First weekend as a local

This weekend is my first since going back to work- does that mean I'm not a tourist any more?  We still did sight seeing though, and did some more exploring around the city.  We started off with a short walk to the Hermitage museum which had a display featuring paintings from some famous Flemish artists from the 1600's.  I'm not much of an art lover but I can still appreciate the history and value of these paintings.

Fields of flowers in the courtyard of The Hermitage

Even the lamp posts are meticulously decorated

After this we wandered through the southern canal belt through to he bloemenmarkt (flower markets) which are apparently floating on the water, but I didn't notice at the time.  It had heaps of tulips and other types of flowers, living, dried, seeds and bulbs were all there.  My personal favourite was the cactus shop, whil Sam loved the wooden tulips, so we'll be back again at some point to buy some decorations for our apartment whenever we get one.

One of the many flower shops in the Bloemenmarkt

After lunching on an Albert Heijn pastry while sitting on the edge of a canal, we walked home via Leidsplein, a very touristy area full of restaurants and pubs. It was absolutely packed, although I'm sure very few of them were locals.

Lunch on the Keizersgracht

On Sunday we spent the afternoon at the local Oosterpark with a Coffee Company coffee (not the greatest ever, and they made a big deal about the fact that they serve a 'flat white').  It was a lovely park with a lake and hundreds of ducks.  I think this would be a good park to come back to after we get bikes so we can practice riding them- there was some nice wide tracks around the park and there wasn't too many people around.

As we sat on the park bench I realised that that was pretty much the reason that we moved to Amsterdam rather than just doing the 6 week holiday around Europe- the chance to spend time just sitting and relaxing, soaking up the atmosphere of this foreign country, without feeling rushed to get to the next attraction or city.