Patti Beth and I spent the day walking around the city… No real plan, just wandering and seeing where the roads and canals would take us. I like to call it wanderlust, I just wish I had a bit more sense of direction and ability to follow a digital map more than one step at a time. I definitely do not have visuospatial intelligence! Luckily getting lost was not a problem because that was the point! Funny how that works. Luckily we found the one shop we both wanted to find, along with several other treasures along the way. And who knew the one shop we both wanted to find was the same exact one!! Too funny.

We stopped for coffee and a bagel at Bagel and Beans. I was so excited to have a bagel again, and it was so tasty, toasted with sesame seeds, melted goat cheese, bacon and roasted pine nuts. Are you drooling yet?? A little slice of heaven, and no calories?!?

Here are a couple things that caught my eye today.

We saw a canal house front decorated for Sinter Klaas with Zwarte Pieten and gifts all over the place, just like we would decorate out front yards for Christmas, but in Amsterdam there usually aren’t front yards.

Most store windows have Zwarte Piet an Sinterklaas in the windows.

And definitely not festive but seen on my walk home from the tram, an interesting view of garbage pickup in Amstelveen!! Look how they do it here. People bring their trash to these bins from their apartments and then the garbage truck comes to one location and pulls the whole bin out of the ground. What do you think about that??