This day featured one of the things I was most looking forward to- a food tour!
We opted for the Hungry Birds food tours, based on recommendations on the internet. I like going on guided tours, and I thought that a tour where we got to eat periodically might be a good one for the kids.
The tour wasn’t until noon, so after breakfast (coldcuts, cheese, bread and leftover noodles) we decided to first walk down to the floating flower market. Along the way we passed this fun sculpture on the side of a building:
And more buildings with detailed architectural features, like these statues on the side of this building:
And these rows and rows of shutters:
This alley of plants:
The floating market itself was quite crowded. The stalls in the market are on boats floating on the canal, though I didn’t realize that until I took a step back too look at them; when walking through the market, the stores just look like open stalls lining the street. We didn’t linger, but it made for a nice stroll to see the colourful flowers and bins of bulbs.
That was kind of the extent of the tulips that we saw. Everyone seems to be shocked that we didn’t go see the tulip fields, even though we were in Amsterdam at the start of tulip season. The fields are outside of Amsterdam and by all accounts very crowded. I don’t love going to super crowded places – I always feel like I can’t get a good view of the attractions, and that the lines move too slowly to be enjoyable while at the same time the crowds push one along so one can’t savor things at one’s own pace. Perhaps if we return to the Netherlands during tulip season, I might book a tour to see the tulips – something a little more controlled.
After we wandered through the floating flower market, we headed to the meeting spot for our food tour. The food tour was in the Pijp district of town, and area that has a more urban vibe than the flower market’s historic canals and leaning houses. When out tour guides arrived, they brought the first tasty bite of the food tour: cookies from Van Stepele.
The story behind these viral cookies is that the person who started the bakery wanted to create one perfect cookie, so people wouldn’t have to choose. The guide said the line is usually around the block for the cookies but since there is only one cookie, it moves really fast.
Next stop: Surinamese sandwiches and fried plantains from Tjin’s. This part of the food tour delved into the history of the Dutch and the different cultural influences to be found in Amsterdam. I wasn’t familiar with Suriname at all, save for a reference to it in the musical Candide. (It’s a little shameful how much of my knowledge of history comes primarily from opera and musicals.) Suriname is a small country in South America which was colonized by, among other nations, the Dutch. Slaves from Africa and Asia were brought there and it has a wide mix of cultural influences. When Suriname gained it independence from the Dutch in the 1970s, many Surinamese people came to the Netherlands to maintain their Dutch citizenship. The sandwiches we had from Tjin’s Toko were spicy and flavorful – they featured a curried mash of potatoes and chicken on a bun with some home made hot sauce. We also had some fried plantains on the side.
The next stop was a FEBO automat. I’d never been to an automat before and at first I was a little dubious at the idea of a hot vending machine. The croquettes , however, turned out to be crunchy and tasty. I can absolutely see how they come to be a late night hot spot. The kids had fun putting the coins in an opening the door to retrieve their food.
After the automat came my favorite spot of the tour: herring! We stopped at a fish stand and had a very classic Dutch snack- brined herring – along with some fried cod. The options for herring was to have it cut up into little pieces, or to have it all in one piece which you would eat by holding it over your mouth by the tail. Of course we opted for the “hold the fish by the tail” option.
Here comes the fish….
Continuing on, we had cookies and coffee from Brood, a bakery with a mission to bring their stores worldwide, particularly to developing nations, as a way to contribute jobs and money to their economies. Then we wandered through Sarphatipark, an expanse of green space in De Pijp area. This would become one of the kids’ favorite places in Amsterdam because they had this really cool adventure playground, with a zipline and more challenging play structures.
After the park, we wandered through Albert Cuyp Market, an outdoor market that started as an informal collection of vendors and carts selling their wares, but which soon became so popular and chaotic that in 1905, the city government made it an official market. They have all sorts of vendors; when we walked through, in addition to vegetables and fish and cheese and snacks, I saw booths selling clothing, fabric, and various house hold items.
The food tour wandered the market, and stopped at a couple stalls of classic Dutch treats. First Stop, Poffertijes, the little Dutch pancakes. We really enjoyed watching this machine squirt batter into the hot molds and then seeing the man at the counter flip the poffertijes over at lightning speed. The pancakes are then put on a plate, layered with butter and a sprinkled with powdered sugar. They were very tasty and mostly a vehicle for melted butter.
Dutch Licorice, which comes in all sorts of flavors and shapes, including some shapes not suitable for children. I liked the salty licorice the best, but there was a peanut butter one that I also really enjoyed.
Stroopwafel, that combination of cookie and caramel. This stall – Rudi’s – claims to use the “original” stroopwaffel recipe. Their stroopwaffels were delicate and gooey, very different from the store bought variation. The other claim to fame is that this stall is run by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Our final stop was at a brown cafe, one of the casual cozy bars where people in Amsterdam go to have a drink, grab a bit of simple food, catch up with friends, and just hang out and wile away the time. The brown cafe we went to on our tour has been around since 1877, with the building being even older than that.
Our tour group huddled together at the bar and at a table near the bar and we chatted about what foods we liked and what we wanted to try again. The kids had Cokes, I had a mint tea, and the Husband had a koopstoje, which involved drinking an practically overflowing glass of Dutch juniper gin, with one’s hands behind one’s back, and then chasing it down with a beer.
Even though the tour was supposed to end at 4pm, we were at the bar chatting until 4:30pm. Afterwards, our guide walked us back to the Albert Cuyp market, since that was an easy landmark and we all went our separate ways. The kids wanted to go back to the playground at the Sarphatipark, so we headed there, though the 3 year old fell asleep on the way and we had to carry her for a bit. I settled onto a bench with her asleep on me while the two older kids plyaed at the playground. We had promised them ice cream, but they were so busy playing, that we ended up skipping that.
For dinner we decided to get dinner at an Indonesian place that the food tour organizers had recommended. One of the things I really wanted to try while in Amsterdam was a rice table, or rijstaffel, which is a meal with many small dishes served with rice. We ordered both the regular and the vegetarian rijstaffel and were presented with many tiny dishes of a wide variety of food. There was chicken in coconut sauce, chicken in peanut sauce, tempeh in coconut sauce and tofu in peanut sauce, green beans cooked in coconut milk, stews, salads, fried rice… I’m sure there was even more. It was so much fun to try all the different varieties of flavors.
Also, I was really tickled by these vats of chili sauce in the back of the restaurants. Imagine going through that much chili sauce!
Once we were done dinner, we took the tram back to our Airbnb and had some tv time (for the kids) and reading time (for the grown ups) until we went to bed around 9pm, though the kids didn’t really sleep until closer to 10pm.
What a fun day it was. The kids loved the food tour and the day was relatively meltdown free until dinner then there was some whining and general tiredness. Step count for the day: 17, 634/ 6.6 miles. And I only had to carry the three year old for less than a mile of it!
Next up, an even bigger walking day!