Day 1- Seattle to Amsterdam-04/08/2010

train to Amsterdam

Alan eating Pommes Frites

Heinekin Brewery

The Heinekin Experience

Making Beer

Alan grinding barley

Heinekin for the Win!

Park Victoria Hotel

Deciding on Food for dinner..chickpea masala!

Today I left Seattle on route to my first official vacation of the year. Destination Amsterdam, but a slight layover in France. It was my first time flying air France. There were some pluses and some negatives to the experience. Pluses were the good service, decent food, and great movie selection. The minus was that the seats reclining in front of us, reclined fully, not just the back part. Some fat asian dude was in front of Alan..so he was very uncomfortable. His companion leaned back…I was in a bit of a fowl mood, so kneed several times..she moved her seat quickly back to an upright position (I felt the slightest amount of guilt).

A great movie selection was offered..including Avatar and “Do not disturb” (A new bollywood comedy). Avatar was interesting…conceptwise, but the whole sci-fi thing does not work for me. A good movie, but not my vote for the Oscars (thankfully Hurt Locker won). I did not realize bollywood movies include so much English. Also autotuning Bollywood  is interesting

Quick plane ride to Amsterdam, then we took the commuter train to Amsterdam Center. Luckily our hotel, was right across the street from the train station..Park Victoria Hotel. This hotel has some history to it. Classic, but old looking on the inside, plus the gym cost 14 euro per hour to use (heck no..I would rather run).

We settled our stuff in, then set out for our journey for lunch and the Heinekin Experience. Alan ended up with fries and mayo, I got a simple cheese sandwhich from Oh Go grocer. Finding the Heinekin experience was not so easy, but we managed.

The entire experience was fun and pretty interactive. We got to be “the bottle” with beer ride (interactive experience on becoming a beer). Also got to grind hops (Alan was quite good and this), and twist and turn wheels on the big copper brew kettles. We got to taste wort (a sweet mixture of malt and hot water) which is very sweet in tast. Apparently the dutch prefer two fingers of foam, whereas the Germans go for 1 finger of foam. A clean glass is necessary in tasted, and each sip, will leave a ring of foam to indicate how much was drank at each time. If this does not happen, the glass is not clean! We got a cool bracelet, with two buttons. Each button was for a beer. Alan did not drink any, but I had half of one, later asking for the button back..so my bracelet looked cool again. They were nice about it…stupid American tourists!

I took a nice 1 hour run west of town..hopefully not running through the Heroin district. It was a nice run and a different way to experience the city..so many canals!

Had dinner at Kohl-Noor..same place we ate last time we were here. I got to say, since Alan has been cooking indian food, eating indian food at restaurants pales in comparison.

Early to bed because early run in the morning, then off to Rotterdam and Belgium