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• Old Amsterdam

  Back from a great trip with Michelle to the Netherlands and Belgium, to see my brother Max who is living in Amsterdam. We stayed mostly there, with a midweek trip to Antwerp and Brugges, Belgium. Visited a couple tourist traps; the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum, but also caught a Magnum retrospective (with Jeroen), and a Band of Horses show at the Paridiso. All very cool.

  Twitter has me thinking in quips, so here are some random, disjointed observations from the trip:

  • “Vla” does not mean milk, even if it’s in a milk carton. It’s pudding. Which is better.
  • Just about all of the new buildings in Amsterdam are cooler than ours. They’re not afraid to mix the old and the new in very interesting ways.
  • Save the bit of chocolate that comes with everything, just give me a free glass of water.
  • Everything in Europe is monetized. Ketchup: 40¢. Bathroom: 50¢. And so on.
  • Dog shit is everywhere in Amsterdam. Owners don’t pick it up, the foot traffic does.
  • Italian food is the Soul food of Europe. It’s cheap and you can’t really fuck it up.
  • All of the women in the Netherlands are knock-outs. Just not the ones taking their clothes off in the windows.
  • I still have to give the prize to American micro breweries. It’s definitely a matter of preference, but the amount of variety in a handfull of breweries over here cannot be denied. But maybe I was just getting sick of the Julipers, Carlsbads, Dommelschs, Stellas, Grolschs, Bavarias and all the other barely-there lagers.
  • Trains are better than airplanes. Period.

  As for “coffee shops”, the faves were The Grey Area (best variety, but a little cramped), Barney’s (the bar, not the cafe. Good food.), The Green House (again for quality, but way too much celebrity dick sucking. How many pictures of Cypress Hill and Woody Harrelson do we need to see to know that they partied there?), and Kadinsky (Michelle’s favorite, awesome interior design). 

  Also, started formulating an idea for a photo project that will hopefully keep me traveling. More on that down the road. Good times, but I’m definitely ready for detox now.

  4 years ago