June 19-20, 2022

We keep hitting big cities…London, Bruges, Amsterdam. These places can put a big dent in our travel budget. I’m not completely against seeing these places. I just want to be careful about how we do it. And to be honest, we weren’t even sure what it was that we wanted to see in Amsterdam. We had originally scheduled a three-day house sit in Amstelveen, just south of Amsterdam, which would allow us to spend a couple of half-days seeing the city. But the homeowner canceled a couple of weeks before, and we were left without “free” lodging. We decided to go anyway, and we ended up at a place I had found a couple of years ago when looking for my usual “off-the-wall” style of accommodation.

Hotel Not Hotel is a hotel with a bit of a hostel vibe to it. Or maybe it’s a hostel with individual rooms. It’s really hard to say. No two rooms here are the same. There are rooms hidden behind a library bookcase wall, rooms hidden behind mirrored walls, rooms that look like a giant dollhouse, a “room” in the upstairs lobby area in an old VW microbus. We ended up with a more conventional room that looked from the outside like it could have been the entrance to an old row-house somewhere. The shower was in the bedroom, rather than behind a bathroom door. Aside from that it was fairly normal.

Hotel Not Hotel. Is it? Is it Not?

That’s our room at the lower right. Just across from Kevin Bacon.

One of the “rooms”. The wall of books behind the bus contains several hidden doors to rooms.

Parked in the row of bikes outside the hotel. Definitely the largest, but it drew little attention.

Not your typical “Do Not Disturb” door hang tag.

We did our now-typical one-day walking tour of Amsterdam, visiting the “Nine Streets”, and walking the Red Light District south to the flower market.

One of the canals along the “9 Streets”.

There are a lot of houseboats lining the canals in Amsterdam. This hundred year old converted cargo ship featured a grass roof and lots of plants.

Yes, this is a brick houseboat on a concrete foundation. Floating in a canal.

I thought England had a serious “Frite” (French Fry) problem. There, everything comes with fries, or chips as they like to call them. Fish & Chips is just the start. Just about every meal, including a salad, came with fries. In fact, Lukasz mentioned that he once ordered a baked potato in England and it came with a side of fries. Here in Amsterdam, they aren’t shy about it either. Hence, a restaurant that serves Fries & Fries.

“OMG! Look! It’s him! It’s Dr. Falafel, in the flesh!” Amazing likeness.

Look closely at this building. The right end of it…the last two windows. That is not an optical illusion. It’s leaning badly.

A photo of Diana taking a photo of the Anne Frank House.

On the main Dam Square, there was a large spinning class taking place. We watched for a while, and learned that they were raising money to build sports clubs for refugees. For every kilometer you pedaled, they contributed £10. So I jumped in. I didn’t last long, but I did earn them twenty or thirty pounds.

In the back corner of the spin class were these two women eating pizza. It just seemed wrong. But they were probably volunteers taking a lunch break. Still, it made for an amusing juxtaposition.

These tiny cars were everywhere. When you can park one in a line of scooters, why not?

These bicycles were also everywhere. Most of them had children sitting in the large box in the front, some with seat belts. This seems to make more sense than putting your child behind you where you can’t see what they are doing. It also makes a great grocery getter. And in this woman’s case, it’s a way to carry another bicycle.

By early afternoon we headed to Leidseplein, an area with lots of restaurants and pubs, to meet an old friend.

Huub and I met in Japan in the early 1990s when he worked for Yamaha Europe and I worked for Yamaha US. We would see each other once a year or so through the early 2000s, usually in the US, then lost touch until just before our trip, when he popped up in my LinkedIn contacts. It was great to see him again and catch up.

After a few hours of catching up, Huub caught the train home, and we walked back to the hotel for dinner at Kevin Bacon Bar, a Thai restaurant in the hotel. Odd name, and we were told no actual relation, but they had a really convoluted story about why they named it after the actor, even though he isn’t involved.