I alluded to my special dietary requirements in yesterday’s post. It is pretty restrictive (no diary, no gluten, no corn, no onions, no garlic, no processed foods, no avocados the list is endless). This makes finding places to eat when out and about challenging and especially for breakfast it seems.
At home I eat a lot of eggs and I mean a LOT of eggs. Therefore, I was delighted to find a place in Amsterdam called Omelegg. The clue is in the name and while they do other things (such as pastries) their main fare is egg based.
We arrived and found that not only was the place bustling but there was also a (short) queue of people waiting outside to go in, which is always a good sign. The queue went down quickly and we were soon seated. The chairs were hard which must help with the quick turnover!
I choose to “make my own” omelette of mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and coriander. Given the strength of the taste of the tomatoes it really was just a sun dried tomato omelette but I was just grateful to find something I could eat.
Breakfast done we went on another stroll around the canals following a route suggested in the DK book. Once again this took us through some very pretty back streets and it wasn’t too busy with people either.
Amsterdam is one of the places outside of the UK I think I could happily live (Georgetown, Washington being another). Amsterdam is cosmopolitan but quiet, you can be close to the action but live in a peaceful area.
But Amsterdam is also very contradictory. On the one hand it is full of tall, healthy blond residents cycling the streets of the city. On the other are the “coffeeshops” in which everyone not meeting that description is smoking cannabis.
One the one hand are the elegant buildings that line the pretty canals. On the other are the sex workers in the small glass fronted boxes in the bottom of those elegant buildings.
I guess those contradictions are what gives it its character and makes me love it so. Of course the eye watering prices of property could be a bit of a blocker to such a move but I can but dream.
An amazing place to live would be Begijnhof (shown below) which is beautiful and quiet tucked away through a tiny entrance. The slight issue for me would be that its houses can be occupied by women only so that is a bit of a limitation.
If I was to live in Amsterdam I’d want to get myself one of these cars which I saw a number of times. They are narrow enough to be parked on pavements when such things exist and look just the ticket to easily navigate the canal side streets.
The other cars that there were plenty of were Teslas. I assume that there were financial incentives available given the number around and that a number of them were also being used as taxis.
When I win the lottery I’ll also have one of those to go with my Amsterdam bolt hole!
