Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

And here we are in Amsterdam. And it looks just like the pictures - canals and bikes and bridges. 

Everyone we meet apologizes for the weather, but really - it is pretty much as we expected. Sure, hot and sunny would be nice, but cloudy and drizzly is kind of how it goes here.

We have rented an apartment not too far from the train station on the northern end of the Red Light District. We're on a street of restaurants - pretty much any type of food you can think of. The not so sexy sexy part of town is a few blocks away.

Our street.

Our building (We're the three windows of the third floor)

And here is the gateway that takes us to the side door entrance of our building. That's an Argentinian steakhouse on the ground floor of the building next to ours.

Our landlady gave us a couple of suggestions for places to eat. One was a restaurant called Meatballs. And can I just say - Bless the organized Dutch. Streets with street names at every corner! Numbers identifying each business. We found Meatballs even in our stunned post flight state (unlike our restaurant hunting adventures in Japan). And then - they were open for dinner early. No waiting til 8 or 9 or 10 as in Southern Europe. 5:00 and we were sitting at the bar contemplating what kind of meatballs we wanted for dinner. As Henry Ford used to say you can have your car in any colour you want as long as you want black, here the message was you can have anything you want to eat, as long as it is meatballs. It was delicious, and came with delicious and interesting sides. We had the opportunity to try a rhubarb liqueur called Rubarbacello, which was surprisingly good. I'll finish by showing you one of the side dishes from my meal:

Yes, that is mashed carrots and pine nuts, topped with popcorn. Unorthodox, but surprisingly good!