Market day!
Today was market day. Right around noon we put our walkin’ pants on and saddled up for a hike down to the Albert Cuyp markt, a large (4 blocks long, at least) open-air daily market in the De Pijp district of Amsterdam. Google Maps puts it at a 3.4 km, 41 minute walk from our place, through what is quickly becoming very familiar territory to both of us. Today also included the first real steady drizzling rain that we’ve seen since we arrived, which seems to be pretty standard weather here for most of the winter/spring seasons — those of you from cities such as Vancouver and Seattle will be well familiar with this. Shannie felt that the rain actually made her grow. She’s still just as short as ever, though.
Plenty of new sights, sounds, and smells at the market. Not only were there mannequins for Shannie to pose beside, but also stacks of severed fish heads for sale and even a couple of bike shops. Much of it was typical Farmers Market-esque fare (lots of fresh vegetables, baked goods, crafty knick-knacks), but there were also some things we didn’t expect to see, such as drug stores and lingerie shops.
Shannie, being much more the open-air-market connosieur than I am, felt that it had a good “vibe” about it, and that the general bustle about the market showed that the locals knew exactly where their regular stops were, and the tourists were able to walk the entire strip and take it all in. A good mix of cultures, both local and foreigners (like us!).
cool!
i like how the booths are numbered with BIG signs, so you can find it again later. (after the ‘do i buy that or not?’ walk) and the street lights on cables are neat, less ground clutter.
decent crowd for a rainy day.
are you bike-mobile yet?
@ben hunter
Not quite bike-mobile yet. The bike I brought with me will apparently get stolen in about 13 seconds if I use it for booting around the city, so I’m only going to use it for longer recreational rides instead of commuting.
I actually just found out this evening that there’s a used bike shop around the corner from our office that gives us an employee discount, so we’ll be hitting that up any day now, get ourselves some nice old Dutch bikes for bombing around in.
They are numbered with signs? never noticed that. :\
Check http://www.fietsfabriek.nl/ for some nice (way to expensive and prolly not so cool as your current bike) dutch bikes