surviving the chill

Ok, last bunch from Amsterdam. I look a bit chilled and miserable here (it was the day we arrived, I'd been up since 5 and it was raining lightly but consistently) but the colors are so good with the purplish bricks and green moss that I thought I'd post them anyway. These were taken in Jordaan, a lovely neighbourhood in Amsterdam where everyone obligingly leaves their blinds open so you can peer into their houses and live there vicariously a while if you like. Conclusions: Protestants have less to hide than catholics? And all Dutch people seem to own real paintings.

tulips!

While I was in Amsterdam it was National Tulip Day. This sounded almost too coincidentally perfect, but we discovered there are in fact three national tulip days per year. In any case, it was definitely an unexpected and charming celebration. The Dam was filled with thousands of tulips, attached to their bulbs, making a picture on the ground, we joined a fairly civilized line, were given a plastic bag and were told we could take as many as 20 tulips away with us. Inside it was a bit of a free-for-all, with children (and bloggers, clearly) posing for photos and people trampling each other in search of the elusive orange blooms, but I left with a big bag stuffed with mostly-closed bulbs. They somehow all survived being carted around for the rest of the day, the trip to the airport at 6am, and the trip back to Barcelona, and filled our apartment with pop-art colourful blooms for the next two weeks!

amsterdam break

Leaving springlike Barcelona for shivery Amsterdam in January might seem to be backwards way to take a holiday, but that's just what Victor and I did last weekend. We stayed with friends and bundled up, then spent our days moving between cafés and museums and anywhere that had Glühwein.

This was my fourth visit to Amsterdam but the first one in winter. I found it a bit hard going (if I ever go back to Canada I'm going to die I think) but that the rewards made up for it: fewer people, less chaos, an equal number of murderous cyclists, and endless excuses to eat cheese and apple pancakes (ever since my first trip, ten years ago, when a Dutch family introduced me to this flavour combination, it's been the only one I order).








I had the most delectable cherry-infused gin