Being a Valentine’s Kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not that it’s cracked up to be much, but I do get a number of girly coos whenever I inform a woman that my birthday is February 14th. Despite past failings (from significant others, mind you), Jonmikel has once again proven himself worthy. So… Happy Birthday to me!

Today started out with an early-morning wake-up call by a dude dressed in Rasta clothes and dreads doing some kind of funky tribal dance with a can of coins. People seemed to either ignore him entirely or smile endearingly at him, so he must be a regular at this junction of church, Red Light District and normal Old Town. He was, nonetheless, annoying, so we flopped out of bed and went in search of sustenance. We found…. Waffles! And not silly American waffles, oh no. The Dutch know how to make a waffle. Big and crispy and candied in some kind of strawberry sugar coating and topped with a mile of whipped cream and strawberries in a thick strawberry syrup. I mean really. OK, so it was probably a dessert more than a breakfast, but Jonmikel told me that today was my birthday, and I could eat whatever I wanted. Calories don’t count on your birthday.

The concoction was utterly fabulous, and my stomach did little summersaults the rest of the day. After sickening our taste buds, we headed over to Madam Tussaud’s, the famous wax museum. JM had never been to one, and the last one I had been to I’m pretty sure was in Gatlinburg and had an entire room devoted to torture devices. Scarred for life. We stopped first to have a gander at a group of hippy-ish people standing in a large circle, holding hands and chanting, Tibetan monk style. They all wore silky and flowing garments, reminiscent of the stereotypical gypsy wardrobe. Apparently it was some peace-through-sound day or something. I give them props for allowing a drunken homeless man to participate in the reverie, despite the fact that he was, well… drunk and yelling Dutch obscenities at everyone. But they seemed a very tolerant group, and noise is noise, and peace is peace, and if noise means peace, then well, so be it.

We headed off to the wax museum. It was pretty typical: kinda cool and way over-priced. But Jonmikel did get to sing with James Brown and cop a feel of an impression of J-Lo’s butt, and I did get to stick my tongue out at George W. Bush without being arrested, so forking over the money had its benefits. I do think wax recreations are amazing; some of them looked completely real, especially the one that looked like Joe Shmo tourist taking pictures of Tom Hanks. It had a couple of curious Japanese girls fooled for a full 5 minutes before one of them got brave enough to poke the statue. I’ll admit it: I ducked under his picture when I first saw him.

Having one supreme touristy thing under our belts, we decided to head to another: The Heineken Experience. We take the scenic route, meandering through 17th century homes and quaint canals, bundled up against the cold and cloudy weather. When we arrived at our destination, what did we find? Oh, the Heineken Experience was closed for remodeling. What the heck? Here, I had though that the 3 beers included in admission would have been a nice birthday present. Sigh. But we were close to the Museum Quarter, so we headed over to the Van Gogh Museum.

I’ve always been a fan of a select handful of Van Goghs, so this was on my list anyway. Not a big art museum kid; on field trips in elementary school my mind would always wander to all the trouble I could get into in such places, as the art, unless it contained Egyptian or Chinese or African stuff, was completely useless to me. Still is, in fact. Impressionists and Flemish painters make me queasy. But Van Gogh has some good stuff (my favorite being the outdoor Night Café scene), and I was especially pleased to find out he did a number of Chinese-style prints. Beautifully done, it was fun to find out that the Chinese script on them (which looked completely authentic to me, who only knows the spoken Chinese learned from Firefly) is just a bunch of nonsense symbols Van Gogh thought were pretty. My kind of artist.

After idling some time at the art museum (one of many… the only one I really had a desire to go to), we began our walk back to our hotel to get tickets for our Valentine’s Day/Happy Birthday to Me canal cruise. We stopped at a bar built into an old bank (the bathrooms were in the old vaults) for a beer, knowing that we only had limited time to putz around. It was definitely a local place, though I was interested to find out that the Dutch have discovered that pool is just miles better than snooker, and have confined the latter to special snooker halls.

We hit the hotel, grabbed the tickets, and were off again to my specially designated restaurant for Valentine’s Day Dinner. In many of the guidebooks for Amsterdam, there are many recommendations for food, some of the best being not Dutch food, but Indonesian food. I had never had Indonesian food before, so I chose a place called Kantjil and De Tijger. I had just 30 minutes before decided where I wanted to go, so it was kind of hit-or-miss at to whether or not we’d get a table. I figured Valentine’s Day would be big. I was right, but we seem to have great luck with tables, and we were seated right away, just before it got busy and the reservations came in. The place had wonderful lighting, dark wood accents, muted “oriental” style in a similar manner to tiki boutiques back in the States. The staff, including the men, all wore black and blue sarongs, too, which I thought was absolutely fabulous. We ordered a small carafe of wine (we were going to have access to unlimited drinks on our canal tour later, so we took it slow) and just went for the all-inclusive, no-thinking-involved meal for two. Turned out to be the best decision, as I know nothing about Indonesian food, and the explanations were in a form of Dutch-English hybrid that I didn’t have the patience to decipher. Excellent food. And despite various complaints about the service, I found it to be just fine, if in the European style (which is, as a general rule, less attentive that American style, which is where some of the problem lies; in European places, it’s considered rude to be as attentive to customers as you would be in the States, and I’m sort of fine with those added moments for intimacy).

And in terribly romantic fashion, everybody was celebrating Valentine’s Day (with the exception of some American/British ex-pats, who seemed to be having a business/social meeting of some sort). A guy my age sat in a table cattycorner to us and bounced nervously in his chair, alone, for a number of minutes before a girl of a similar age showed up, her smile only growing when he presented her with a small bouquet of flowers. Jonmikel remarked that, “he gets a lot of points for picking this place out.” Like I said, terribly romantic.

After spending only an hour at dinner (about half the time we usually spend, unless we have wine, in which case we can spend much longer), we head out to the docking area for our cruise, the Blue Boat Company. We spent the next hour-and-a-half (though it seemed much shorter) cruising slowly among the lights and sounds of Amsterdam at Night. The canals are incredibly narrow, with harrowing turns, and props to the boat pilots who manage not to crash into every stone wall and metal barrier. The wind was chilly, but drier than we were used to in Scotland, so we bundled up and headed to the outer deck to take pictures. It was only us and one other couple (coincidentally sitting at the same table) who braved the cold to get some great night shots of the city. While neon lights may not seem to be the most romantic of lighting choices for Valentine’s Day, they did provide an exotic flavor to the night, even in the small portion of the Red Light District we sailed through. I don’t remember any other European city being so well lit; the Tokyo of Europe, perhaps?

We also were given Champaign (OK, so not the real thing, silly French, but the Dutch version of sparkling wine), Dutch cheeses and variety of snacks to keep idle hands busy during the cruise. Despite the group of wholly obnoxious British tourists (who, doubtless, came on one of those tour buses geared toward old folks who want to get the “real” international experience by staying in big groups of fellow tourists and visiting only the best faux-authentic tourists spots), the trip was relaxing and quite nice. I gave Jonmikel a copy of “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silvertsein, one of my favorites as a child, as a Valentine’s Gift, and maybe some day we’ll get around to reading it. ☺

After the cruise, we did the traditional Valentine’s Day activity: visit the Red Light District! As our hotel was on the edge of it, it was more or less on the way back, so we meandered through it. It was fun to watch all the awkward 20-something boys walk around in big groups giggling uncomfortably, and the girls they were with (if there were any) rolling their eyes and trying to look smooth and cool and mature. We stopped at a small bar and had a beer and just hung out; the area is great for people watching, and I don’t mean the prostitutes in the windows. Though I did get irritated at a couple of guys who just didn’t get it that they weren’t supposed to be taking pictures of the buildings in the District, despite the fact that everybody was yelling at them. I hope they got arrested later in the night and their pictures erased. It’s just not kosher. For all those who may be wondering, the place isn’t as racy as it’s made out to be. There’s no nudity or anything, and it’s all very well policed. Though I do wonder how well regulated it is, not in the sense of health check-ups and such, but by way of making sure all the girls are there by choice and are treated well by both pimps and customers. Some girls looked cheerful and happy and normal, while others looked bored and still others looked unhappy, but it’s hard to tell whether such sentiments are from a bad day, a bad job, or a bad life.