Ice Cream - Annamaria

Since the weather is better in Berlin ice cream shops seem to pop up everywhere. Or they have been there all along but I didn’t notice. There are so many shops in our neighborhood that we definitely will be testing the coming weeks to find out where we will be able to eat the best ice creams.

Today we start our ice cream quest at Annamaria, a small Italian ice cream shop. I love it here before I even had a look at the ice cream. On a big table in the front of the shop sits a big group of woman talking Italian very loudly with a lot of laughter. It makes the shop feel very Italian immediately. Second thing I love about this shop is the somewhat elderly Italian lady scooping the ice and the fact that the whole shop feels a bit eighties. It really makes me think about the small, slightly dated Italian ice shop we used to come every Saturday in the summer to get an ice cream from the elderly Italian lady with my dad when we were kids.

Annamaria is definitely one to visit more often, they do have very nice icecream. Our little chocolate ice cream lover is very happy with her Kugel and my mandarin quark and cherry yoghurt are also very good. As far as I have been able to taste in between feeding everything to the twins who were also very pleased with Annamaria.

Finger painting

A rainy day plus we need some new decorations for the windows since the painted autumn leaves don’t fit anymore these spring days. I had the brilliant idea to let the girls finger paint some new decorations. Why not? The did it all the time at day care and there they have 9 babies at once. How hard can it be?

Well, at least one part of the idea was a bit brilliant, and that was the part where I decided to let them paint in the bathroom wearing nothing but their underwear. I honestly do not have the faintest idea how they did this at daycare and not have a single smudge of paint on them or their clothes at the end of the day.

The result is a very colorful bunch of paper flowers that brighten up our windows and we’re very happy with that (and a couple of very colorful toddlers in one very, very colorful bathroom. Eventually it will wear of, I hope)

Spring in Berlin

What a big surprise! Retuning to Berlin we still had the vivion of how cold and white it was when we left, but spring has also started in Berlin! The streets are alive again, playgrounds full of children, terraces filled people.  Oh we’re so excited to be back!

Goochem

Birthday nieces in the UK and in India. So we need sendable items again. Also in Amsterdam I have a couple favorite stores I visit when in need of a present for a newborn or a birthday kid. One of my favorite stores, also for the birthdays of my own girls, is Goochem. They mainly sell a lot of wooden toys, games, stuffed animals and puzzles. We call it the giraffe store because they have this huge stuffed giraffe in the middle of the store.

For the twins first birthday we bought them a couple of wooden instruments at Goochem. Today we bought a really girly purse for our niece turning one and some facial paint and a mirror for the one turning three. These last two I secretly also bought for our own soon-to-be-three year old.

Nieuwe Meer

A beautiful Sunday for a walk with the dogs. On days like this (sunny Sundays, especially the first ones of the year) walking the dogs in ‘Het Amsterdamse Bos’ (forest of Amsterdam) isn’t really relaxing. Too many dogs, too many children. So on these days we go to the ‘Nieuwe Meer’ on the other side of the Bosbaan, the rowing track next to the forest. On these day it really is like a small paradise on the border of Amsterdam, so quiet, so green.

Today our friends Marie and her dog Moes are joining us, so it’s an extra fun walk.

Palladio

Grandma and grandpa are babysitting the girls so we can celebrate our sixth anniversary of being together. We decided to not travel half the city for a nice restaurant but just try the Italian just around the corner where we never have been before and Palladio turn out a nice surprise.

For starters the ladies that are serving us are all really Italian, so there is a lot of ‘Prego’s’ and they really are very nice and professional. They have a good Italian menu but the best dishes, as we presume, are on their daily specials list. They make a very nice pasta vongole, one of our favorites, and their rib eye from the grill is one of the nicest I’ve ever had in a restaurant. The antipasti and deserts are also very good and they have a nice selection of grappa’s to finish the evening with.

We’re just sorry we haven’t ‘discovered’ this restaurant way before; it would have been a great place to frequent every now and then, especially in the summer when they have their terrace out.

Don’t pay too much attention to the picture, I don’t want to flash in a restaurant so restaurant pics are always terrible.

Twigs

The oldest went on a playdate with my friend Marie. They walked Maries dog together and gathered some twigs, put them together with a beautiful blue and gold ribbon and hang a drawing on one of the twigs. I’ve seldom seen her so proud as with this bouquet of twigs, so I’ll try keeping them forever and ever.

Spring

It almost feels like spring in Amsterdam. I guess a lot feels like spring if you got used to -15C in the last couple of weeks, but it actually is very nice weather. Even the snowdrops put out their little heads in our small city garden. Nevertheless we put up some snacks for the little birdies, we didn’t get a chance to feed them yet this winter and they must be counting on us anyway. Besides they’re some good entertainment for the little ones flying around our garden picking the nuts we’ve put up.

Bilder & de Clercq

On the corner of the Bilderdijk and De Clercqstraat there is, since a couple of months, a store called Bilder & de Clercq with an amazing new concept. They have recipes for 1 meal and you can buy all the ingredients you need to cook the meal with them. All the ingredients for a specific recipe are displayed on a table and you can pick whatever you need, from a box of herbs to a clove of garlic. So in the end you don’t need to get a lot of groceries to make a meal for one evening, just need some basics like vinegar, olive oil, salt & pepper.

Besides meals they also have a selection food and drinks (among which some of the best brands in Amsterdam) to have a complete dinner party: from sausage, nut and cheese to wines and sodas, from soups to deserts and from coffee and tea to pies and chocolate.

When we still lived in Amsterdam we didn’t really go there, mainly we then still had a weekly organic vegetable box delivered which mostly provided us with enough veg to feed us for a whole week. Nowadays when we are only in the city for a couple of days, it is a perfect store for us and when we are in Amsterdam I really go there almost every day. Of course to get dinner for that day but also to quickly get pieces of their lemon polenta cake when somebody comes over for a cup of coffee, to get a bottle of wine and one of their rosemary goat cheeses when on my way to have dinner with a friend or to get a bag with tea and cookies, wine and Brand&Levie sausage, Ginger Ale and smoked almond by Gotje to thank my aunt and uncle for organizing my grandma’s 80^th birthday dinner.

Burgermeester

One thing we miss in Amsterdam in ‘de Burgermeester’. When not in the mood to cook ours

elves dinner, this was one of the places we really frequently visited to pick up some burgers. Especially in the weeks after the twins were just born.

Their concept is that they serve about ten different burgers and only use organic products. They mainly use meat on their burgers, but also always have at least one fish burger and two veggies burger. You can get them in 2 sizes, which defer very much. My regular order was two small burgers and one of their grilled corn cobs. Tonight we only have one girl with us while the other two are with grandma and grandpa, the actual plan was to really go out for dinner but we realize on time that this will not be a party for both her and us and we decide to go to the Burgermeester instead.

Two small veggie burgers, coleslaw and a Bionade. Very good. They have several establishment in the city, so if you stumble upon one around lunch time I would definitely recommend one of their veggie burgers, biefburger royaal or a mini trio if you’d like to try a couple different ones.

London Police

Noordermarkt

While in Berlin almost every Kiez has its own farmers market on Saturday, in Amsterdam we just have one: the Farmers market in de Noordermarkt. It’s, as on Kollwitzplatz, a place where tourist and locals meet.

In Berlin we visit the market weekly. Mostly for a sausage, fish or falafel lunch while the kids are enjoying themselves on the playground, but also because it’s the only place I know so far where you can get good fish and seafood.

The Noordermarkt in Amsterdam is a real only organic farmers market and it’s very nice to visit every once in a while, but it’s (for us) not suitable for the weekly stuff because it’s just too expensive.  They do have beautiful products though from the best organic lam to a stall specialized in mushrooms and very good homemade fries with homemade mayonnaise. A big part of the market also is the only weekly second hand market of Amsterdam, every Saturday and every Monday. When in Amsterdam I would definitely recommend strolling around the farmers market on Saturday morning. We only went for the fries and mayo this time.

Hutspot

We returned to Amsterdam again, mainly because one of my grandma’s celebrates her birthday turning 80. Last time we were here we were so eager to see all of our friends that we hardly had any time together let alone had a nice walk through our old neighborhood like we used to do on Saturdays. This time the plan was to only stay for a couple of days and not let people know we were back. This first Saturday we really want to spend like we were used to, even in the three months we’ve left there are so many cool new places in the area.

We start off our day having coffee with my sister and her family in a brand new and very cool place called Hutspot on the Rozengracht. They already have another location in Amsterdam, but recently opened this one, because of the big hit the other place is. It started out as a place for young creatives to be able to sell their stuff, it now is a mishmash were you can either buy fancy looking sunglasses, a vintage cabinet or a stuffed parrot. In the back is a nice café were you can chill out , have coffee and pancakes while your kid plays in their teepee or plug in your laptop, order a ginger & licorice water and work for a couple of hours.

It really is a nice place to relax, if you don’t have any children under two. We manage to keep them sitting down for about half an hour by feeding them pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup, but after that there just are too many interesting things to discover. That is just a bit too much for our nerves with all the glasses, bugs, bottles and stuffed animals standing around.

Later this week I returned with just my mum and our oldest and then having coffee and lemonade on one of their couches is just perfect.

Not the very best pictures by the way, have a look on their site to get a real impression.