Amsterdam: Once More with Feeling

Our trip has certainly not lacked for structure and planning, and our five-day, four-night Amsterdam reprise was built into early planning some cold late winter night in Casper when we sketched out an itinerary of what we could do with a month in Europe.

We love Amsterdam and already had 9 overnight visits of slowly increasing length in the last six years before we embarked on this journey. While it was a bit painful, we held off for a whole week on this trip before visiting at the end of June. Our second trip was built into the itinerary at the end of our month as a pick-me-up for ourselves, certain were we then that we'd now be sad to be leaving this traveling life behind so soon. Which we are now. We also assumed that we'd be missing our Amsterdam friends and yearning for one last round of nightlife ... another vision which came true.

It is worth it, on a vacation, to be professionally massaged at least once.

We made good use of our time, lingering in the Hague long enough for cake and coffee in the late morning (and an impromptu birthday wish to our hosts' friend) and still arriving in Amsterdam and even being well-settled into our hotel room before 1 pm on a pleasantly sunny Thursday. We reconquered our well-known trip chores quickly -- breaking a few 50s on souvenirs to get change and small bills, dropping off laundry for pickup tomorrow, hitting shops including tracking down a much-sought Claudius the God by Robert Graves at the American Book Center, filling the fridge with sandwiches, salad, juice and beer, and resting. We connected to hotel wireless, and got the laptop set up as a jukebox (we brought the wrong set of cords last time, depriving ourselves of our music for four nights). And still it might have been 3:30, at most.

An early happy hour and a long stroll to walk off calories and enjoy the rare sunny day still left us plenty of R&R time, a chance to picnic from our grocery haul and linger in the room for a nap before we finally headed down to Reguliersdwarstraat and hit Soho just before happy hour began at 10.

The highlight of a long evening at this wood-paneled, British-feeling pub were friends-of-friends, one of whom we'd been introduced to a few weeks back and who had been part of the Berlin group from Amsterdam whom we meant to connect with but never could track down. Turns out they'd had serious traffic problems and hotel reservation changes within their group, but we did get to see some cell-phone snapshots showing us the Berlin experience we'd missed in exchange for the precious extra visit with John. We chatted the hours away, breaking through sheets of rain later to enjoy Hotspot, a cozy neighborhood singalong bar on Amstel, and then later backtracking to the Exit Cafe on Reguliersdwarstraat after 3 a.m. when the other bars have all closed. We were on our way to bed within a half-hour while a body-to-body crowd of Amsterdam bar-crawlers were still just getting warmed up. It is true, as all our Amsterdammer friends tell us, that the gay nightlife scene is a shadow of what it used to be, as is the nightlife scene in general. But there is a contingent who are still carrying on their proud traditions.

Friday was a delightful day altogether - clothes washed and folded for us for 8 Euro at Powders on Kerkstraat just off Leidsestraat, a lunch nextdoor at the place with the English Breakfast sign in the window, except we were 5 minutes past the end of breakfast, freeing Guy up to have a fantastic Dutch pancake and relegating Jason to a tuna salad sandwich, which fortunately enough was very good. A restaurant meal was a nice luxury and seated outdoors the people-watching on this cloudy but pleasant lunch hour was fascinating.

A long afternoon of wandering, rest, windowshopping and happy hour brought us to a deep desire to have a really nice, romantic dinner together somewhere we hadn't already been. This was the single-longest restaurant selection discussion we had in the entire month together, but after a string of reasonable choices that inspired no particularly warm romantic feeling, we suddenly found ourselves in front of Rose's Cantina on Reguliersdwarstraat, which boasts a very large garden dining space in the back, an upscale but relatively bargain priced Mexican and Spanish menu, and an enticing selection of well-made cocktails (choosing margaritas and mojitos required some deliberation). The tuna tartare was tearfully delicious. Guy had fish tacos (his first time) and Jason chose a lamb chop/lamb filet entree. Sitting in the garden, peering into the backs of the stately Herengracht canal houses, we found the romantic dinner we had been looking for.

After dinner we met up at last with our friend David, who had kindly shown us so much of Utrecht on our last visit, and were able to enjoy a few drinks and catch up on each other. He was on his way to Belgium to take up a new job within the next few days. We enjoyed the peoplewatching in front of April until he eventually had to be on his way. By then our friend Bob had arrived out for the night and we sat with him sipping soft drinks while he caught a late dinner at the surprisingly delicious Wok and Cook walk-in stir-fry-to-go restaurant. A short stop into Soho then elapsed into hours as we filled the gezellig little alcove with the round table in the front (by now we were actually scheming to grab choice seating when we could get it) and watched the friendly company gather around our friends, talking about the world and travel and jobs and school, and just feeling very pleased to be there.

Saturday we managed to get an English Breakfast down our gullets on time, HP Sauce and all, though this time without tomato slices, sadly. Happy and energized despite cloudbursts, we made our way toward the old city, toward the Nieuwmarkt, where we rediscovered the place we got life-saving foot massages during our 2006 trip. We each indulged in hour-long table massages to work off some of the deep soreness and fatigue from walking, travel exertions and strange beds. Since they cost real money, I went in hoping they would help the soreness quite a bit ... in fact though, I think they just about saved my vacation. The massage immediately increased my flexibility and lifted the aches and pains away. I'm sure some folks would not go into a random Chinese-run massage business, and lay on a table in their underwear getting more or less manhandled, crackled, popped and reshaped, but to those people I say, respectfully, get over yourself and go for it. It is worth it, on a vacation, to be professionally massaged at least once.

We took a nice long walk through the center of Amsterdam, stopping for occasional window shopping and in a cafe, still enjoying the fading bliss of the massages, as we made our way on foot and by tram to the new public library building, Bibliotheek, in the dockland redevelopment area to the east of Centraal Station. We had made plans the night before with Bob to see this new public facility which had just opened about a week ago and which still had a few miscellaneous features still being fine-tuned. Approaching the library was a maze of elevated boardwalk segments tying together the Botel and other floating attractions with the rapidly-being-developed old dockland segment adjoining the railroad line. The 6-story library tower brings an instant appreciation for the value Amsterdammers currently place on their public spaces. Reading rooms, shelving with special lighting for the spines, huge sections of computer stations with views into the open center, all combine to make you want to read books, watch movies and hear music. On the top floor, a La Place fancy cafeteria offers an impressive selection of hot and cold gourmet soup, fruit plates, lunch food and desserts. And an outdoor dining terrace on the 6th floor balcony boasts impressive views of the city.

A long walk home through the far eastern edge of the old city, through unfamiliar neighborhoods, a nap and some late dinner at Wok and Cook (a delicious green curry stands out in particular) brought us around to another night out. Beers and conversation were capped at the end of the night by a walking tour with friends through the mayhem of the Red Light District, which in all our many visits to Amsterdam we had never explored at night. Amid hooting and hollering by rowdy groups of young men speaking various languages, we wandered through the narrow streets and alleys, seeing the working girls' heads turn at the sight of four handsome young men who were not in the market for their services. Late-night revellers in motor boats revved their engines on the canals suddenly, splashing the crowds on the banks, who cheered them on.

Sunday was to be the day we headed out with Bob to the beach at Zandfoort, but we awoke to persistent rains which were spread out across the region despite early predicitions of a sunny beautiful day. With those plans cancelled, we breakfasted in a cafe crowded with dripping wet tourists buying coffee to get out of the downpour. We improvised an afternoon's entertainment and enjoyed a low-key afternoon and evening until the opening of a unique Sunday-only nightclub approached. Our friend Michiel offered to take us to de Trut, a nonprofit club which grew out of Amsterdam's squatter movement and took over an old commercial building in the trendy and hip Jordaan neighborhood of western Amsterdam. The line begins forming an hour before the 11 pm opening, and space is limited, so we stood in line amid Dutch, French and German speaking people waiting patiently before entering the club. Inside, a dance space teems with fashionable, fun looking young people enjoying drinks bargain priced at one Euro. We soaked in the ambience before hoofing it back into the center of town for one more brief batch of beers at the tables outside Soho. With our hours in Amsterdam coming to a close, we made plans with Bob for a day trip to Rotterdam on Tuesday to see a little more of that wonderful city.

We turned in respectably early and were easily checked out of the hotel on Monday, wistfully grabbing our last Amsterdam breakfast for a long time and catching a train ride back to the Hague ...