Extra senoritas

I should be taking more pictures. Memories fade. Maybe writing about them will help fix them. The thing is I’m a lazy writer and I haven’t the dedication to thrash out every scene in detail. Instead I dab a few broad brushstrokes and let other people’s imagination do the rest.

I’m three days into my Holland adventure, staying in a little room at the top of the Seven Bridges Hotel, which is delightful. Around the corner from the hotel I’ve found a little Belgian café where I came on my first morning to try and erase the nightmare memories of plane food with the help of coffee and chocolate, croissants and baguettes. It’s a nice place to blog before wandering through town visiting bookstores and looking at interesting things.

The centre of Amsterdam is just Tourist Town, the same as every tourist town all over the world – albeit in a pretty Dutch setting. The culture becomes polarized, both trivialized and amorphous, either women in funny hats selling tulip bulbs or young guys yelling, selling coca cola, phone credit and trying to fill sprawling restaurants. But a short walk away things settle down a bit. The streets behind my hotel remind me of the west end of Fremantle, big old buildings with big windows shoulder to shoulder on wide streets. Except with canals and more bikes. So many bikes, including lots of cargo bikes. And lots of stylish Dutch people riding them.



Yesterday I got out of town and went to a big market in Beverwijk called De Bazaar. I caught the train through the countryside and of all things my eye was drawn to allotments and electric fence tape. It is the beginning of autumn and so the last of the summer crops are finishing and the slow winter crops are taking over valuable space.

The bazaar in Beverwijk was really big and not as good as I was hoping. But there were some gems. Well……two gems. And one of those wasn’t very good. Lots of stalls selling flashing plastic and cheap leather jackets. I had lunch at De Bazaar in an Arabic restaurant, just a cut above the kind of kebab shop I’d find back home only this one was filled with arabs eating lunch and drinking Moroccan mint tea. I sometimes have to remind myself to be a bit more adventurous and not so shy, otherwise I’ll end up just seeking out the familiar and missing the interesting things and experiences. The Moroccan tea was delicious.

In the food section I bought nectarines and Turkish pistachios to sustain me on my wanderings. Eventually I found an antique store where I couldn’t resist the “Extra Senoritas” cigar tins, along with strap on ice skates and a brass door bell. I also found a wooden folding ruler, not the sort of thing you can find in Australia as it unusually combines worn charm with the metric system.

The woman who ran the stall gave a little on the price, gave me the name of another shop to try in Amsterdam and invited me to feel her boobs. All in the name of science of course. She had hers done ten years ago and her friend had hers done twenty years ago and they were giving each other the squeeze test. With my darling wife in mind I politely declined, murmuring a few excuses and feigning disinterest. The Dutch really are good sorts.