Amsterdam & Utrecht - Business Trip

This is REALLY late.  Work and wedding planning have kept me away from blogging.  They also decided to block Blogger at work, so my blogging is now confined to after work hours.  Even though I was only blogging on my lunch hour...

I did a lot of wandering around Amsterdam.  As a result, I don't know the names of a lot of these places, but I'll describe them as I see fit :-)
 


My trip started in Utrecht, the Netherlands.  Utrecht is a smaller city about 40 minutes outside Amsterdam.  Sara Lee's international headquarters are located in Utrecht, along with my boss and colleagues.  I had the nights to myself, so I enjoyed the local scenery.  Utrecht, like many other European cities, has a system of canals that run through the city.  Supposedly (according to the hotel TV channel) Utrecht is unique that they are the only European city to have a lower level concourse next to their canal.  However, I think they have this in Paris as well, I could be wrong.

Utrecht is also a college town.  There are three universities in town.  This fact became very obvious, even to me as an outsider, as I walked passed scores of students in the streets.  My hotel was across the street from a dormitory.  This sign was on a walkway near my hotel and the dormitory, my translation:

Cows go here to sleep

I think we can all agree this is 100% accurate.

After three 13 hour days of training, I headed back to Amsterdam for the weekend.  I started the weekend by going to dinner with my Uncle Jack's partner, David.  He is a flight attendant for United Airlines and flys the ORD-AMS route (due to the fact he speaks fluent Dutch).  In fact, he was working my flight on the way over.    He took me to this cool hole in the wall bar where they sold homemade liquor in about 75 flavors.  If I remember correctly, I had raspberry and butterscotch (per the shop owners' recommendation).  He showed me around the city a bit and then we had dinner at an Italian restaurant (the Dutch aren't really known for their cuisine).  Our waiter was from Texas and apparently spoke terrible Dutch...and was also a crappy waiter.  But, it made for a memorable story.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of us at dinner, bummer.

I had the following day all to myself, so I decided to go for a long run and explore the city that morning (notice the headphones in most of these pictures).  The picture at the top of this page is me in front of the well known "Amsterdam" sign in the center of the city.  Perhaps best known from the Amstel Light commercials.

 Another picture from the notable Amstel Light commercial - life size chess board.  This old guy was awesome.  I athoroughly enjoyed watching this.

I'd like to point out the gray box like things in front of the sign.  These are public urinals and they are scattered all around the city.  If you look close you can see each one has 4 urinals, one on each corner.  At first, it sounds disgusting.  But after you've had for beers and you're wandering the streets, they are amazing.  The Dutch are genius for inventing (I assume) and using these.

This is "Dam Square."  That's right, Dam Square.  Its a WWII memorial.  That's really all you need to know about it.  It is really large, and very impressive.

Right in the heart of the city, there is a comedy club named "Boom Chicago."  I didn't go, but I couldn't help but take a picture of a placed named after my hometown.

After my day of exploring the city, Is went to dinner with one of my colleagues, Yaprak.  We went to dinner at a nice Italian place and enjoyed finally being able to speak face to face.  It was really a please to spend some time with her.

Before heading to the airport on Sunday, I stopped by the famous Amsterdam flower market to buy some flowers for the women in my life: Kate, my mom, Kate's mom and both of my grandmas.  I bought two bundles of tulips for 15 euro a piece.  Each bundle had 50 tulips.  I had to carry the flowers by hand, and overhead compartment, back to Chicago.  I caught some flak in customs in Chicago, but I told them how it was gonna be and everything worked out.

I'll close out this blog post with some pictures of the scenic system of canals in Amsterdam.  I took a 90 minute boat tour of the canals and it was incredible.  There are over 300 houseboats on the canals in Amsterdam.  Notice the example in the second picture.  The tour went past a Anne Frank's house (where she hid from the Nazi's), the flower market, the largest harbor in Holland, and numerous other sights.  My favorite part of the tour was the view of the canals and bridges themselves.