Amsterdam: Day 7

by Vincent

Tropenmuseum

The Tropenmuseum used to be the Colonial Museum but today the museum focuses on the culture of different parts of the world such as the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, and North Africa. As with most of the museums in Amsterdam, there is not much said regarding the colonialization of these areas, preferring to not mention it then to address it. The museum itself was pretty fun and entertaining to visit though, with interactive exhibits and tons of objects to see. It took us about two hours to work our way through and we chose to skip a couple areas that didn’t interest us as much.

De Grote Pan

Feeling a bit hungry after touring the museum, we decided to head to the nearby Watergraafsmeer market in search of food. We came upon a small bar and decided to grab a quick bite to eat. The staff was pleasant but the food was marginal— “pub fare” if you want to call it that but not even good pub food. I don’t think we’d care to eat there again.

Watergraafsmeer Fries & Market

Feeling a bit disappointed after that lousy meal and still feeling a bit hungry, we walked through the Watergraafsmeer market to see what it had to offer. We came upon a humble fry shop and we decided to try it out. It was astounding. The fries were fantastic and we didn’t even get any sauce! If you’re looking for the best fries in Amsterdam, they are here, sold by a sweet older woman who knows what she’s doing. The rest of the market was more local-oriented and didn’t offer much interest to us, but the fries were worth it.

Lucas Bols

We decided to walk off those fries and head to the Museumplein area to visit the House of Lucas Bols Experience. While we had never heard of the Bols brand, it wasn’t really much of a surprise as neither of us knows a ton about liquor and cocktails. Bols is an old brand and they are best known for their Oude (Old) Genever (or jenever)—a distilled liquor from which gin evolved. The tour was pretty cool and one of the parts let you smell all the different liquors. You could write down your favorites and then at the end you could choose a cocktail that the professional Bols bartenders would make for you. It was especially cool because our bartender let us shake our cocktails!

Kantjil & Tiger

After our Bols tour, it was time to start heading back to the B&B and we wanted to take home some tasty Indonesian food. The same place where we ate dinner at the day before also had a fast takeout section of the restaurant so we took home a couple to-go boxes of food. If you don’t visit Kantjil & Tiger while you’re in Amsterdam you’re missing out because the food is excellent, even at home!

Bike Ride

Before dinner we wanted to take some bicycles for a spin just to say we rode bikes in Amsterdam. It wasn’t so bad but we made a few mistakes—there are definitely specific lanes and ways to cross streets that we didn’t pick up on just walking around. It was pretty much like driving except more stressful, as you still had to choose lanes to merge properly and pick your turn lane. We’re glad we only rode on the outskirts of the city center—I don’t think we could handle riding in the middle of the city without a few days practice. We rode to a couple nearby parks and then headed back home, ready to eat some food and turn in for the night.