Ed and Andrea Conley are a couple that we try to get together with every time we are in New England on one of our three month breaks and they have a standing invitation to visit us anywhere in the world that we happen to be. Unfortunately, their lives are so busy that they have only graced us with their presence once in our seven years of travel. They visited us in Paris during our pre-blog days so we have no link to that visit. Andrea is the daughter of our friend Kathy Collins who has visited us in Rome and San Diego. We first became friends with Andrea around 2008 when she ran the Tufts 10K with Sandy. Since that time we have run a few races with both Andrea and Ed including the 2009 NYC marathon when Ed was startled to learn that we drank our usual martinis even the night before running 26.2 miles.
A picture of Ed and Andrea on October 31 2009 before they ordered their martini.
We have met up with them in Istanbul and Tuscany back when we were still working in 2013 and 2015. We were so delighted that they were able to visit us for our last days in Amsterdam.
Ed and Andrea were able to join us as they were on their way home from Croatia after spending a lavish Birthday celebration in Greece and Croatia with a friend who just turned 60.The first night they wanted to go to Door 74 which is a Prohibition-era Speakeasy style bar for classic and creative cocktails.Door 74 is well hidden and unmarked. In order to get in you need to make reservations online then knock on the “Magic Door” to be let in. Later we had a lovely dinner at a nearby Michelin recommended Restaurant.We pre booked the tickets for them to the Anne Frank House. We were grateful for a short break in the cold, rainy, windy weather when we rented a boat to cruise the canal. Since they own a boat in Gloucester we made Ed our captain and he did a fine job, not one mishap.We packed picnic snacks and drinks.We cruised by our apartment on the canal which is the brown building with the bay windows that give us spectacular views.For our last day we booked lunch at our favorite restaurant de Kas, a plant to plate restaurant that boasts PICkED IN THE MORNING. SERVED IN THE AFTERNOON. It is located in a Greenhouse and has a one star Michelin rating.We started with oysters.This was a complimentary appetizer which was an emulsion of something I can’t remember but do remember it to be incredibly delicious.We did save room for dessert which was followed by a chef’s complimentary dessert, and we ate it all 😛.The restaurant is surrounded by lovely wild flowers and a pond which is home to various water fowl.Blue HeronStork nesting.On our last night we got to meet our Air BNB host Nick who now lives in Monaco. He describes himself as an entrepreneur. He owns a sneaker company called Mipacha as well as a Restaurant in The Hague and multiple properties in the Netherland and Switzerland. We guessed his age to be in early to mid thirties. He was an incredible host extremely responsive to any need we had.Also he had the cutest Boston Terrier that really warmed up to Sandy.Our evenings were spent playing our favorite Italian card game Burraco. Sandy and Andrea teamed up and solidly beat the boys.Final Sunset for us in the Netherlands. June 4 we all packed our bags and headed back to Boston on the same Jet Blue flight.Always nice to come back to family and friends.
So ends our nearly three month stay in Amsterdam. We had 25 houseguests in a three bedroom, one shower and one toilet home over 84 days. The first guests arrived hours before we did and the last guests left with us. The temperature stayed well below our desired 55-75 degree limits and we saw a lot of rain. We were out in a number of hail storms and were nearly blown over by the wind a few times. We did avoid being hit by any bicycles, scooters, electric wheelchairs, cars, buses, trams or trains although we had too many close encounters. We did get hit by a large tour boat while we were in our tiny electric boat with our son, daughter and granddaughters. We came to Holland in the spring for the tulips and we were fortunate to see millions of them. All in all we really did enjoy our stay in Amsterdam and would rate it in our top five favorite cities so far.
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