It was lovely weather today so we decided to walk through the nearby park - Westerpark and admire the geese but we managed to hold off going in what looked like a lovely bakery in the park. We wanted to properly explore the Jordaan district so I planned route via a number of canals and back streets. The area was really fascinating and had plenty of good photo opportunities. My second favourite image of the day was actually a beautiful blue moped covered with fallen yellow ginkgo leaves!
As we had been good and avoided the bakery first thing this morning we decided that we had earned pancakes especially after the disaster the other day when we waited for forty minutes and then left with NO pancakes. The first place I had identified to visit was packed and had tourist prices to match its location. We wandered down a road away from the canal and came across ‘Letting’ cafe which despite nit looking much from outside produced superb proper pancakes (not crepes) and I could have eaten a second sliced apple and cinnamon one it was so nice. Colin went for traditional lemon and sugar which was also very good.
This was all gearing up to prepare us for the boat trip I had booked a few months ago but which I had to rapidly rebook for today as we had to sort out Colin’s antibiotics for his dental abscess on Friday. The boat stop was the same for one of the 100-seater boats and I was rather worried about who would be coming on the trip. In the event it was excellent. There were nine of us in total including two people from Amsterdam, two from Greece and a couple from Southern Ireland. The skipper was keen to make sure we were all comfortable with heated seats and glasses of Prosecco (and tea for him and Colin who cannot drink alcohol at the moment). He also produced rugs for our knees and chocolate and snacks - what’s not to like! We had 1.5 hours on the canals and because it was just a little electric boat we could explore the smaller side canals that other larger boats cannot access.
We walked back and collected dinner to eat in as we planned a visit to the Red Light District later in the evening! I had a bit of a challenge figuring out the combination oven but eventually I managed to heat it up and whilst experimenting with the oven we had mixed tapas! After resting our feet we headed back towards the Dam District taking the tram as we certainly had been covering the miles today. The Red Light District was not quite what I had expected and I felt bad looking at the girls on display in the shop fronts. Their ‘handlers’ were lurking in the shadows, in theory to look after them in case of dodgy clients but actually probably mainly because they take a cut of the money that the girls earn. The girls seemed more preoccupied with their mobile phones and to behest they looked more like lingerie models than working girls. I just felt sorry that they have work like this but then again, perhaps they have chosen this so I should not be presumptuous.
We managed the walk back without a tram which was a long one and achieved double the advised number of footsteps today!
