and today, we went shopping!

Or, a tour of Amsterdam via its grocery stores and cheese shops.

We started off around 10:30 heading down the Dappermarkt, where we bought hot stroopwaffels and roasted chestnuts for breakfast; we turned down Eerste van Swindenstraat in order to hit the Turkish grocer, the natural foods store, and the Greek restaurant where we checked to be sure that they had adequate vegetarian food for us to do dinner there tonight. Then it was back down the rest of the market, stopping at pretty much every cheese stall but only buying some at Joel's and my usual (a farmer's cheese with walnuts and a gruyere). Then we swung up back home, to drop off our purchases so far, with a short side trip through the Oosterpark. Then, stopping for sandwiches along the way, we headed towards the Nieuwmarkt and China town, where we went in a couple of Asian grocers and another cheese store. Then since whynothing's dad told him he had to go to the red light district, we did, but more to see the Oude Kerk than anything else (the first couple of times that I'd ever wandered into the red light district by accident, I never even saw any of the girls in the windows -- I was too busy oggling the gorgeous 13th century church in the middle of the district!). We then started back towards the Amstel and ended up on a street that I knew a very good cheese shop, so we turned down there, first stopping in a fairy-themed store (with lots of cute gnomes and fairies and mice and dragons and stuff). At the cheese shop, I picked up a stilton with cranberries for Joel; I hope he likes it! That street opened up onto the Dam Square so I showed them the WW2 memorial, the royal palace, and the Nieuwe Kerk. Then we headed down Kalverstraat where we found a Lush store, and when leleth_faery found out I hadn't even heard of them before, she dragged me in. I now know exactly what I want for Christmas from Joel this year.

We then went through the flower market before coming up by Muntplein to head down the Amstel to the place where I've gotten calligraphy nibs, parchment, and pergamenta before. They only had two pieces of the 19x24cm size out, so we asked if they had any more -- and it turns out that they have three larger sizes (the largest being 119EUR and huge); the size one up from 19x24 was about 10EUR more and more than twice as big. The shopkeepers were really nice and unrolled every single piece until leleth_faery picked out the one she wanted. I didn't get any but now that I know that they have such large, lovely pieces, I definitely will in the future. And somehow I get a feeling I'm going to be getting some orders from people in the US; it'll hardly cost anything to get a cardboard tube and mail pieces back to the US.

Let's see, from there we went to Waterlooplein and the glories of all the flea-market-y-type-stuff and the goth-y-type-stuff. leleth_faery got a skirt and whynothing got two t-shirts, and I picked myself up a new zip-up knit jacket, in part because the current zip-up, hooded light-weight jacket that I have I noticed recently has a hole in it, and in part because it had droopy sleeves and a hood with a tail! Too cute.

By then it was nearly 4:30 and we'd been walking and shopping continuously for nearly 6 hours. We headed home with a stop at the office where I ran up to get my homeworks so I can finish grading them on the train to Paris tomorrow. At home we broke out the walnut cheese and the gruyere and the pomegranate we got at the Turkish grocer, and had ourselves a (very yummy!) snack before playing another game of Attica. Then it was off for dinner, with a final shopping stop at one of the normal grocery stores, for important purchases like stroopwaffels. :) At the Greek restaurant we split five appetizers, spanakopitas, dolmades, mushrooms in garlic, baked sheep feta, deep-fried egglant with tzatziki, an extra order of pitas, and half a liter of retsina. It was just fabulous, as the food there always is. We were all pretty full at the end but since we'd read the dessert menu before we ordered, we'd all be hankering after the Greek yoghurt with honey and walnuts, so we decided we weren't TOO full to split one of those three ways. Oh, my. That was absolutely heavenly! The yoghurt was creamy and fluffy and sharp and the honey complimented it and smoothed it out beautifully. Very yummy. And all that gorgeousness came to just over 45EUR. Amazing.

So today was a fantastic day. I don't go out shopping very often because when I do I don't enjoy it, but if I don't go shopping often I enjoy doing it every once in awhile, and all throughout the day we had wonderful food, and it was just so much fun to go out and do fun stuff with friends. I'm so glad that leleth_faery and whynothing were able to tack on a side-trip to see me at the end of their trip to Italy. A day and a half isn't much, but it was better than nothing and boy did we have fun!