De Bos

There were a couple important discoveries made this weekend.

Fast-food vending machines, and De Bos.

Friday

First things first. Maybe I saw this last time I was here a few years ago, but I don't remember seeing it, and I was floored upon seeing it Friday night. Imagine a room. Lined top to bottom, side to side, with lots and lots of doors. These doors contain burgers, fries, other fried things I couldn't identify. Put in your coins, open a door, and bam, get a burger. I wonder how long they sit in there? I wonder how often people are made sick by these? I guess we'll never know. I must admit, very distant, deep down piece of me sort of wants to eat something out of one of these. When in Rome eh?

Another highlight of the evening: Finding out that there is, in fact, a beer store in this town that you can purchase micro-brews from the west-coast. IPAs! Unfortunately I don't remember the description of where this store exists, but I'm determined to figure it out very soon.

A picture of a polaroid of the hooligans I spent the evening with: 

Saturday

Went adventuring with Dan (bike buddy you saw from last weekend post) and met up with Ashley, Josh and Rachael (Kendrick not Mays), for a lovely afternoon outdoors.

Amsterdamse Bos, or De Bos, or Amsterdam Forest. Call it what you will...I call it heaven. I spent much of Saturday afternoon gulping in as much tree-air as possible. This forest/park/place exists a pleasant 15 minute bike ride from my house, and it is huge. Lots of trees. Lots charming tree-lined paths. Lots of fields. And like every Amsterdam park...lots of water. They have places you can rent paddle-boats and kayaks. They have kiddie pools. They have a petting zoo. They have spaces you can wander into, and not see any other people. Just lovely.

I'm looking forward to seeing this in the fall:

iPhone navigating. Tree. Bike. Baguette!

Photo Credit: Dan Maxwell

Picnic by the water

Petting zoo: Goats like to stand on things.

Petting zoo from afar:

A field I will wander to the end of at some point:

Saturday evening I enjoyed a lovely dinner at Los Pilones with Neeza, Pierre, and Ignazi. The restaurant makes it's own tequila, and it is very, very good.

When we left the restaurant we saw the after-math of a huge classical concert that had come to an end on the Prinsengracht canal.  The stage you see below is floating. I didn't see the concert, but it sounds like it was great. People were staking out their domain with lawn chairs along the canal starting about 10 in the morning. The concert was a grand-finale to a week long classical music festival.

Finished off the evening at a charming, mellow little bar.