An Amsterdam Bar

We only had one night out in Amsterdam, and, after wandering around, wound up at a bar that was everything I imagined it would be. Populated primarily by locals with cracked peanuts on the floor, the bar had a beautiful large painting on the wall. Our beers were solid, but we wished we'd sprung for cocktails. The hard alcohol looked even better than the beer.

Also, a word about the food in Amsterdam: it was amazing! Perhaps this is just due to the fact that I love smoked salmon, but every menu we looked at there was extremely enticing -- well, when we could find a restaurant, that is. There appear to be far more bars than restaurants in the city!

Suggestions on where to go next time we're in Amsterdam are extremely welcome - it's a hard city to find your way around!

Next stop: Barcelona

Visiting De Bierkoning (The Beer King)

For those of you who do not know my boyfriend Derek, he is one of the biggest beer snobs I have ever met. His "beerventory" contains over 100 beers. So perhaps it's no surprise he didn't trust me when I tried to convince him to go into a beer store in Amsterdam, De Bierkoning. Advertising hundreds of different beers, I figured we couldn't fail. And despite his apprehension, of course, I was right:

We were greeted by two floors featuring beers from all over the world. Our favorite find (a.k.a. the moment when Derek believed me) was when we found three beers from Short's Brewing Company, a brewery in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, that were only released AT the brewery three years ago -- a one time event. Yet this store thousands of miles away had many of each!

For fellow beer lovers, the Short's beers were: Aorta Ale, Abnormal Genius, & Ginger in the Rye.

The incredible beer selection at this store did not stop there. The #1 beer in the world right now, as rated by Beer Advocate, is the Trappist Westvleteren 12. Beers from that monastery are extremely hard to come by - the monks only brew the beer to make enough money to run the abbey, do not ship the beer, and let visitors only buy one gift pack (of 6 beers) each. Yet De Bierkoning had a crate of Trappist Westvleteren 8! (And it sounds like they often have 12s)

It is therefore unsurprising that, despite it being the first day of a three week trip to six different countries, Derek still bought several beers to bring back to the US.

Only in Amsterdam

The first stop on our trip was Amsterdam. Despite the rain, we still were able to see a lot of the things that make Amsterdam so unique:

Poggled visits the sex museum in Amsterdam. "Smoking allowed. No cigarettes." - ahh Amsterdam... Where you don't need to choose between smoking and drinking... And where the stores actually advertise magic mushrooms.

Note: We did not participate in any illegal activities, but find it amusing that such activities are legal and public in Amsterdam. Prostitution is even legal and regulated.