因为Siu Kee白天得上班,所以一直没有什么机会与他外出。所以回到阿姆斯特丹后,乘星期天与他一起骑脚踏车,以当地人的眼光来看看这个城市。
Back in Amsterdam, because Siu Kee has to work during the daytime, I hardly get to go out with him. Since it was a Sunday the day after we got back from Paris, Siu Kee suggested us going cycling and I got to see Amsterdam the local way.
在游布拉格时,认识了一位新的荷兰朋友Marleen。乘着这次到荷兰,到她的家乡布雷达去拜访她,顺道在那里小住了一夜。布雷达是个非常小的城市,没有什么特别的旅游景点,没有什么伟大的建筑,不过整个地方却给人一种清幽的感觉。Marleen给我来个非常当地人的布雷达一日游,先到郊区的一个农场去参观。
I got to know a Dutch girl, Marleen, in Czech Republic and she invited me to visit her when I get to Netherlands. So I made arrangements to stay over at her place for one night. Breda is a very small city, with little in terms of sights. But this also means that you do not get much of a tourist crowd like that in Amsterdam, and so it was pretty nice to walk around. Marleen gave me a localised day tour of Breda, bringing me first to a farm.
We then went over to her parents’ place before heading back to the city centre for walk. After a yummy ice-cream, I had to say goodbye to Marleen and Breda.
在荷兰待了一个星期,才发现我还没有机会吃到真正的荷兰餐,所以Tu带我到当地一家小餐厅去品尝当地食物。这家餐厅还挺特别的,餐厅以“母亲”为名,四面墙壁上全是食客带来的母亲照片。而餐桌用具也很特别,不是老板自己买的,而是开幕当天要求来宾自己带餐具来,因为你看到的餐具什么样的款式都有。
I was in Amsterdam for a week before I realised that I had not had any real Dutch food yet, so Tu brought me to this local restaurant for a meal. This uniquely decorated restaurant is called Mom’s Restaurant and true to its name, every picture on the walls of the restaurant is that of somebody’s mom. Not only that, the cutlery used in this restaurant is special too. You will not see nice or beautiful sets of cutlery here. Instead what you get is cutlery of all shapes and sizes as these are cutlery brought by the guests on the day the restaurant opened.
Dutch cuisine (if it can be called cuisine in the first place!) mostly consists of potatoes and meat. This here is our starters.
This sumptuous looking meal is the main course that the two guys in the next seat ordered. This is actually a set meal of mini portions of all the Dutch specialities.
This is our main course. And surprise, surprise, it’s all meat and potatoes.
And then comes my favourite part of the meal – desserts! We had an apple pie and mousse.
I guess the most interesting part about Amsterdam other than the red light district, has got to be the sex museum. Interestingly, all you see here are women. There was no man about when we got there and even the one selling tickets is a woman. Since this is the sex museum, you of course, can expect to find everything related to sex here. There are all kinds of statues and sculptures, comics, magazines and toys of sexual nature. There is even a room with a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme, albeit with a sexual connotation to it, where you can sit down and watch sexual cartoons. And there is a model showing you how the Amsterdam model works. Since I could not take a picture of the real thing, I had to make do with this. Warning: the pictures below are of adult nature. If you are below 18, please seek parental guidance before you look at the pictures. =p
The other trademark of Amsterdam is the many “coffee shops”. These coffee shops are not the typical coffee shops that we have back home. These ones are those where you can find marijuana (or weed as some call it) on the menu instead of the normal coffee. The Netherlands is the only country in the world where smoking or consuming marijuana is legalised, as such you see many coffee shops like this all over the place. Apparently, not only can you smoke marijuana in these coffee shops, you can also buy pies or pizza with marijuana fillings from these coffee shops. This coffee shop, Bulldog, is one of the long standing establishment in Amsterdam. Business is so good that they not only have a few branches, you can even find a Bulldog Hotel and Bulldog souvenir shop. No. Don’t bother asking me what marijuana is like. I AM a good girl, so of course I didn’t try it. Ha…
The last thing to do before I leave Amsterdam was to attend a football match. It’s always been my wish to attend a football match in Europe. Siu Kee, knowing how into football I was, proposed bringing me to one of Ajax Amsterdam’s football matches. Unfortunately, tickets for the Dutch league was either too difficult to get or too expensive, so we ended up catching a UEFA qualifying match between Ajax and FK Borac Cacak from Serbia instead. As Ajax had gotten a 4-1 lead in the first leg, it was a pretty dull match. But the match itself was secondary as it was the atmosphere that I was going for in the first place.
The Netherlands was never in my plans. But the warmth from Tu, Siu Kee and their family made me really glad that I made the detour in the end. I said goodbye to Tu , Siu Kee and Amsterdam with reluctance, but I know I will be back. Thanks a million for everything, Tu and Siu Kee! ~wei
2 comments:
what an U-turn u made... :P
hey ya i heard about the 'coffeeshops' in Amsterdam. I thought the govt was intending to impose a ban... obviously the bill wasnt passed...
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