This is how you feel in your late (OK, very late) 20s in London while enjoying cocktails with your best friends in a bar with high ceiling, a fireplace, beautiful people and lovely plants. Where you celebrate your friendship, their new job, your new dress and your plans for all the glorious days ahead. This is the place to host these big dreams, high hopes and extra large love: the Chiltern Firehouse. Such a glamorous, chic, wonderful bar that makes your eyes sparkle. And that spark becomes a flame.
xO
...writing for another city. A city with lovely canals, beautiful flowers and hipster bicycles. And great places to visit.
Like the De Laatste Kruimel cafรจ with the most delicious warm sandwiches and the best muffins to go with your coffee. You sit in your grandma's cosy kitchen or on her balcony above the canal for morning chats and laughs and plans for the day ahead.
Which finds you walking around Jordaan and getting lost in the tiny roads around the canals. While the sun is putting a golden veil over the water, you sit on the bank of the river and order a glass of wine and chips with mayo to nibble. Preferably at Walem or Morlang. Necessarily though with your friend who you haven't seen for months. Because wine tastes better when shared with loved ones.
And after this mellow feeling that wine in the sun can only give, it's time for dinner. In Kantjil & De Tijger for Indonesian cuisine or in Trattoria Caprese just a few meters down the (Spuistraat) road for talliatele ragu served by possibly the most smiley and gentle people in town. And you bring your friends around a table with good food, which is another way of describing "bliss".
Next morning is coffee and apple pie time in Piejpe. Where you want to just sit and browse. To reflect on these lovely days and to plan the last few hours in the city. You grab a table at De Wasserette on the cobbled street and enjoy.
Upon reflection and deep thinking you are found in Brecht for a last pint and this warm feeling of visiting a home that you've been to several times before.
I am (in) (Am)sterdam. With S and A. And I am O(h so very happy).
xO
You walk into a vegetable garden: the artichokes have petals, the vine tomatoes look like blossoms and the spinach grows into a bush. Vegetables are colourful and aromatic and pretty- they are flowers in reality. You walk in La Fromagerie and you keep a note on your phone "to endorse healthy eating". You see the bags of pine nuts, the jars of honey and the bottles of olive oil and you remember how much you love the Mediterranean cuisine. You smell the hundred different types of cheese, the dried oregano and the fresh basil and you "need to get better at cooking".
You find your friends S and B and you talk 10 years of friendship, her lovely wedding and his great talent in photography. You order wine and nibbles and you talk work, dream jobs and thoughts around life over a platter of cheese and charcuterie. You hear about travels and pictures and cultures and you feel you're in the right place with the right people.
xO
