Travelogue: Amsterdam - City of Canals
Posted on Monday, January 14, 2013
For some odd reason, for the short period of time Justin and I were in Amsterdam (one night, but essentially less than 24 hours!), the weather was absolutely miserable, which has rather affected my impression of the city. That said, it definitely was an interesting experience of which, I can't share much of online.
I didn't take many photos of the city at night because of the rather heavy rain. We spent some time being voyeurs over at Amsterdam's famous red light district, marveling about how open the city is about its sex trade. It's something that you won't ever see so openly in Singapore, but definitely an eye opener! Photography of the prostitutes is forbidden, so I guess you can only see it with your own eyes!
We hardly saw much of Amsterdam. Something I regret. Never going to travel to a city for just one night ever again - the amount of time spent on traveling and airport transfer in that short two days was simply not worth it!
Lunch at Wok to Walk! First taste of proper Asian food since arriving in Europe :) This is Leonadi, our fake "tour guide" for Amsterdam!
The concept of Wok to Walk, as you can see from the menu above, is of a Pick N' Mix style. You can pick your base (brown rice, white rice, udon, egg noodles...); your "favourites" (prawns, chicken, pork, mushrooms, veggie...); and your sauce (curry coconut, oyster sauce, sweet and sour...). It's a fun idea, but I imagine this potentially going very wrong for the uneducated who may think that udon would actually go well with oyster sauce or something!
As Asians, I think we make the right choices. Food wise, it's tasty, quick to serve, warm and authentic. Hell, they even have Kikkoman sauce!
As if we're not full enough, we head on nearby to try these waffles that apparently everyone eats when they come here!
Finally, we actually walk around and see the city because we realised that we had zero pictures besides of Walk to Wok!
Amsterdam's bicycling culture definitely is as prevalent as people say it is. It's really quite impressive, and a pity that we will probably never be able to adopt it in Singapore because of our sucky weather. I definitely think that Amsterdam will be infinitely more pleasant in the summer or fall, as I would have liked to take a boat down the canal or cycle around. That said, I feel that I got whatever I came for in Amsterdam this time round, and though the travelling was tiring, at least we made the most of our time!
