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Tuesday, June 25, 2019

pancakes and heineken and cigars, oh my

when we headed out for our first full day in amsterdam, we spotted a whole rack of bicycles that the hotel had available for rent to their guests.  i'm a pretty terrible bike rider, so the hub was fully aware that that was not going to be an option for us.


we were heading out in search of breakfast, and thanks to a tip from my friend weezermonkey we headed straight to pancakes amsterdam for some delicious grub.


it was very tiny but super cute inside.


we decided to split two pancakes - one savory and one sweet.


it's funny - we're both fairly familiar with french, spanish and italian.  but dutch was a totally different animal to us.  like, neither of us know any dutch at all, and even when we looked up simple phrases the words seemed damn near impossible to pronounce.  thank goodness for us that pretty much everyone in amsterdam spoke english.  we tried to read the words on the condiments on the table, but even though it was obvious what the items were, the dutch language is pretty perplexing to us.


his coffee came with a stroopwafel on the side, while my iced latte did not.



he'd gone with the bacon and cheese pancake, while i got to slather mine with butter and whipped cream and top it with chocolate sprinkles.



it was all delicious and we were really glad we'd gone.  from there we headed across town to our next adventure - a tour through the old heineken beer factory.  on our way there i spotted this funny looking car that makes smart cars look like a full size vehicle.


the factory wasn't too far away.  we were about an hour past our ticket time, but we barreled on in and the tour guide didn't bat an eye as she scanned our tickets and handed us our wristbands that held our two drink tokens.



the tour is self-guided, with tour guides available in each room to answer questions and offer additional information.


here's a bunch of really old heineken tools and bottles and awards and things.






the rest of the tour consisted of a detailed description of how heineken beer is made.  this building isn't a functional factory anymore - it's been relocated elsewhere in the country in a much larger facility.  and i don't even like beer, but it was still interesting to look at everything.




and like budweiser, there are heineken horses.



from there we went into the "heineken experience" - a fun little simulator that turns you into a bottle of heineken beer from brewing to bottling to distribution.







at the end, of course, you get a glass of beer to enjoy.  and while i still don't like beer, i took a sip just to say that i did.  it's a cute little glass but alas, you don't get to keep it.



there's a kiosk where you can create a custom label for a keepsake bottle of beer.  of course we ordered one.


then there are photo ops for selfies and interactive musical booths.



 then you head downstairs to the bar, where you can redeem those tokens for more beer.



once you've finished your drinks, you go back upstairs to pick up your personalized beer bottles and browse through the gift shop.


after we shopped for souvenirs to take home to the old lady and her special friend, we headed back towards our hotel and walked into the conservatorium hotel just down the street so that the hub could check out la casa del habano - a cigar shop and members-only lounge.  they had a ridiculous amount of inventory and the hub was agog at the sight of so many limited-edition sticks.




after he'd made his selections, we headed through the hotel lobby and over to the patio area so that he could enjoy one of his new cigars.  i ordered a bloody mary, which was delicious.



after we finished our drinks we dropped off his bags at our hotel and then headed out to find some dinner.  we'd earned a good one after all the walking we'd done, so i was excited to see where we'd end up.

5 comments:

  1. Nice to see Amsterdam up close. We only saw it from the tour bus. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have to go back and spend at least a couple of days walking the city! It's beautiful and tons of fun!

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