LAUREN WALDSTEIN

My weekend in Amsterdam was absolutely crazy – but not because I was tripping on shrooms or tweaking on space cakes.  As soon as I got there I lost my purse and everything inside it which was basically my entire life.  I lost my wallet, my passport, my iPod, camera, phone, make-up, deodorant and toothbrush.  I tried to pack light by carrying just a backpack and a purse and ended up without half of the things I really needed.  Still, I had clothes and my computer and friends to be my ATM’s for the weekend.  Trying to keep a positive attitude despite my bad luck, I left Amsterdam truly enchanted. 

On our way from a coffee shop called Green House, Hallie, Rachel and I strolled around the area a little bit.  The street we were on was pretty much filled with coffee shops, head shops, falafel stands, and waffle stands and yet it still maintained its pleasant, inviting atmosphere.  Naturally, we stopped at a bakery where we split three mouthwatering pieces of cake three ways.  The lemon cloud cake was a take on lemon meringue pie, but underneath the meringue was a little fluffy pastry and instead of crunchy graham cracker crust it was a spongy light cake.  The filling was a slightly sour, light lemon custard that melted in my mouth.  Yum.  Next was a moist, dense carrot cake chock full of raisins and walnuts with a thin cream cheese frosting on the top.  It was a little cool, just out of a refrigerated case, and it sort of smashed and smoothed with each bite.  I love carrots in every form and I think carrot cake tops my list.  (I say this with an empty bag of baby carrots sitting across the room, from earlier.  What can I say?  They're delicious.)  Finally we got a Boston cream cheese cake.  Rich, thick, and creamy with a chewier graham cracker crust, this cake was the real deal.  Each bite gave you a little hug on the way down - or maybe that was just my pants getting tighter.  I'm not even a cheesecake person and I'm still thinking about that slice of heaven.

After the Anne Frank House we headed straight for Sara's Pancakes.  We needed a pick me up after our visit and what better way to do so than with food?  The menu at this restaurant was pretty much all amazing pancakes, some amazing waffles and omelets, and four salads - but come on.  Who goes to a pancake restaurant and orders salads???  (Actually, I do a lot of times at Walker Bros.)  We all ordered different plates of deliciousness.  Mine was a pancake with blueberries, apples, and bananas.  I was kind of hoping for a big stack of heavy, cakey, buttermilk pancakes like in cartoons when there's a stack of like fifteen and with butter and syrup melting over the top and they cut a perfectly triangular piece down the middle of all of them and then take one giant bite.  Instead, I got a deliciously thin, almost crispy around the outsides, doughy and a little sticky on the inside Dutch pancake covered in tiny, ripe blueberries with thin slices of apple and banana accenting the plate, all dusted in fairy-like powdered sugar.  It was delicate and thin - if it were a person it would be a drawing of a svelte woman with long blonde hair and big round sunglasses, wearing a tight black pencil skirt hitting just above her perfectly pointy knees, one cocked in so as to elongate her already impossibly long legs, standing on a street corner with the wind blowing her violet, almost blueberry colored scarf around her neck (think the silver haired girl in The Incredibles who's working for Syndrome and gets Mr. Incredible to come back to work).  If I lived in Amsterdam, I would start every morning with a different pancake.