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After admiring Dam square for a while, I headed westish past the food plaza (an Albert Heijn store) to see what else I could find in the city. I ended up going northish to Westerpark via the tram system, and hung around the park taking photos of birds (mostly ducks and storks) for a little while. Someone turned up with some bread to feed the birds, so I was able to stand there with birds all around me, taking shot after shot. Unfortunately, it was a bit grey, so I’m not sure that the photos will come out all that well.

Once done with Westerpark, I headed back to the center of the city, hunting down the Cafe Luxembourg - reputed to be one of the better eating places in the city. After hopping off at Spui, and walking north until the food plaza, and then back south to Spui (yes, I didn’t look to my left *sigh*), I managed to find it. The non-smoking section of the Cafe can be found in the back of the building, raised up slightly, sporting 7 tables. Not many, but enough, and there’s always eating outdoors (though it was raining again). Speaking of rain, Amsterdam on a wet day is not fun without a raincoat or umbrella - the vertical nature of the buildings, with so few overhangs means you can’t really shelter in the lee of the building.

I considered the 2 € that De Sneeker Pan charged for a bottle of still water to be rather high - Cafe Luxembourg charges 2.50 € ! The Cafe isn’t somewhere I’d call romantic personally, though the young couple at another table seemed to think otherwise. As for the food and service? Most excellent. You get your own pepper grinder, and the spaghetti was done to perfection - al dente pasta, and nicely flavoured meat sauce. For this alone, I’d rate the Cafe at 5 stars. However, there is dessert to yet be considered.

I ordered the chocolate gateau, expecting your standard chocolate cake with some trimmings. What I got, however, was a crisp biscuit (cookie to the American readers) base, over an inch of firm chocolate mousse, a thin layer of cream and a very thin layer of dark chocolate to form a shell, dusted in cocoa powder. Absolutely divine. The dessert earns 6 stars in my book. It wasn’t made by the Cafe though, but by Patisserie Holtkamp. My afternoon meal, really a late lunch, ended up being 17.50 €, but it was easily the best meal to date, and makes the 19.85 € charged by the Keukenhof ‘restaurant’ absolutely extortionate for the quality.