amsterdam

aperol, alternative milk and abundances

there’s an abundance of bikes in amsterdam, a lesson we almost learnt the hard way on numerous occasions. i read a fact that there’s apparently more bikes than people in the city, which on first thought made no sense to me, but after seeing the city for myself and a quick google search it confirmed it’s true: 850’000 people, almost one million bikes. there’s few buses and few trams, with taxis and cars only on main city roads, making the narrow cobbled-stone alleys and streets peaceful and quiet, the only noise pollution being bike bells rang at tourists. i paid €8.50 for a salted peach foam coconut milk matcha, which is just about as obnoxiously pretentious as it sounds, and i wouldn’t have paid it apart from the fact that i’d ordered before i noticed the price and i’m too awkward to say anything. i tried an alternative milk made from peas (not sure how you milk a pea), and it has topped the charts in my opinion, hopefully will soon make it’s way to all my locals. the best way to see the city is by boat. there’s an abundance of boats and an abundance of canals, and an abundance of facts to learn, such as the fact that more men fall into the canal annually than women, mainly because they get dizzy and lose blood flow in their head when they’re peeing. i wonder how many bikes are at the bottom of the canal. there’s an abundance of prostitutes and an abundance of sex shops and an abundance of creepy looking men. i’m not sure how seeing that made me feel. it’s an abundantly sex-positive city, abundantly free and abundantly open, but seeing how the men looked at the women made me feel… weird. we saw a man get pushed into the canal along the red light district, reemerging from the water, dripping, shouting, short, angry, like a sewer rat. it made me think of the women there, all that they see on the daily, the situations they end up in, made me feel uneasy. there’s an abundance of sour beers: mango, peach iced tea sours, la chouffe cherry on tap, rosé beer, sours i’ve never heard of before. there’s an abundance of aperol spritz too, and there’s no better feeling, in my opinion, than sitting in the sun, no emails to open, spritz’d up, beside the canal, the chirps and dings and murmurs, people watching in a city you’ve never been to. i liked amsterdam a lot, the locals are like the irish, friendly faces, good craic, good coffee, good beer, good sights to see, you’ll see me again, tot ziens voor nu.