Amsterdam: Kings Day Festival - Part 2

Amsterdam, Girls Weekend, Musings, Netherlands, Street Waffles, Travel

Amsterdam: Day 2

It's always nice to have a plan for what to do on a certain day... and then not do any of them! One friend got up early to meet another for brunch while the other two (including me) took advantage of vacation time to sleep in. Waking up upon first friend's return, we left her behind to go get some eats and coffee. Ending up at a Tex Mex restaurant, we were vastly disappointed in the food. First sign: empty restaurant. Whatever, we were starving. The enchilada she had looked like a burrito, no sauce, and extremely dry. My "fajitas" were lacking in any kind of taste whatsoever and their version of spicy is non-existent. But the coffee .... you just can't go wrong here! And by coffee, I really mean coffee!

Coming back from this, we all decided to take naps. Maybe this is a sign of our older age, but what do you do? Food coma, bring it. I'm not much of a napper so I grabbed my current read (Not A Sound) and laid on the couch. After about 3 chapters, I woke myself up (lightly) snoring. (It's cute, shut up. 🙂) This is in no correlation to the book, the book is fantastic, my body, not so much... Originally we were going to go to the flower market but that closed at 5:30 and we woke up just in time to miss it completely. The torture museum didn't close until 11 so we figured we had PLENTY of time to get moving, grab some dinner and hit it up. Yeah, that didn't happen either. We went to a fancy French restaurant and ended up at a 4 hour dinner. Two bottles of wine, a three course dinner and an espresso martini later, we finished in just enough time to miss the torture museum too. Whoops! But look at all the good food we had!

I started with this marinated raw salmon... now, I'm not much into raw fish to be honest but this was pretty good! Absolutely have no idea what the other stuff was that was on top of it but it was crunchy and delicious and the horseradish cream complimented it perfectly. My main course was this steak au something or another. It was extremely raw - I don't like my steak mooing most of the time - but the char and spices on the outside made for a delectable eat. Potato ham side was a nice addition.

My friend opted for the frog legs and mushroom risotto pictured above. It basically was delicious frog legs (tastes like chicken!) in green foam. There was no rice to be found. Maybe risotto means something different here? Still delicious (despite the mushrooms - ew).

And then you must end with dessert, right? RIGHT! I opted for two, an espresso martini (holy hell this was delicious) and some crème brulee. The fluffiest and creamiest I've ever had, with the ratio of crunchy top that's best I've seen - a shallower dish is definitely the way to go for this dessert.

My bestie ended up with a chocolate mousse that was the perfect sweetness and had a vanilla cream to add to it - look how happy she is with her dessert!

After dinner we headed back to the apartment to freshen up and to decide where our next destination was going to be. We definitely did NOT want to embark on another bar hopping venture where the guys were handsy - our tolerance level for this behavior has dropped immensely and it's only day 2. So where's the best place to go? The gay district!

Now, keep in mind that the first day, we literally only traveled within a block radius to do everything we wanted. We were laughing that we basically got NOWHERE our first day. Hahaha, but we're in the best area! The gay district was about a 10 minute walk - EEK. Hahaha - yay - we made it out of a block from the apartment! When we first get there both my friends got accosted by two assholes and I played bodyguard, which was quite hilarious after the fact. Then we went to our first bar. Ahhhhhhhhhh.... no hands, good music, cheap drinks. Thank you, Amsterdam! Had a few drinks there and decided to venture off to the next establishment. We ended up at SOHO, more room to dance and have fun. Stayed there for a bit with no issues or creepy people. SCORE! Then it was time to head home.

Everybody has been telling me, when in Amsterdam, get a street waffle! A STREET WAFFLE?! Don't mind if I do. And then bestie tried to steal it.....

They are DELICIOUS! I opted out of the Nutella option... why? I DON'T KNOW! Totally worth it though. Thank you and good night!

Today we are off to try and do the things we didn't do yesterday.... let's see if we can't actually make it this time? Stay tuned..... (and things for coming along with me on this journey!)