Amsterdam is known for a few things. Its businessmen. Its painters. Its canals. Its wooden shoes and windmills. Its bicycles. Its coffee-shops (they sell cannabis, not coffee). Over the course of a week we have seen or sampled most of these (cannabis isn’t our thing). And we’ve had company!

We spent a morning in the Amsterdam Museum learning about Dutch history: from the building of the city (it is a manmade city in a marsh on hundreds of thousands of pilings) to the Dutch Golden Age (when the Dutch East India company was a global trading company); from Napolean’s invasion to Hitler’s; and the changes from religious intolerance to complete tolerance of all lifestyle choices.

We spent a day in the new Jewish quarter securing provisions for passover – including a “brisket” that turned out to be corned beef from Mouwe’s, frogs, matzah, and our haggadot from the Jewish Historical Museum.

The Goldsteins arrived on our third day here – just in time for a nap, their own trip to the Amsterdam Museum, and then our passover seder!

For the next several days we explored the city together. We viewed the great works of Rembrandt and Vermeer at the Riksmuseum; went for a bike ride in Amsterdam Noord; saw the tulips in Keukenhof (again!!); took a boat tour of the canals; saw Van Gogh’s life unfold through his art at the Van Gogh museum; cruised the local markets and devoured herring and waffles; bought a photo frame from a bride-to-be to fund her bachelorette party in Vondelpark; made our way through the Anne Frank house imagining life as this teenager in hiding; and capped our last night off with apple pie in the uber cool Jordaan.

It was a great week. And while we can’t compare experiences – how does one compare the time with the Hadza with being a mahout in Thailand? – we do consider our bike ride in Amsterdam Noord a highlight of our time in Amsterdam and thus, a photo Andy took of our motley crew in a picturesque town is this post’s featured pic.

Next stop Andy’s low-key birthday in Berlin…