Week One

Less than a week after arriving in Amsterdam it was time to start work. Monday morning I woke up, calculated my google maps route to the EY office and was out the door. Upon arriving in the office I quickly realized I was not the only one starting at EY today. Apparently today was also the first day of work for all the new staff in the Amsterdam office. What this translated to was me waiting in lines for all the things I needed – badge, computer, etc. Thankfully it didn’t delay the process too much. The most exciting part of the morning was receiving my new work phone with a Dutch number. One of the classic first world problems of world travel is that of cell phone service abroad. Never is one more desperate for wide spread WiFi as they are when they are avoiding data overage charges on an adventure through Europe. Now I could contact the world to my hearts desire although the 7 hour time change makes that difficult until about 3 or 4 pm. After a quick check in it was off to the client for the first time. The funny thing is, my first week in the Netherlands office happened to be the week of the Corporate team site visit. So when I entered the room I was greeted by two familiar faces from Dallas – Forrest and Matt. Shout out. It is so crazy that I moved thousands of miles away and my team looked much the same as it did at home. It was nice to have a bit of a safety blanket these first two weeks. Everyone on the Netherlands team is very nice and I think we will get along well but to have people there I knew really well helped make the transition easier.

I will fast forward through the boring work stuff and get to Wednesday – our three year wedding anniversary! It’s a bit odd because I have never actually spent our anniversary in the US. Our first anniversary Bill and I were in Berlin, for our second I was in Canada and now we are in Amsterdam! To celebrate we had a special dinner planned at one of Amsterdam’s one Michelin star restaurants. How cool is it that we have multiple one and two star Michelin restaurants right in our backyard?? The restaurant we went to is called the Dutchess and it was absolutely great. The venue itself is an old ticket station that has been converted to a restaurant. They had beautiful chandeliers hanging from the stained glass detailed ceiling.

Moving onto the real reason for the visit – the food. The concept of the restaurant is smaller plates to share – kinda tapas style. I personally enjoy this style of eating because it lets me try lots of yummy things. We started the meal with two appetizers – crab and lobster avocado salad as well as a seared calamari squid ink pasta. Both were excellent but the salad took the cake. Fresh and delicious. Lots of crab and lobster meat. Moving onto the entrees, we tried the Dover sole and the broccoli and truffle gnocchi. Seriously the Dutch are obsessed with truffle. I am still in full support. The most fun course was the dessert. We got the signature “Chocolate Explosion”. Basically it’s a dark chocolate dome they present to you and they pour in some liquid nitrogen or dry ice or something for effect then they slam down the ball and reveal the contents of the dome – mousse, brownies, macaroons, chocolates, a chocolate explosion literally.

We left the restaurant full and satisfied. This was the perfect place to celebrate 3 years.

The following evening we invited Matt and Forrest to explore our new neighborhood with us and try one of the many restaurants in the Pijp. We decided on one of Matt’s suggestions – a bazaar with middle eastern food. The star of the show was definitely the baklava. There was this interesting cotton candy type stuff on top that was slightly less sweet. I think it was made with honey maybe. I will say as good as it was though, my dad’s friend Sophie still holds the title for the best baklava I have ever had.

Friday came it was time for a new visitor! Enter Carrie Stires (shout out)! Unfortunately I had to work but Bill was unassigned so he was able to greet her at the train station. While I slaved away at the office Bill and Carrie went on a biking adventure into the country side. Bill mimicked some of the sites we saw on the bike tour we took the week before with sites that included windmills and farm animals. Once I was finally released, I met Carrie and Bill at our apartment and we headed off to the House of Bols. For those of you that are not familiar with Bols I was also not familiar so we are on the same page. Bols is a type of liquor that comes in a plethora of flavors all of which you have the opportunity to smell on the tour. There is a lot of scents at this particular venue. Honestly, too much smelling. It almost made me sick to my stomach. The tour did end with a delicious cocktail of your choosing however so all in all it was a nice hour but if you’re in Amsterdam I would not necessarily put this at the top of your list.

Something I would recommend is where we went for dinner – Restaurant Classico. A hole in the wall Italian restaurant run by some real Italians. I swear the wife of the owner was trying to fatten us up because before we even had a chance to order to was presenting us with delicious delicacies. First up, was simple, fresh and delicious bruschetta followed by warm toasty bread with delightful herbed butter. When we did finally order we started with an appetizer plate with various meats. The pastas were fabulous. They even had a special where they put the freshly cooked pasta on top of the Parmesan wheel and it absorbs the cheese. Yum cheese. When we were finished it was raining so we decided on some boozy coffees to pass the time until it died down. Post dinner we were headed out to hit the town. We went to an area called Spiegelgracht which was very lively on a Friday night. The first bar we went to was way too touristy so we tried again and found – you guessed it – a hole in the wall! This particular hole in the wall was a whiskey bar with a bar tender that was a dead ringer for Ryan Gosling, not a bad view. It seemed like a local spot and one of the bartenders off for the night happened to be sitting next to us. We left after a couple drinks but promised to return and to bring them some TX whiskey when we came back from Christmas. With a slight buzz we decided to check out the Amsterdam club scene. Of all the clubs I been to this was one of the calmest but we still had a great time. The venue is called Paradiso and it was converted from an old church. One thing I have seen in Amsterdam is that a lot of stuff has “been converted from an old church”. The population here is predominantly Christian but like most of Europe, most Dutch people do not actively practice their religion. Back to our night out, my style of dancing fits in very well with the Dutch – a combination of subtle bopping around and standing with very little actual skilled dancing. The DJ took a while to get going but there was about an hour to an hour and a half where I was really enjoying the music. He switched back to what he had been playing at the beginning of the set though and it was late so we decided this was our cue to go home. We attempted to find late night snacks unsuccessfully on the way home (probably for the best). Man I missed me some triple bacon toppers sticks.

Waking up the next morning, Carrie had already departed for the train station back to Paris. Our big endeavor for the day was a trip to Ikea. Someone recently compared Ikea to one of the circles of hell and I think that is a pretty accurate description. The one time I went to Ikea in the States I got so lost and couldn’t find the exit. This time, Bill and I literally turned the wrong way right out of the gate and we were going the wrong direction from the start. Salmon swimming upstream. When we finally did get in order and gathered all our belongings we were running quite tight on time for the wine and cheese tasting we had with our new evening guest, my former swim coach Alexis. To make things more stressful as we approached the check out the lines were insane. They only had 5 cashiers open for a crowded Saturday afternoon. As the clocked ticked down we realized we would never make it on the train so we audibled to an Uber. Thankfully we were able to make it home, drop our belongings, and rush to the city center. We made it to the cheese store with a minute to spare. The store is called Reypenaer (ripening) and the cheese was fabulous. We of course bought way too much following the tasting including some fancy mustard with who would have thought truffle. I told you it’s everywhere! We can now treat our guests to our own cheese board. Even more incentive for all of you to visit us! Post cheese were Dutch pancakes as big as our faces because we definitely needed more food after all that cheese. At this point Alexis went to the Anne Frank house as we went home to unload our Ikea treasures. We did meet up with her again for drinks at a cozy spot called GlouGlou. It was nice but the service left something to be desired.

Sunday was a day for just Bill and I. With no specific plans we started with a nice brunch at Bakers and Roosters. There was an hour wait but they have this fancy feature where they take your phone number and you can track the waiting list then they will text you when your table is ready. We lived right around the corner so we just went home and relaxed until we got the message. Look at us being urban city dwellers. Breakfast was worth the wait. We resisted the urge to order the huevos rancheros, reserving those for when we are more homesick, and instead ordered the salmon stack (Bill) and Navajo Eggs (me). Both were fab. Check plus. After lunch we went home and realized our power was out. There was construction outside which was our immediate suspect as the culprit but we were slightly concerned the power outage meant our utilities were not properly set up. Thankfully it was construction related and after our run the power was back. The rest of the days details are pretty vanilla but Bill was super excited because he found a way to get NFL redzone and was able to watch the first games of opening weekend. Very exciting for Bill. Yay Bill.

Next weekend we are off to London to visit a few friends. Until then cheers!