Thursday:
We are cheese fans, perhaps even cheese fiends so i was determined to visit Gouda (pronounced How-da) to explore their notorious thursday Cheese Market. Gouda is a little town (pop. 75,000) an hour’s train ride outside of Amsterdam. It was still pretty cold and overcast when we arrived but the cheese market was in full swing. There were tons of stalls selling gouda and other cheese (but mostly gouda) in beautiful yellow waxed rounds. Live cheese auctions were happening and “Cheese Maidens” were showing off HUGE rounds of cheese.
Cheese Maidens at the market!
I bought lots of the small Gouda rounds and ate stroopwaffels with jamie. Stroopwaffels are little then waffels pressed together with sticky caramel in the center–sooo delicious. After a tasty lunch of onion soup and some fish we’ve never heard of we headed back to amsterdam.
After taking the wrong train to Utrecht, fixing that and then depositing my pounds of cheese at the hostel we headed to Spui district to scope out some more Coffee Shops and check out some funky stores.
We then had a huge and romantic dinner at this delicious italian place we’d walked past and oogled since we’d arrived. Although the waitress could not really be understood jamie heard the word lamb and ordered that and I was able to make out the words pasta and lobster and went for that. It was all sooo tasty. After to much walking, cheese eating, shopping, coffee-shopping and lamb fillet and entire lobster eating we needed a food coma and some sleep.
It had been a very delicious day.
–sarah
ps. the main death threat in amsterdam is not drugs or violent crime but Death By Bike. There are bike lanes set aside but they frequently cross paths with pedestrian sidewalks, leading to many near-death experiences and add to that the fact that bikes always have the right of way. Mopeds also speed in the bike lanes adding to the danger.
hi Sarah, I guess what you meant by your ps. is that you are not used to this kind of traffic, I understand that. It’s often frustrating to adjust to. As it is, bike lanes don’t cross paths with sidewalks, they’re always separated, whether through a splash of paint on the main road or segregated. You are probably confused with bike lanes that looked like sidewalks to you, but weren’t. I totally appreciate the fact that a lot of tourists, while crossing a road, have to remind themselves again and again to be extra careful. I’ll give you that bikers here seem rude, but you have to understand that the Dutch are very pragmatic (and skilled) on their bikes and don’t like to stop for other people’s mistakes, and/or they will just scare the hell out of you. I’m not faulting you, just laying it out for ya, giving it a little perspective.
Mopeds are not allowed in bike lanes anymore, so the ones you saw are assholes
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Enjoy the rest of your time here!
PS. If you’re interested, hop on over to my Amsterdam bike blog, choose category ‘video’ and check out my bike vlogs. I think it will help you understand.