Day 9: A Day of Windmills & More Pancakes

In class this morning we concluded our discussion on prostitution and briefly started talking about the drug trade.

Afterwards, I joined the guys for pancakes again. This time we went to the Upstairs, a joint that bills itself as the smallest restaurant in Europe. But don't diss it until you try it. The place may very well be the continent's smallest eatery.

After you climb a nearly 90 degree set of stairs that's less than 1meter across, you come to a landing that has a table directly in front, the "kitchen" and cash register to the left, and two more tables kitty-corner to the "kitchen". But the draw for us wasn't just its architectural and spacial quirks. Anthony Bourdain apparently visited the Upstairs during an episode of his television show "The Layover". My buddy Josh ordered the same thing Bourdain did: the rhubarb and apricot special.

I elected for the heavenly banana-chocolate pancake. (I've figured out this neat Smell-O-Vision trick, so go ahead. Get really close to your computer screen and just sniff. It really works best if you press your nose against the monitor. Give it a try!)

Smells good, right?????? ;-)

Later in the afternoon, about half the group left the city to do some independent travelling around Europe. Some kids went to Paris, others to Germany, and I think we had one or two go to London. Those who stayed behind went to Koog Zaandijk and Zaanse Schans, two villages that were about 15 minutes out of the city by train. Zaanse Schans is famous for its chocolate factory and numerous windmills (seriously the air there wreaks of cocoa, but I'm not complaining). We did lots of walking, but it was definitely worth the trip.

The weather couldn't have been better. With the breeze and waterways coming in from the North Sea, it felt much more like small-town Florida than The Netherlands.

Afterwards, we had dinner at a pizza place right next to the water in Amsterdam. The night ended with drinks at Kriterion, which is a bar/movie theater around the corner that only shows the most thought-provoking of fare, like Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha and Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives. 

I've been fighting a wicked sore throat and cough for the past few days, but I've still been trying to make the most of my time here. Can't wait to sleep in tomorrow!