As I begin this post, it’s 10:00 on a Tuesday night and I’m exhausted. The past three days have been jam-packed with so much activity, I’m not exaggerating when I say that I haven’t taken a real break until now.
As I’m lying alone in my hotel room, exhausted and ready to crash, I’ve come to the realization that it will be impossible for me to document my whole Netherlands trip in one post. Instead, I’ll make this a series of posts, each about a specific day.
Let’s begin with Sunday… and just because Saturday was cool too, let’s throw it in the mix.
Saturday was a nice last day in Copenhagen. I went to breakfast with my friends and then we checked out a Cactus festival at Torvehallerne. If I learned one thing that day, it’s that cactus tastes exactly as slimy and bland as you’d think it would taste like. The bagel I had for breakfast was pretty amazing though. We went to a shop called “Bagel and Co.”, which was located on the top of Illum, a fancy department store on Stroget (Copenhagen’s main shopping street). I also got a fancy juice there. Despite my conscience, that keeps telling me that juices aren’t actually healthy and have more sugar than you need in 2 days, I really, really, REALLY like them.
The rest of the day I rested up and packed, in preparation for waking up to go to the airport at 4:00 in the morning on Sunday. Somehow I actually managed to fall asleep at a reasonable hour and got a solid 6 or so hours. When I woke up, there were people blasting disco music and Spice Girls outside my bathroom as I took a shower. Oh Copenhagen…
My friend and I left the apartment at 5:00 and got on the Metro, which consisted of 70% airport-bound travelers and 30% drunk people chowing down on pizza or shawarma. It was quite an experience!
A few hours and one delicious airport Lagkaghuset pastry later, we were in Amsterdam for my long study tour!
I’ve been to Amsterdam before, but it was when I was really young… at least 10 years ago. Upon getting off of out bus, I was instantly reunited with the first taste of Europe that I had ever gotten, so long ago… the canals, the cobblestoned streets, the thousands of bridges and the narrow buildings. It was all so strangely familiar, yet exciting and beautiful. To make it even better, the weather was sunny and just cool enough. It was a perfect day to start our tour.
The first stop on the tour was a visit to FOAM, which is the Amsterdam Photo Museum. There were a lot of short-films being shown in different rooms, and of course, lots of photos.
Next, we walked over to an area of Amsterdam called “The Nine Streets” to get lunch. We found a really good Greek place that had awesome pita bread. I ordered dolmadas and a “feta and red pepper salad”, whicy ended up just being straight feta cheese whipped into a dip. It was good, but only as a dip for my bread!
We then were assigned to go out and explore the surrounding area and take visual notes in our sketchbook. My group decided to sit in a square and peoplewatch for the first portion of it. I felt kind of creepy sketching people but I’m really happy with how my sketchbook turned out!
Next, we decided to walk around some more. I drew a map of the area and sketched some logos and signage that we passed. During an intense sketching session, I was sitting on a bench and it started raining! At that point, we were all too exhausted and done with our assignment so we headed back to the coffee shop where we were supposed to meet up afterwards. On the way, I grabbed my second pastry of the day from a cute bakery. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was sort of crunchy (kind of the texture of shortbread) with a poppyseed, lemon and honey filling.
After getting some coffee/tea with the whole group and comparing sketchbooks, we were free to wander around a little before heading off to dinner. I went to a cheese shop and sampled a ton of Dutch cheeses, which was enough to convince me to buy some for gifts!
Next, it was time for dinner. We took the Amsterdam Tram to a place called “De Culinaire Werkplaats” for a cooking demonstration and dinner. This was seriously such a strange, unique, fun and delicious experience…
Upon sitting down in the small restaurant, which was half kitchen, half-dining room, we were served some fancy bread with a spinach pesto dip. The owners then went on to tell us about the five-course meal we were about to feast on.
The deal was, each of the courses were based on a different Dutch designer (oh DIS… you’re so sneaky!) Our tables would take turns plating the food in a way that reflects a different Dutch artist.
The first course was based on Viktor and Rolf, which is an Amsterdam Fashion house. The plating was inspired by purfume bottles, including a fruit bon-bon, jelly bows, red peppercorn and a fruit puree. It was a little strange, but I liked how the owner decided to serve us a “dessert-like” dish before the savory dishes. She said it was because they didn’t like to follow the rules!
The next course was inspired by Marcel Wanders, a product designer and artist. Our dish consisted of three varieties of fried dough balls (one with onions, one with olives and one with sundried tomatoes) with gold flakes sprinkled on top. The dough balls were placed on top of a fermented garlic sauce, which was so, so good. Also, I’ve never eaten anything with actual gold sprinkled on it, so I was pretty stoked. The dough balls relate to Wander’s “one minute sculptures” that he creates and dips in gold.
The third dish was a combination of French and Dutch cuisine, inspired by a painting by Rembrandt that was shared between the French and the Dutch. The pretzel infinity sign wrapped around the two packets of food represents this bond. One of the packets had barley and mushrooms. The other had asparagus, lima beans and artichokes.
The fourth course was my favorite, even though it looked the weirdest! Rem Koolhaas, a Dutch architect inspired the structural aspects of this stacked dish. The brown squares are black bean cakes (actually really delicious), the top layer of the stack is made of apricot, and the bottom of white and wild rice. The sauce on the bottom is hoisen. We were told to eat all three parts of the dish together… you wouldn’t think that would taste good, but I was thoroughly impressed.
The last dish was a sort of DIY dessert sculpture where we could combine anything we wanted from a buffet-style table. I picked up a bunch of dark chocolate of course, plus a bunch of fruit and some mint, vanilla and berry sauces. It looks like a total mess, but I was happy with how it tasted.
Even though I didn’t really LOVE all of the dishes we ate, I really loved spending 3+ hours having a multiple course meal. It was so fun just relaxing, talking and wondering what surprise awaits you for your next course.
After all that gourmet stuff, I was so ready for bed. These DIS tour planners really pack in their activities, so we had to be ready to leave early in the morning. We took the Amsterdam tram back to the hotel and I went to sleep shortly afterwards!
To be continued…
Let's Dansk 