Going Dutch

You know how you always say, "Hey, we don't have kids, we both have passports, we live on the East Coast, we (fill in the blank with your favorite "we're not tied down" line), so we can just hop on a plane and go to Europe any time we want."

Yeah, well, we did it.

Seriously, how spontaneous are we? A couple of weeks ago Jason found out he had to go to the Netherlands for a meeting, so, since Congress isn't in session, we scrounged up a ticket for me and spent the weekend in Amsterdam. I met Jason in the Hague on Thursday morning and

walked around the city/sat in a cafe with a book and goooood hot chocolate for the afternoon,

then we went with his colleague to a Rijsttafel--in Dutch it means "rice plates," and you basically start with a stack of rice and then add delicious Indonesian dishes around it for, as the menu put it, "variety of tastes in each bite." Apparently it dates back to the days of the Dutch West Indies Trading Company and is quite hip.

On Friday we took the train to Amsterdam, where we walked over lots of bridges and wished we had cool European bikes, like everyone else in the city. We took a canal ride, saw some Rembrandt and Van Gogh, checked out the Blomenmarkt, where they sell all kinds of tulips and bulbs, and took the tram to the edge of the city to see just one windmill.

The best two highlights of the trip were the Anne Frankhuis and the fantastic Dutch meal we had on Friday night. The former was...actually, I don't think I have good words to describe how it felt to walk through the small, dark rooms of the Secret Annex and imagine what it must have been like for Anne Frank and her family to hide there from the Nazis for two years. The whole time I felt my heart in my throat, hoping illogically (yes, I read the book) that the story would end happily when we got to the end of the tour.

Our Dutch dinner was more light-hearted. We tucked ourselves into a small table in a tiny restaurant on Leidseplein that served "traditional Dutch food" by candlelight and ordered pea soup and "hutspot." It turned out that the restaurant also served traditional Dutch singing--most of the other guests were with a loud and cheery group of Dutch folk, and halfway through the meal they burst into song, singing to what we assumed must be the time-honored tunes of Holland playing in the background. It was hilarious and loud and delicious. We brought a slice home for you to enjoy as well (at the bottom of this entry).

Amsterdam was lovely--the canal houses with their stepladder gables, the arching bridges, the bustling bicyclists, the changing leaves--and now we're home and the laundry is done and the Redskins won and we are oh so tired but happy.