#081: Amsterdam and Amersfoort

A Few Quiet Days in the Netherlands

The best trips are the ones you didn't plan. Flight reschedulings and the chaos of the world conspired to drop me in Amersfoort, a quiet township just outside Amsterdam, for a few unscripted days with dear friends Tom and Kav. The universe, it turns out, occasionally knows what it's doing.

I was their first house guest in Barcelona years ago (that's what they told me), and here I am again, first through the door in their new Dutch home. Some friendships are like that - they follow you across continents, and you're better for it.

From Schiphol, one train interchange and I stepped out into something I hadn't realised I needed: calm. A measured, unhurried, distinctly Dutch calm. People on bikes moving with that beautiful purposefulness of those who have never once considered the car a default. Canals catching the light. Buildings that look exactly like you'd hope they would. This is a town that has quietly figured things out and isn't particularly interested in telling you about it.

We got on bikes one morning and rode through the countryside, and honestly, what a thing. Impossibly flat, vast skies, the kind of landscape where weather rolls toward you like a slow announcement. Cycle paths stretching out in every direction, fields divided neatly by drainage canals, everything green in that almost-too-tidy European way. I wish I could do my runs on these flat roads; I could definitely pick up the pace here. The air, too, was cool and clean, and the whole morning felt like a gift.

Kav and I spent a morning wandering Amsterdam, while Tom was at work - side streets, a local market, and a good lunch. The kind of day that doesn't need an itinerary because the city hands you things if you let it. Then back to Amersfoort, where the pace drops and you remember that not every hour needs to be optimised.

I had the camera out whenever I could. Canals, open fields, bicycles leaned against railings, boats, old architecture, easy in the company of new surroundings; one that wasn’t planned on in the first place. Looking back, the photos are more travel than street - less the raw, chaotic energy I usually chase in Kuala Lumpur, more quiet observation. But that's the thing about unplanned travel: it shows you other ways of seeing.

Amersfoort is a place that doesn't perform for you. It just gets on with being itself - beautiful, functional, unhurried - and invites you to do the same. That's rarer than it sounds.

I'll be back. Next time, hopefully with no onward flight to catch, free to follow those cycle paths wherever they go, to linger in the squares, to eat and drink and see what happens, in the company of good friends. Because that's the whole point, isn't it? Show up somewhere unexpected, stay a little longer than planned, and let the place and great company do the rest.

For now, enjoy these photos from a few very good, very unplanned days in the Netherlands. I tinkered with the colours this time round, giving it the look and feel of how I felt being there at that time. Hope you like this blog entry.

Cheers.

Amersfoort

Amsterdam

All photos taken with the Nikon ZF.