Today is the final full day of our trip and it has been great. We left the ship around 10:00 this morning, after having said our goodbyes to our new friends made on the trip. We walked about 600 m from the ship to our hotel and luckily they were able to give us our room immediately (as we have all our luggage plus what we bought).
We decided to walk and go see the Anne Frank house. The museum itself has changed since I was last here 20 some odd years ago! It has a very well laid out plan and they added in pictures of how the Annex would have looked while Anne and her family were living in hiding. It was still a very powerful and moving experience.
We had lunch at a lovely restaurant along one of the canals and pumpkin seemed to be the specialty of the house. I had a wonderful cheese, tomato, lettuce and cucumber sandwich on very fresh pumpkin bread with a beetroot, spinach and roquefort salad. Steve had a roasted pumpkin soup and a Croque Madame with a fried egg on top.
We walked back to the hotel and had a late afternoon nap.
We asked the hotel's concierge where native Amsterdammers like to eat and they made reservations for us at Long Pura, an Indonesian Speciality Restaurant (www.restaurant-longpura.com), where we had the Rice Table (spelled Rijsttafel) Dinner (similar idea to tapas). It was an incredible experience (Dad you would have loved it). We chose the 3 course meal which starts with lamb, fish, shrimp and pork satay (it was nicely spicy, but I was very glad we had ordered beer to drink). This was followed by the main Rice Table Dinner, which saw 9 different bowls of food put on our table along with saffron rice in a banana leaf and various condiments. Finally we finished with a dessert course. I was so glad that that was our final experience on our European Epicurean Adventure.
Ginger pumpkin soup
Jennifer's sandwich
The salad.
Croque-madame.
The rijsttaffel warming the plates.
Satays. Clockwise from top left: pork, fish, shrimp, lamb. The sauce on the lamb was prepared right at the table.
Georges by the flower. No tears for him.
Georges with flowers in his hair.
The main course. On the rijsttafel (clockwise from top left):
Egg in spicy coconut sauce,
Pork in sweet soya and ginger sauce,
Vegetables in mild coconut sauce,
Beef in coconut milk sauce,
Chicken filet in Balinese sauce,
Shrimps and peteh beans in spicy coconut milk,
Fish in sweet spicy soya sauce,
Lamb in spicy coconut milk sauce.
IN front the rijsttafel: cold vegetables in a peanut sauce and yellow rice steamed and service in a banana leaf.
Relaxing in a banana leaf boat. The striped food is a tradition Indonesian sponge cake.
A view from a bridge.
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