Let’s take stock. As of tonight, we’ve already had eleven adventurous days here in Amsterdam. Time flies when you’re having fun! Today’s weather was very mixed going from quick flashes of bright sunshine and actual lightning flashes to dark and menacing to gray and murky and back like the crazy pattern of a kaleidoscope spinning in sticky little hands. The high winds created a cherry blossom snow storm in the back yard

and since it also rained quite hard intermittently, we decided to declare it laundry day.

After dashing to the supermarket at the corner for some extra-whitening laundry detergent, we ran two loads in quick succession and realized during the third load that the rain had stopped, only the high winds continued to blow hard, really hard. But it wasn’t chilly, quite nice actually, so we took a walk through the neighborhood culminating in a wonderful dinner at Scottadito (hot finger?) a small, lively Italian family restaurant. We both had very satisfying & truly delicious pasta dishes and enjoyed a fun conversation with a widely traveled US American gentleman at the next table. As he was dining by himself, he had brought a book to read. I couldn’t believe my eye, when I saw the book’s authors, Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, the famous Swedish crime writer duo, who, in the 1960s practically singlehandedly invented the melancholic, Scandinavian police novel genre, which focused heavily on the social condition of everyday people. I devoured every one of their 10 books as soon as they were translated into German and still have every single one on my shelf. The main character in their books, Martin Beck, represents the cornerstone in my collection of unusual, not to say weird and sometimes tortured law enforcement characters, like Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallender, Ian Rankin’s John Rebus or Micheal Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch. My astonishment upon seeing this iconic book lying so innocently on the neighboring table goes back to the fact that I’ve never ever met anyone else who’s read Wahlöö/Sjöwall. Did I mention the food at Scottadito was really tasty?

But let’s return to Amsterdam. Yesterday we visited the Rembrandt House, the home Rembrandt owned for 20 years, where he raised his only child, Titus, where he taught his pupils and where he created a number of his masterpieces. As I haven’t edited my impressions from that outing yet, you will have to wait a little bit for the story, however, glutton that I am, I have already edited a couple of pictures of yesterday’s dinner. We had a fabulous meal at the Dragon I, just around the corner from our place.

This Korean Bulgogi was just one of several tasty dishes, including dumplings and pot stickers and my most favorite soup, tom yam kung, clear fish broth with lemon grass, chili and prawns. It was fabulous! But since one can’t live by Bulgogi alone, we selected our dessert at the Patisserie Linnick across the street – and what a street it is, Scottadito is there too!!!

I actually couldn’t finish my desert yesterday and enjoyed the rest today. Closely watched by the neighborhood cat, who chose to spent the evening at home with us tonight.

Good night to all.