Best laid plans….

Dear readers:

Something(s) you should probably know about me as caveats before taking my travel advice:

1. I have a truly terrible, completely faulty sense of direction.

2. I inexplicably mix up dates. I have no idea why…I double check things and it still seems to happen.

3. I can’t do math in my head (if you happen to be a client reading this, please pretend I did not just admit that. I swear am a whiz with an HP-12c 🙂)

It’s really amazing, given the above, that my travels have been as successful as they have been and that I’ve managed to see as much as I’ve seen. As you might imagine, numbers 2 and 3 above have over the years led to quite a bit of wasted time and money. So it shouldn’t have surprised me when the nice man at the bike tour company didn’t have my name…. and it turned out that I booked my countryside bike tour for last Tuesday.

What’s surprising, flaky as I have been on this trip, is that I haven’t walked into a canal or gotten hit by a tram. So I decided to take the latter as a win and just wing my day.

I usually take decent pains not to look like a tourist, and by the number of times I’ve been asked for directions or recommendations in foreign countries, I’d say I mostly succeed. I’m sure my basic European-mutt heritage helps…. I tend to blend in almost anywhere. So imagine yours truly walking through the red light district, middle of the day, iPhone in one hand for directions, “Rick Steve’s Pocket Amsterdam” in the other. I’m so embarrassed I’m ordering a glass of wine right now to dull the sting of that image.

BUT. I took a great walking tour of the city (thanks, Rick!), it was another gorgeous day, and I ended up back in the museum district in time to go to both the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. Both were outrageously crowded. As you know, I’m not a huge plaque-reader/museum-goer, and I also hate crowds. I don’t mind crowds where they’re supposed to be (concerts, train stations), just not where they don’t belong (grocery stores, museums). I literally turned around and walked out of the Rijksmuseum when confronted with crowds of screaming children, and I’ll admit I blew through the Van Gogh museum pretty quickly.

You know what, I’m on vacation. And on vacation, you should do the the things you want to do, not the things the guide book says you must.

THEN. Then I found the Moco Museum, a modern art museum in an old house just around the corner, currently exhibiting Banksy and Icy and Sot, all street artists. What a cool exhibit! And not crowded at all. I just loved it. Banksy, the famous British street artist, I knew. Icy and Sot were new to me – they are Iranian brothers who have been banned for life from Iran for their controversial art.

Here are some of my favorites from Banksy:

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And Icy and Sot:

Tomorrow I’m going to visit (and hopefully climb) the Westertoren Tower and wander the Jordaan neighborhood before I fly out to London. Just confirmed today that I’ll get to see two of my Hoffman friends there! Couldn’t be happier that it worked out.

I’m having oysters again as I write this…. they’re just SO GOOD… and heading to dinner shortly. Dinner tonight is at 212 Amsterdam, a “no table” restaurant. Meaning it’s all one big bar. Could there be anything better for a party of one? I think not.

Wishing you a sense of direction and a grasp of dates better than mine –

Cheers!

TG