There’s a month and a half before our yearly vacation. It helps to understand that here in Milan, everyone goes on vacation in stages through August. During this time, we have to head out a lot farther to find an open store of any kind. So our choices are to go out of town for a holiday or sit around in the heat and do nothing.
Hubby proposed Amsterdam, and while I suggested Dublin, the fact is, we’re on a very limited budget for the vacation this year. Frankly, we’re lucky to get to go at all, but we’ve both come to like Amsterdam for a lot of reasons.
The food is a major pull for both of us, but so is the ability to sample beers and wines. I’ll use this excuse to buy another bottle of absinthe, which will last me a year, like the bottle I bought last summer that’s almost empty now.
It’s a great place to recharge my creative batteries because visually, Amsterdam is amazing. You can’t fully appreciate its beauty through pictures, though I’ve tried in vain to capture all the things there that fire my mind creativity. This is before you get into the art museums, or you read about the history of the city and the country.
It’s not all perfect, as the torture museum makes it clear. But their history is left as an open booknow, allowing people to see both the good and the bad. This kind of research is invaluable to a writer.
And the books! My goodness, they have a number of bookstores with a wonderful selection of horror and fantasy titles. A few places even had used books piles, allowing us to pick up a few extra bargains that we might not have otherwise considered. Many titles that I’ve struggled to find in Italy, I picked up in Amsterdam instead.
The mild weather combined with the relatively level terrain allows for lots of walking without getting tired. So it’s possible to walk to a café from the hotel, walk to a museum, and then get lunch and walk to another tourist attraction. You can hit three major locations on a good day, and you’ll stop often during the walks to admire the buildings, the waterways, or even the mesmerizing vanilla clouds hanging above it all.
Okay, and the pot’s not bad either. =^P
... I write dark fiction in a variety of genres. My blog contains my rants and rambles, and some short fiction that can only be found here.
I can be pretty fucking offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.