A Day Trip To Amsterdam

I spent most of last week in the Netherlands with Thomas, where we were house- and cat-sitting (which - just as an aside - proved that my cat allergy is cope-able and so we'll definitely be cat owners before the end of the year: hooray!) for friends while they were on honeymoon.

Our friends live in Erlecom, a tiny village just outside the town of Nijmegen (where Thomas lived when I first met him, and where I therefore spent many, many weekends during our long distance relationship). In between the cat-cuddles at home and the many awesome friend hang-outs in Nijmegen, we made time to take a day trip to Amsterdam.

I love Amsterdam and it's always a joy to wander the streets of this beautiful and characterful city. On this trip, our priority was a visit to Katten Kabinet, a marvellously eccentric gallery/museum on Herengracht. Set up by the wealthy and cat-loving owner of the building, it's essentially a gallery of cat art: sculpture, graphic design, sketches and paintings (including a Picasso and a Rembrandt). Oh, and there are also the owner's cats wandering around (or, on the afternoon we visited, curled up asleep). What really makes it worth a visit, though, is the unique opportunity to see a perfectly restored canal house interior - complete with wood panelling, ceiling frescoes and elaborate carvings - in an area that has tended to see original features removed for the sake of modernity. 

For dinner we struck lucky with a place I'd read about on Tigerlilly Quinn. Latei is a funky little neighbourhood cafe just next to Nieuwmarkt. Full of vintage and retro goodies (with everything on display also for sale), it's a diner by day but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening it's taken over by the Kook Kollektief, who serve delicious (and cheap) food inspired by Indonesian and other Asian cuisine. We ate a huge portion of Gado Gado with a tasty beef curry for me and a vegan one for Thomas, plus a side of fried plantains. Stuffed with food, we rolled back to the station for our train home to Nijmegen.

This mirror was not at a Janet-friendly height - I'm standing on my tippermost toes here. I've also realised that you'd be forgiven for thinking Thomas only owns one shirt: I think he wears this checked one in 90% of the pictures that land on here. I promise, he does have other clothes. His wardrobe isn't currently sacrificed on the altar of my dress addiction. Yet.

A guide to vintage shopping in Amsterdam

I was delighted to discover, ahead of my trip there, that Amsterdam is awesome for vintage shopping.  Thanks to @fiandme on Twitter, who pointed me in the right direction, I spent much of the first day darting in and out of shops (The Boy was probably less happy about this turn of events) and quickly learnt three things about vintage shopping in Amsterdam:

1. The range and quality of stuff available is incredible: it seems to me like vintage might be a fairly new thing in the Netherlands, because there was so much high quality original 1940s, 50s and 60s stuff that you just don't find in the UK anymore.

2. Compared to in the UK, vintage is incredibly cheap in Amsterdam.  I saw stunning 1940s tea dresses and 1950s sun dresses in perfect condition, which would go for upwards of £60 here, for around €20-€30.

3. Plus size vintage doesn't seem to exist.  Not just like in the UK, where it's harder to find but you usually come across a piece or two after some rummaging, but literally not available anywhere. Major sad face from me, and the reason why I came home entirely empty handed.  However, if you're sizes 8-12, you're laughing.

So, where to go to find all these riches?

Your first port of call should be the Negen Straatjes (Nine Streets), a small neighbourhood of beautiful independent shops, cafes and bars in the canal district.  There are too many vintage shops on the Negen Straatjes to name individually, but spending an hour or two criss-crossing the canals to wander up and down the streets will provide any vintage lover with plenty to see.

A ten minute walk north of the Negen Straatjes will bring you to Harlaammerstraat, home to three good vintage stores: Rumours Vintage (modern, what I'd call 'fashion' vintage, including some menswear), Marble Vintage (which has another branch on Nieuwe Hoogstraat and also offers lots of menswear), and Wini Vintage (pictured above).

Episode has three branches in central Amsterdam, including one on the Negen Straatjes and one smack bang next to the Waterlooplein flea market, and is the closest thing I saw to British shops like Rokit or Beyond Retro.  Quite fashion-driven, rather than true vintage pieces, and lots of 80s and 90s stuff, but excellent for a rummage.  This was also one of the only places I saw anything vaguely approaching my size (14-16, so not wildly plus, but where vintage is concerned I'm huge).

Tut & Hola on Korsjespoortsteeg was probably my favourite vintage shop.  It's a small store but absolutely brimming with amazing dresses at reasonable prices, and seemed especially good for 50s and 60s pieces.

Finally, a store I managed to entirely miss while I was there (despite it being on a street we walked many times) is I Love Vintage, which sells vintage clothes as well as their own retro designs both online and in their shop on Prinsengracht.

This is a mere taster of all of the vintage shopping that Amsterdam offers: tucked away on quiet alleys and canal-side streets, there are more stores than I could possibly name here.  So what are you waiting for?  Get shopping!

All images apart from the first one are from the websites of the shops and © the shop named.

Six days away

We got home late last night after a jam-packed six days in Europe.  Three cities (Amsterdam, Nijmegen, then Copenhagen) visited, miles and miles walked, five books read, lots of sunny weather, five trains, two flights... I'm exhausted now but had such a lovely and relaxed time away.  I could tell just how relaxed I was because, for the first time in ten months, I went six whole days without taking any painkillers: amazing!  My jaw pain is lingering around a bit today, but I think that's just the stress of travelling home.

We started with two days in Amsterdam, a city we both know well and so were able to just enjoy wandering around without the stress of dashing from one sight to the other.  We stayed at the Chic & Basic Hotel which is super central and had a fab canal-side location.  From there we went to Nijmegen (a small city to the east of the Netherlands, where The Boy lived for five years), where we had such a fun night out with friends.

Finally, Copenhagen, where we walked for miles and miles, stopped for drinks in sweet little pavement cafes, sat in the park to read and by lakes to take silly selfies, watched the most incredible thunderstorm (from the comfort of our Airbnb apartment, thank goodness), and generally had a lovely time.  I didn't utterly fall in love with Copenhagen, though, which surprised me because I'm generally a bit of a city slut and will give my heart to any place that comes along and bats its eyes at me.

The one thing I didn't do was take many photographs, because I was having such a lovely time just hanging out with The Boy that I didn't feel like taking my camera out every few minutes.  But hopefully these few snaps will give you some idea of what we got up to (and with apologies for the excess cleavage in the first picture!).

Summer in Nijmegen

And so to The Netherlands.  It was wonderful beyond words to spend all of last week with The Boy.  We...

... caught lots of trains, exploring Den Bosch, Leiden and The Hague (Den Haag) as well as spending time in Nijmegen, his hometown;

... visited two art galleries and one cinema;

... ate lots of tasty food (I might be in trouble for this photo of The Boy enjoying his falafel, but I love it!), had a picnic in the park, and drank cider on a boat on the canal in Den Haag;

... sought out political graffitti, which Nijmegen is full of.  This one reads, "Education is right for everyone, we won't let it be taken away";

... browsed through dusty old record shops;

... wandered around cathedrals, like proper old people, and got freaked out by the dolls heads in the window of a shop just behind Stevenskerk in Nijmegen;

... played Scrabble using a Dutch set, which was abandoned when I ended up with a hand consisting of seven (SEVEN!) Es.

And now I am back in Leicester, and it's only five weeks until The Boy moves back here too!!  Counting the days...

Day 26: Holiday fun

Last Bank Holiday weekend, I was in Nijmegen in The Netherlands, visiting The Boy.  This Bank Holiday weekend, I am in Nijmegen again.  We'll spend the weekend there before catching the train to Berlin on Monday morning.  I can't wait to spend almost a week with him exploring Berlin, finding fun bars, eating yummy vegan food... all in all, having a lovely holiday together. 

In the meantime here are a few photographs from my visit earlier this month, during which we walked in the spring sunshine, drank Dutch cider, admired graffitti, ate falafel, watched films, and stared into each other's eyes and all that other cheesy crap that couples do.

Day 6: Bank holiday

For those new to my blog; back in October last year, after being single for a looooong time (ten years to be precise.  You can read my reasons for that here), I met a lovely guy who I call The Boy for reasons of anonymity and because it makes me smile*. 

Just finding The Boy in the first place was something of a challenge, and then getting two socially awkward and shy people to declare their 'like' for each other presented a second challenge.  But next came the biggest challenge of all: in January, he moved to the Netherlands to work on his PhD for eight months.  Cue a great deal of travelling for both of us, as we embarked on a long distance relationship and fell in love while hundreds of miles apart.

So, this bank holiday (and the next, and the one after that) I will be wearing out my passport to visit him in Nijmegen.  I have my euros ready, my bag packed, and by the time you read this on Monday I will be very happily lazing in bed with the man who makes me happier than anything else in the world.

* It particularly makes me smile that some of my IRL friends who read this blog have taken to calling him The Boy in day-to-day conversation, rather than by his actual given name.

Half term travels

1. & 2. On the way to Nijmegen;

3. & 4. Political graffitti art on the walls of the vegan cafe downstairs from The Boy's abode;

5. Gracie playing in the park in Brighouse, West Yorkshire;

6. Don't get excited!  As the only daughter of the only daughter, I've had the privilege of being entrusted with my late Granny's beautiful diamond engagement ring, and have enjoyed wandering around with massive rocks on my finger.

As you can tell from this and other recent posts, I'm slipping back into bad habits: relying on my phone and Instagram rather than using my camera.  Must do better, Janet.  It's been a good half term though: DVDs and pizza with friends to start it off, then five wonderful (but bloody cold) days in the Netherlands with The Boy, culminating in a fabulously romantic Valentines Day walk through Amsterdam in the snow.  Finally, I've spent the weekend at home at my mum's house.  She and my step-mum have just returned from my Granny's funeral in Cape Town,and we - and my brothers - enjoyed sharing stories and memories of my grandparents and looking through old photographs, letters and documents.  It's at times like these that we all find it hard to be living on a different continent to pretty much everyone in our extended family.  And it's back to school tomorrow... boo.

New Year in The Netherlands

What an adventure!  Having got very last minute flights using my airmiles, I headed off to Nijmegen (via Amsterdam Schiphol airport) on 30th December.  I'd inadvertantly booked myself into business class, so at Heathrow I was able to enter the hallowed halls of the BA Club Lounge and hang out with all the rich old white guys.  Being able to board the plane first was weird, too: I had a brief moment of thinking, "wow, this is cool," but then I started feeling like a twat as I walked past all the standard class passengers*.

New Year's Eve itself was lovely; The Boy and I wandered around the town all afternoon, drinking tea and looking at secondhand books, then in the evening we ate dinner with his friends in the cafe downstairs from where he lives, then had drinks and watched a punk band in the venue in the basement of the building (the building is a story to itself: an old newspaper building that was once a squat, it's now an anarchist/vegan cafe and gig/club venue with communal living accomodation above: it is so awesome). 

At midnight, we all headed out onto the streets where the full craziness of a Netherlands NYE was revealed.  People light bonfires in the middle of the road and set fireworks off all over the place: the whole town was lit up with explosions.  For a Brit raised on health & safety lectures, it was pretty terrifying, but exciting too.

I didn't take any photographs at all, which is kind of a shame, but I wanted to just live it and enjoy it.  I promise that if I ever go back I'll be a better blogger!  But this is what I wrote on the plane on the way home; a mental snapshot, if you like:

* This was even more the case on the flight back on the 1st, when I had a proper New Year's Day hangover, teary eyes and a pair of underpants stamped on the back of my hand from the club the previous night. I stood out a mile in the business class section!

2012 in pictures

One of my resolutions earlier in the year was to take more photographs.  I haven't always managed to stick to it, but I have done my best - since the summer - to snap away.  So although this post is titled '2012 in pictures', it would more accurately be called 'the second half of 2012 in pictures'.

July: Sunset over Table Mountain, Cape Town

 

August: The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg

September: discovering the hidden beauty of my city

October: graffiti in Amsterdam

October: A walk in the woods in South Yorkshire

November: hanging out in the cemetery on my day off

December: Christmas wreath on my freshly-painted front door (the incessant rain has, sadly, caused the dye in the ribbon to run, so now my lovely door looks like someone has been brutally murdered against it)