European Christmas Part II - Prague & Amsterdam

PRAGUE
Guidebook - Top 10 Prague

We arrived super late into Prague and kicked off Christmas Eve with a stroll to the Christmas Market at Old Town Square. Prague was one of the few cities I researched that had a main market open through Christmas (theirs is open until early Jan.). Hands down, this was one of my favorite markets on the entire trip. There was your share of standard touristy tchotchkes but also some unique, neat crafts (I picked up a few pairs of earrings). Most everything we saw was at considerably cheaper prices than the other parts of Europe. And find me another word for OUTRAGEOUS because the smells wafting around this market were just unbelievable. We walked over the Charles Bridge and then spent Christmas Eve at the market for their "Czech Christmas mess" (mass?) which featured the Prague State Opera orchestra and soloists from the National Theatre.

I was expecting fun Christmas songs to get in the spirit, but we made it through 3-4 songs I had never heard and called it quits in favor of some eats. What was most memorable about the performance was the clapping of mitten'd hands. But on to the eats! Let's start with praha ham... giant pieces of ham rotating on spits over an open flame. Tasted just as good as it looked and smelled, if not better.

We then tried langoše, a fried dough brushed with minced garlic and ketchup and topped with cheese. Sounds fairly gross but it was heavenly. Moving on to trdelník... this is a sweet bread dough wrapped raw on huge rolling pins, then baked while it grills and turns over hot coals, later topped with sugar. Yum!

We also visited Prague Castle and St. Vitus's Cathedral as well as the Old Jewish Cemetery and surrounding synagogues. In our absurd quest to hike up most of the bell towers of Europe, we walked up the Old Town Hall, which has the beautiful Astronomical Clock on the exterior. We think this is only tower we've trudged up that actually has an elevator to take you to the top (though we took it down, not up). The walk up was also ramp based, so it was much easier on your knees.

One of my favorite memories of Prague? The most beautiful, perfect, 6 pointed snowflakes I've ever seen in my life. It was so cold that these little icy snowflakes wouldn't melt... they'd just hang around on your coat or scarf in their perfect form.

From Prague we hopped our first flight of the trip to Amsterdam...

AMSTERDAM
Guidebook - Lonely Planet's Amsterdam Encounter

We hit two main sights while in Amsterdam... the Anne Frank Huis and the Van Gogh Museum.

• Anne Frank Huis was an awesome experience. The museum has little video vignettes in every other room which help collect folks for viewing and keeps the house from being too crowded. It was extremely surreal to be in a place that I had read of many moons ago - a place virtually every student reads about at some point or another. You walk through the revolving bookcase into the secret annex and see The Diary of Anne Frank come to life, with the various rooms people slept in, the kitchen, the bathroom, the attic, etc. In Anne's room the museum has preserved the wallpaper covered with magazine photos that Anne pasted on the wall to brighten the space and feel the outside world. Something I didn't think to be prepared for was a room in the modern part of the museum that housed Anne's actual diaries and writings. It was a very special visit.
• Van Gogh Museum, on the other hand and on another day, was an absolute madhouse. Too many visitors, all dumped into too few spaces. The placards with each painting were also extremely small to read which meant queues to read everything, or queues of audioguide zombies trudging along. The painting collection was vast and impressive, but the experience of so many visitors really hindered the visit and made me want to rush through it.

Amsterdam was extremely walkable and we trekked all over the city, from our hotel in the southern canal area into the city centre, with its pedestrian-friendly shopping avenues. If we weren't dodging trams we were dodging bikes... this would be a fun city to tour on bike if the weather was right and the bum could tolerate the ride.

I had promised Kev that I had timed our itinerary of cities so that we would be finished with Christmas Markets by the time we hit Amsterdam. Oops - one right across from our hotel. But this time (and in similar markets around A'dam), they were just small ice skating rinks with food stalls. The pastry stalls were overflowing with appel beignets (a flat, apple filled donut) and oliebollen (a dense donut ball with raisins topped with powdered sugar).

We also tried a few restaurant recs out of our book. At Pancakes! Kev had Thai lotti pancakes (coconut, banana and condensed milk) and I had apple pancakes with fresh raspberry sauce and whipped cream. Decadent! Another treat was rijsttfel (a sampling of 18 Indonesian meat and veg dishes plus rice and sides) at Tujuh Maret.

From Amsterdam, we hopped a plane to London, perfectly missing all the snow nonsense and airport shutdowns we had spent most of our trip hearing about.

WANT TO SEE MORE?
Check out the photos from this part of our trip over on Facebook.