[Itinerary Page]The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
February 9 - A Quick Break in Amsterdam
The direct flights on Northwest from Delhi to Seattle involve two ten-hour legs -- Delhi to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Seattle. That sure beats a series of connections, but there was no way we were going to volunteer for that much flight time in one stretch ... and as it turned out, Margene would have been too sick to handle it anyway. Fortunately, we had already planned to slow the pace and break the trip for a day in Amsterdam to re-acclimate, relax, refresh, regroup and generally re-balance before the final push for home.
A secondary motive, at least for me, was to visit with Joe Los, a college classmate of mine who lives in Amsterdam. Truth is that we didn't know each other all that well at Cornell but we re-connected when I took on the role of class columnist for the Cornell Hotel School magazine. Joe and I have been trading messages for over a year and a half now and I have come to appreciate his dry sense of humor. I thought it would be a fun afternoon ... and it was all that and more.
Margene was still down with the stomach bug and just wanted to sleep all day anyway, so I left her at the rather amazing citizenM hotel at the airport and headed off for a boys afternoon out in Amsterdam. The hotel is right at the airport, the train into town leaves right from the terminal and the tram to Joe's house leaves from the central train station. It was all pretty easy once I figured out how to buy tickets. You can buy tickets for the train from kiosks in the airport, but only with a Dutch credit card. After trying every card in my pocket, I finally figured that out, found an actual ticket office and got myself legal (although nobody on the train ever asked to see my ticket). The trains were new, clean, quiet, frequent ... and quite full.
From there it got a little tougher. The tram requires a separate ticket which it appeared could only be bought in a free-standing ticket office hidden behind some construction fences. The Dutch system involves taking a number and milling around with a bunch of other ticket-seekers until your number comes up. It was rather like getting a drivers license all over again. But the trams were also frequent and within a few minutes of finally snagging a tram ticket, I was walking along the canal to Joe's house.
And what a house it was! Built in 1684, twenty-foot gilded ceilings, historical art on the walls (Joe estimates that one of the paintings could fetch $100,000 euros at auction) and a real sense of place. He even had the record of everyone who had ever lived in the house since it had been built. (Joe did point out that the painting in question belonged to someone else, but I still bet the house will bring an impressive price when the market returns).
© 2009 Restaurant Doctor