Ciara's Little Eats: Adventures in Amsterdam

Hello all!

I'm mixing it up a little and centering my paragraphs. I know, I know, crazy or what?

So as this is a food blog, I thought i'd blog about my culinary adventures in Amsterdam. I'll summarise it now in three words:

Espresso

Some food

Espresso

It has become quite clear to me now, that coffee and I go well together. Coffee is my friend, my pal. Coffee keeps Ciara awake and Ciara drinks coffee, which is coffee's soul purpose. I used to drink the latte kind the most, with the occasional espresso, or cappuccino. Now it is espresso all the way. Plus, I used to add milk and sugar to it, now I just drink it as is.

These dips basically came with everything

I am just as surprised as you. You may be saying, 'wow, that was a little fast. Latte is a mellow kind, what with all the milk, and espresso is really intense.' Evidently, sleeping was an issue in Amsterdam. I wasn't sleeping well anyway, so maybe having around 2 espressos a day wasn't the wisest choice?

I had another one today and that has given me enough energy to write this blog. I feel to write a blog, you have to be in the mood to do it. If you don't want to write a blog, it is going to be the hardest thing ever to write. Knock knock... Who's there? Writer's bloody block. I loath it. When you are just staring at the screen, willing the words to write themselves, but they never do.

So Amsterdam. We had a really early flight, so that meant there was no reason to go to bed as we were leaving at 2am. So my breakfast for that morning was Fruit...pastels. The blackberry kind. Yes, I picked out all the good ones and left the others for the bin or someone else.

We then arrived at the airport and it was pretty exciting. I saw a hare. I real live, terrifyingly large hare. It looked very smart. Sitting up straight and powerful on the pavement. It then saw the car headlights and hopped away. Very sad. I tried to find it, but it was like 5 ish in the morning and I was exhausted and at this point hadn't slept in like 25 hours. So, wonder we did over to the terminal and checked in.

I then had a coffee and a little of mother's croissant. We didn't want to eat anything big before we got to Amsterdam. We arrived in early and couldn't get into the place we were staying until 2 ish in the afternoon.

First stop, breakfast. We stopped into this lovely little restaurant/ cafe. I had this traditional dutch breakfast which consisted of three slices of white bread toasted. Between the toasty bread layers were cheese, bacon and an omelette. A little strange tasting, texture wise, but it actually grew on me. I can't figure out whether this was the lack of sleep talking or that my body was happy I was finally feeding it?

Mother had this sesame seed cracker, baguette, ham and cheese slices combo thing. Mine definitely looked better.

I had this with an espresso. Espresso No.1.

I'm not going to dither on about everything we did, but I will go through the parts that would make me want to come back and made the trip for me.

After wondering around and going on this bus tour, we stopped for some of their traditional apple cake. Which I feel tasted more like an apple pie. They served this with some whipped cream. So large, that one would have done the two of us, even four of us. Couldn't finish it!

Espresso No.2

We went on this Pizza Cruise. This was basically a bunch of people on a little canal boat, floating along the canal and stuffing themselves full of pizza, ice cream and unlimited alcohol.

I had the margarita and a caramel ice cream thing and some red wine. Normally red wine, ice cream and pizza aren't the food groups that I would normally pair together, especially when floating on water, but I was tired and hungry, so why not?

There were also all these olives and little croutons to nibble on beforehand.

We then went to the place that honestly made it for me. The Tulip Gardens. I mean have you ever been to somewhere so beautiful that it could make you want to spend a year there and only there? The aroma of the flowers, the vibrant sea of colour and the warm sunny haze all around = blissfulness.

I really loved this place. It was so beautiful and magical. All those flowers, little streams of water and cherry blossom shading it all!

We then stopped for a little lunch and I had the biggest meatball i've ever had. When I read meatballs, I was expecting little, delicate ones, but nooo, this was like the meatball that gave birth to the little ones. It was a big one and I couldn't finish it. I actually had water this time, what with all the sun and warmth, my throat yearned more for water than coffee.

After lunch we wondered around for a while longer, basking in the flowers and sun and then stopped in front of a Windmill and ate an ice cream. Yum. Sitting on the grass, surrounded by flowers, munching on an ice cream. Happy.

We then had these pizzas on one of the days at this authentic Italian restaurant and it was amazing. The crust was all thin and crispy. The topping was rich, fresh and full of flavour. The cheese, the wonderful cheese was all stringy and delicious! The gentleman who was serving us could have been an actor. So flamboyant and theatrical. He gave us these mints at the end which was pretty strange. It was like a hard boiled sweet at the start with a really subtle minty sensation, then went all gooey and super intense. Not the most pleasant as it coated my teeth and all I could think of was the dentist trying to take a mold of my tooth.

On the first night, it was funny as we'd just come to Amsterdam and the first place we went to eat dinner and sat down at was an Irish Pub Restaurant. Typical. We both got a burger and chips. When you're exhausted, this was a pretty amazing thing. All comforting and yummy.

We then went to the Reijksmuseum where I had a very interesting salad. It was filled with chicken, fennel, lettuce leaves, fresh chili, sun dried tomatoes, cashew nuts and coriander seeds. It was really lovely though. This was then served with a bread roll.