July 3, Amsterdam

Shopping in the morning. I buy way more books than is good for my bank account or my back. Finally some good Dutch dictionaries, too.

I suddenly realize that I understand most of the uncomplicated things that the salespeople say to me. Weird, and great. Despite having visited Dutch-speaking countries many times and being able to read the language somehow, my comprehension of spoken Dutch had usually been about nonexistent, and suddenly I understand a lot of what these people are saying. Go figure.

Another suddent linguistic revelation is that Leidse in Leidsestraat, Leidseplein, Leidsegracht, etc. refers to Leiden.

Afterwards I just hang out in town, which is what I intended to do all the vacation to begin with.

In the afternoon Ville, Leena and I go check out the only roleplaying bookstore we found in town. The people there are nice and talkative, but the store is not very impressive. They have huge dice though.

Leena (bad, bad influence) drags me into a bookstore again, and a book jumps into my hands. It's Filth by Irvine Welsh, and of course I can't resist buying a book where, according to the cover, a bad cop is being persecuted by his own anus. Now that I've read it, I can also say that this was a mistake: the book is way too tasteless even for me, and I am saying this as a former regular of alt.tasteless who usually likes Welsh.

We find Marko and go to an Indonesian restaurant called Orient, where we finally get rijstaffel (I really like it and was advertising it to others since the beginning of the vacation).

The restaurant has a sign saying that they have smoking and non-smoking areas, but the first thing we hear upon asking for a non-smoking table is that they don't have a non-smoking area, at least yet. They sit us away from all the smokers, though, and their rijstaffel is quite good, and they have no problems bringing us tap water. They give us a huge doggie bag in the end, too.

We go home, and look at the clouds over the railway station. "If they put those into some game, everyone would complain that they are unrealistic," - says Ville.

July 2, Amsterdam

I wake up fairly early, promise to pick Marko up from the railway station, and go to the city. The city looks like it hasn't awakened yet, at least for the most part, in spite of it being Monday and all. Many stores open at noon on Mondays, and many don't post their opening hours so I don't know when they open.

A bookstore (De Slegte) on Kalverstraat. They have last year's editions of Dorling Kindersley travel guides for 10 euro a piece. A few books jump right into my arms and refuse to go away until I buy them.

I find Marko and we go to the boat, where we drop the luggage off and pick Ville up. We go downtown, to Zeedijk, Nieuwmarkt and Dam.

It rains every once in a while.

The royal palace is closed due to circumstances, as a sign helpfully informs us. Nieuwe Kerk, however, is open and pretty as ever. With stained-glass windows and all.

We find a really nice comic shop in Zeedijk, with a very talkative guy who almost makes me feel like buying Everything, but I don't.

The historical museum is better than I remember it.

We meet Leena on Rembrandtplein, which is now decorated with Night Watch sculptures, and go to a restaurant appropriately called Nachtwacht. Afterwards I put the restaurant on my boycott list because they do not bring you tap water, but their steaks are quite good.

Back at the boat we are having a geek luxury stay: a computer per person (the boat has a desktop, and everyone except me brought a laptop). We also have visitors who want food: black birds whose name I don't know (Eurasian Coot, says Pare) and a retarded swan who keeps hitting its head on the boat every time it tries to grab food.

July 1, Amsterdam

Finally getting around to writing about Amsterdam. Got the pictures up, too.

The ticket vending machines in the airport don't want to accept my credit card, even though they claim to accept Mastercard in general. Bought them for cash, which means a line and an extra 50 cents per ticket.

In general the ticket vending machines of the Netherlands Railways are not your friend. They usually want some local (debit?) cards, and some of them also accept coins. If you have paper bills you gotta stand in line and pay an extra service fee. Bugger.

Amsterdam GVB (transportation office), OTOH, is your friend. If you have a passport photo of yourself they make you a stamkaart (a card with your name and photo) for free and will sell you a week ticket for a very reasonable price. Works much like the old Helsinki one-month tickets, except that you can buy them for just one week, too.

We find our houseboat without much trouble. Leena and Ville think the houseboat is totally cool. I don't really understand the coolness - an apartment would have been just as fine by me - but as apartments go, it's a pretty nice one.

We leave our stuff and go to shop for tomorrow's breakfast. Albert Heijn is a nice chain of supermarkets, even though they don't accept credit cards.

We go to Leidseplein for dinner. Leidseplein is full of rather nice restaurants, but restaurant Chicano, where we decide to eat for some reason, is not really one of them. Out of two appetizers and three entrees one appetizer and two entrees are totally wrong. Luckily they try to fix their mistake, replace our waiter with a much better one, give us some free wine and give us a discount, so in the end the price/performance ratio is not too bad.

I totally love Amsterdam. The place is somehow overwhelmingly enjoyable.