoyed a walk in towards the city centre and went into a spacious and airy café bar type of place.

It was overpriced and too trendy by half, but we were starving so we didn't care too much. (I lie a little – I always care about value for money and I have a huge problem with paying € 7 for a brie sandwich that consists of only a partially stale roll and 2 slices of brie.) We sat by a window and watched the traffic go by, seeing the Heiniken horse wagon.

Fortified by lunch, we set out for a boat tour. For our trip, we used two guidebooks – Lonely Planet 's "Amsterdam City Guide" and "Amsterdam on a Budget" from Let's Go. Peter is a big fan of the two guidebook system, since it means that we can both look at a book at the same time without fighting over it. The two guidebook system was first pioneered on our honeymoon tour of the Scottish Highlands in 2004 and, like most great inventions, it was purely accidental. I couldn't decide which book I liked best, so I bought both. (One was a Lonely Planet – I can't remember what the other one was. Maybe a Frommer's. I can handle Frommer's in a pinch but I absolutely despise Fodor's.)

Although I have previously asserted that I am marching comfortably towards middle-age and am thus too old to use Let's Go travel guides, I do appreciate their budget-mindedness. I would not use them to find a place to stay (because, as was established in Slovenia, I am too f***ing old to stay in a hostel). But they do tend to have good advice on cheap eats and exploring off the beaten path. And Lonely Planet, well, they are my favourite manufacturer of guidebooks although I do not like their tendency to focus on the décor and clientele of restaurants at the expense of the food and service. But I know now – if the review of the place uses the words "trendy," "hip," "glitterati," "fashion models," or "contempo-cool," we are better off finding another restaurant.

We had pretty good luck with the guidebooks on this trip, but they did have one fatal failing – they had bugger-all useful information on the canal boat tours. It's my belief that at least 85% of tourists in Amsterdam have a checklist of 3 things they want to do. In no particular order, these are:
1. Smoke pot.
2. Visit the Van Gogh museum.
3. Take a canal boat tour.

The books are fantastic in giving minute detail on #1, they have a fair bit of information on #2, but they are so sleeping on the job when it comes to the canal boat tours. Maybe it's just the tours are all pretty much the same, but we could have used a decent recommendation. Our approach to selecting a tour left something to be desired. We walked down to Centraal Station to the tourist office in the hopes of finding some pamphlets or someone to offer advice. All we found was a queue 20-deep and some posters about train travel.

Our next strategy was to walk out along the canal, ostensibly looking for the launch spot for the boat line I used the last time I was in Amsterdam. (The memorably named Lovers company.) We didn't see them, so when a man dressed like a captain told us his boat was leaving in 2 minutes, we bought our tickets and hopped on board.

It was a passably fine way to spend an hour, but I had the nagging feeling that the tour could have been better. The 4-language audio track provided hints on where to look and a little context for what we were seeing, but I still had the nagging feeling that we weren't learning or seeing enough. The boat was comfortable enough although the glass ceiling and the beaming sun made me feel like I was in a greenhouse and it also made me more than a bit sleepy.

We were well into late afternoon when the boat tour was finished. We selected a bruin café from Lonely Planet and enjoyed our walk there. Bruin cafes are sort of like pubs. They are relaxed places where you can have a drink and hang out. The name comes from the way the walls inside are stained brown from centuries of cigarette smoke.

De Sluyswacht is right on a canal, in a ridiculously slanted small building that used to be a lock-keeper's house. It looks like it's been huffed at and puffed at but luckily, it was only put a little off-kilter. Peter had a beer and I had a Kuala with coffee, which we carried up a steep flight of wooden stairs to an open room that felt a lot like a club house. After a bit, we even managed to get a seat at the window, which has a tremendous view up the canal. (This link is just to some random guy's picture – Peter did not bring his camera on this trip.)

We passed an enjoyable bit of time alternating between staring out the window and perusing the guidebooks to locate a place to have dinner. Peter had decided he wanted sushi. I don't eat cooked fish, so you can be damn sure I don't eat raw fish. Getting sushi is a huge treat for Peter, especially now that we live in Dublin, so I am willing to suck it up and take one for the team, which usually means either having teriyaki-something or fashioning a dinner out of carefully selected appetizers.

Peter picked a place out near the museum campus, so we took the tram out there. This was only our second tram ride, which is a testament to how walk-able of a city Amsterdam is. The sushi establishment turned out to be not so much a restaurant as a sushi deli where a Dutch woman packaged of pre-made sushi pieces from a cold display case. There was no way I could eat anything from the place, so Peter got his sushi to go and we hopped on a different tram to get back near our hotel, where I'd remembered seeing an upscale cafeteria-like place.

The cafeteria place turned out to be a bit too upscale for my pedestrian tastes. I told Peter it was okay, that he should just have his sushi and then we could get my dinner later. So Peter had passable sushi, sitting on a park bench overlooking a canal, which I imagine is not exactly what he pictured when he said he wanted sushi for dinner. After his dinner, we hung out in our hotel room for a few hours until my hunger level made foraging necessary.

We ended up about a block from the hotel, at a place called Goodies, which turned out to be not just a clever name. I had the best fried-brie salad that I have ever had. The lettuce was crisp and deep green and most assuredly not of the wretched iceberg variety. The brie cubes were fried to perfection and when I cut them open, they became little cups of melted cheese. I was a happy girl and I think I got the much better end of our dinner bargain.

Goodies, like a lot of Amsterdam establishments, had a resident cat, a medium-sized black and white male whom we later learned was named Mickey When we came in, Mickey was sitting on the bar with his back to the restaurant, having a bit of a bath. It's apparently exhausting work, licking your fur, because when he was done, he curled up on the bar for a nap Sometime later, a guy came into the bar, scooped Mickey up and deposited him on a nearby table. Mickey remained in his curled-up position and kept napping on the table, eventually rolling onto his back with his paws delightfully curled over his chests. He reminded me so much of our old cat, Jeeves, that I wanted to scoop him up and bring him home with us.

Shortly after my dinner arrived, Mickey came over to check it out. He's quality control, you know. I wasn't going to feed someone else's cat, so he soon tired of me and went over to hang out with Peter, who had great fun trying to find that spot on the back of a cat that, when scratched vigorously, causes the cat to go into a frenzy of uncontrollable licking. But then, of course, another table got their dinners and Mickey had to fulfill his inspection duties.

We had another early night as we had big plans for the next day, Peter's birthday.