Amster damm your cute!

When our apartment booking in front of our favourite daily food market Place Monge in our favourite 5th Arrondissement, more specifically, the Old Latin Quarter got cancelled late; we were scrambling to book anything remotely as good. When we did make a booking it was for a completely new part of town close to the Eiffel Tower in the 7th.

We could not book the last night planned and we had already locked in all other dates so we had a spare night. We decided to train it to Amsterdam for the night and then fly on to London, our next 5 night destination. We are doing 5 nights in 5 European places + Amsterdam now for 1 night.

There are 1 Million people living here and apparently there are 1 million bicycles here (Source from Ahmed our Uber driver). It feels like there are more bikes than people here. And no, we have not staged it for there to be bikes in almost every photo here.

In the Herengracht Canal area where we were staying, there were many cute and really unique boutiques for all kinds of shopping along with plenty of vintage too. It was a great place to land for the 1 night we were there and we got a good feel for the City without seeing any Red light district or feeling the hash bar scene really at all. Amsterdam to K and I now is re-calibrated from our previous poorly informed view of this place.

Sorry Amsterdam, we think you are cute as a button. And yes, we did just come from Paris and the Marais district known for its uber cute and unique shopfronts. This was different though and we liked it.

And to food where the Dutch celebrate the love of chocolate in a way like few others. Breakfast was a particular treat. Even on the train coming here we were treated with these lovely chocolate sprinkles. Cue the breakfast buffet where we hit the motherlode .

The Dutch and Amsterdam are also famous for their hand cut chips and mayonnaise that they call patat frites. In this cold weather, they are fantastic. They are served two ways (although with a million varieties of sauces) and this seems to be split down two distinct lines. Crispy and soggy. As is the long held Barlow way, crispy rules on all things which means sauces must be on the side so as to dip using the fingers; this the the C way. Soggy chip lovers want the amalgamation of once were crispy chips with sauces to blend into the fabulousness seemingly arriving at the whole being greater than the parts; this is the K way.