Amsterdam & Berlin

Amsterdam + Berlin Travel Log⌗

This trip was because of a conference in Amsterdam, we extended for some personal time in Berlin

• I got to bring Ally, this was our first international trip together and it was a blast
• I met up with Kenta, Matt and Tristan was really glad to get to do a trip with them
• I realized how important walkable cities are to me and how much I value public transit over cars
• If I have children, I will highly encourage them to live abroad for an extended period of time as a young adult

10/4/2026:⌗

Had a good time in Jerome. driving back to Phoenix now with Ally for our flight to MSP. We were trying to think of a good bit to play and Ally said we could pretend to be on our honey moon. We worked out the details but Ally said she didn’t have a ring… might have been a jab at me hahaha.

Ally tried to do laundry before we went to the airport but forgot that our hot water heater broke. This delayed things and we’re running a bit behind now, suffice it to say she packed her pants with paper towels. Hopefully we catch this flight.

Made it but here’s ally packing wet clothes:

Made the flight. Now watching football, delta partnered with draft kings so I’m picking random shit to try and win a gift card. According to their T&Cs it’s a “skill game” though.

Watched the raiders almost beat the chiefs on the PHX->MSP flight. Landed and had some mediocre food as I watched McMillan make me lose in fantasy football.

We then went to our gate and I made friends with a delta customer service rep who gave me a coloring book. I found an error with the crossword in the book there was no 13 down.

On the plane to Amsterdam now going to try and get some sleep. Apparently they are serving curry… yikes

10/5/2026:

Just coming in to AMS now. Flight went fine, watched gone in 60 seconds. Opened the window to these cool off shore wind farms.

Uber’s to soho house and they let us into the room early. Put our stuff away and went for a walk. We are in a really busy part of the city, there are bikes everywhere, euro cig is in full effect, and everyone is in cafe mode. Definitely need to watch were you’re going and we were so tired.

We walked over to a grocery store and got breakfast stuff and a shitty croissant. We walked over to a random canal, sat down and ate some stroop waffle.

We went back to the hotel and I was trying to keep Ally awake at 5pm so we decided to just go get dinner. Ally found a Thai place which was great and then we walked around a bit after… so many leaning buildings.

So far I would say this city is cool. Not necessarily my kind of place but it’s fun to be back in Europe.

10/6/2026

Just locked in 12 hours of sleep 9-9, briefly woke up at 2:55 but then went back to sleep. Now we’re drilling some espresso in the hotel and eating the breakfast we got from the store. I think today we are going to hit this cinnamon roll place and then take a train to Utrecht.

We had a mid cinnamon roll and got in a train to Utrecht which was pretty easy just paying using the credit card on my phone. Had to pay to use the bathroom which was lame. The train was cool and the country outside the city is nice.

Walked through Utrecht a bit and went to the dom tower, feels similar to ams but a bit quieter away from the station. Now we are eating lunch at the street food club. We went to the library after lunch and walked around a bit more before taking the train back.

We went and had dinner at a pizza place called Perla. It was quite good and we got some ice cream after which was phenomenal.

I really like this western neighborhood. It’s still quite central in the middle of the city where we’re staying but it’s quieter and the streets are mostly apartments. We walked past one apartment and Ally pointed out a big spider. This lady came up and told us it was her place and the spider comes back everyday even though they get rid of its web.

10/7/2026:

Got up at 7 to head over to the conference. Currently on the A10 which runs a massive loop around the city. Hoping to meet Ally in Leiden later to check out the botanical gardens.

Riding over to the conference it’s wild to see the bike culture. Everyone commutes by bike there are some cars mixed in but mostly bikes. It’s fast paced, no helmets, and seems like it takes place no matter the weather. I’d like to as well but I feel like I’d need someone to show me the ropes first. Also they have circle K here didn’t expect to see that.

Sat through the first couple sessions of the main stage at World Summit AI. I thought Audrey Tang was well spoken and had good ideas. I then walked around the different vendor booths, clickhouse and mistral where there so had to stop by. There were larger companies like HP, Microsoft, SAP, etc… and then a bunch of “agentic” companies I hadn’t heard of.

After the conference I walked to zandaam station, I’m now waiting to board a train to Leiden to meet up with Ally.

Met up with Ally in a sushi place. It turned out to be all you could eat and it was huge and we were the only people in there the entire time. Everything we ordered was mid lol!

We walked over to the botanical gardens and looked at the plants. They had tons of great flowers and trees all next to the canal.

After the gardens we walked around for a bit. I really like Leiden it’s quaint and has a charm to it. We sat down at Waag right on the water and we got dinner and a chai latte. This lady was chain smoking cigs behind us so we finished up and then took the train back to Amsterdam. Had to stop for ice cream again on the walk back to our hotel at night.

10/8/2026

Woke up and took a train To the conference venue. Had a bit of a walk and it was raining but it was kind of nice out. First speakers were a panel with Ted tremper. He was actually really good at handling the crowd and had everyone crack their knuckles to smooth tension when they asked the audience for questions. He also thanked the staff which was a great way to break the tension. I found him to be a really solid presenter and learned a few things watching him.

People arriving a little later today. Maybe a late night or the rain. I met up with the clickhouse guys and chatted with them and got some swag.

After the conference I headed to The Hague. Ally and I met up on the train and walked to a bakery once we got there. Had a great croissant.

We met up with matt and Kenta and had some vietnameee food. They had just gotten in and were a little jet lagged but it was good to see them. We walked back to the station after eating because we had a canal tour in Amsterdam and needed to take a train back.

The canal tour was funny. We had Heineken and cheese. Ally met a doctor and her family who live in Scottsdale. We also met some people from San Francisco. We learned about the ams spice trade and our boat driver was solid at whipping the boat around.

We walked over towards La Perla (the pizza spot) after the boat tour. I vibe walked us to an Italian place and we sat our front and had bread and pasta it was great. Then we got ice cream again. We kept walking around and went to a bar, someone had left some money in a slot machine and we played that and got 6 euros. We turned that into some paprika pringles which were fire.

10/9/2026:

We got up at like 10am and got ready quick because we had a 10:45 slot at the Van Gogh museum. It was pissing rain and I had decided to not bring a rain jacket for some reason or an umbrella. The line to even check our tickets was of course outside the museum so I just stood there getting soaked.

Once inside we walked around and looked at the art. It’s a cool place with 4 floors. Very crowded, I don’t like crowded museums, you just feel rushed. We went and got lunch at the cafe and colored in some art.

We met up with matt and Kent and walked over to rjiks museum which was a massive place. Looked at some old stuff in there and then had our picture taken.

I like this painting:

After the museum we hung out at oreillrys (Irish pub ) and played tarnib. I was ordered a cosmo. After that I vibe walked us to an Indonesian restaurant which was good. They put like 6 dishes down on some heated trays. After we walked over to the hotel and got stroop waffles and then hit the sack.

10/10/2026:

We woke up early and headed to the airport. There was a massive line for outside of the EU passport control which we luckily avoided since we are going to Germany. We landed a few hours before our Airbnb would let us in. So we vibe trained over to the radio tower, got doner, and played cards in touristy area where people kept asking us for money.

At 3, we went to the Airbnb and met up with Tristan. We went to lidl and got some groceries. We went to Klunkerkranich which was this rooftop bar above a parking lot with dance music. We got Schneider-Weiss and I got some vegan food which was ok.

We went to a few other bars and then got some sourdough pizza. They also had the best tiramisu I’ve ever had, We then went to another bar and accidentally crashed someone’s birthday party where they had live music and some of the people were dancing. We went to one more tiny bar called Ratzeputz which was a cool spot, it was almost as if you walked into someone’s living room. I got a hilarious peanut butter chocolate drink and the bartender from New Jersey said I had an accent. Which Arizona doesn’t really have.

10/11/2026:

Woke up pretty late and made some oat meal. We got out of the house and went to this outdoor market. It was a bit cold and rained on and off, we got some cute coffee cups. We checked out their Berlin Wall memorial and climbed up to get a view of the wall and some guard towers. We vibe walked to an Italian restaurant in a park and matt butchered the pronunciation of bolognese to our Italian waiter.

We walked around the center of Berlin and along the spree. We eventually stopped for dinner at a German restaurant which was good we had sausage, pork knuckle, and ox cheek.

we played cards a bit when we got home and then got to bed early.

10/12/2026:

Got up and I made oatmeal again. We took a train to the topography of terrors, a holocaust memorial museum. Stopping at the US checkpoint beforehand.

The museum was pretty tough. Makes you very angry about what happened. Too many parallels to our current administration in the US but I won’t get started here.

Kenta and I went to see if we could get tickets to view the parliament building while ally Tristan and matt got doner kebab. The ticket place needed all of our IDs so me and Kenta left and met up with Ally Tristan and matt. We smacked the kebab by the river and then hit the boat ride.

It was cool to ride along the spree and it was a nice day in the sun. Once we got off the boat we took a train over to the east side gallery. There were a bunch of cool Murals painted on the Berlin Wall and they had the famous one of the two politicians kissing.

Matt and Tristan went to buy some clothes. kenta, ally and I got drinks by the wall next to the river. We headed back to the apartment but I smelled this burger place under the subway. We walked past it because ally and I were the only ones hungry. Once we got to the platform I said fuck it, and Ally and I headed back and had a great burger. Kind of like in and out but with a better bun and the burger was a bit crispy.

We went back to the station and actually took the train this time. We met up with everyone at the air bnb and Ally got everyone ready to go out. We were going to an afrobeats concert that I had wanted to see. It was Tmaro and papa razzle at badehause.

We took the train over to badehaus. It a pretty cool venue. There was a decent turn out, maybe a hundred people, and we showed up around 8:30 just in time to watch TMARO. Paparazzle couldn’t make it due to visa issues.

We hung out til about ten and then I vibe walked to another bar where we got 4 espresso martinis and Kenta and matt got some food.

After this we took a train over to a club and had a fun night.

10/13/2026:

We got up around 9:30 and finally made it out the door before noon (except for Tristan) lol. We went to the technical museum which had trains, planes and boats in it. It was absolutely massive.

After the museum we took a train to 7 dumplings and had… dumplings. We almost went to the zoo but it was like 4 pm so we wouldn’t have really had time to enjoy it. Instead we met up with Tristan, grabbed a coffee and went to Kaiser wilhelm church.

Afterwards we checked out the oldest department store which was now a fancy mall. Matt bought some chocolate and thought the price was $219. He exclaimed loudly not believing it was actually $219 and everyone started laughing because it was only like $40. I went over to the Haribo store and got like 5 pounds of that shit for $10.

We then crushed matt in the subway on the way home.

I made one pot chicken and rice with the groceries we had bought on the first day. We speed packed and then I vibe walked us to a bar where we had a beer and chatted.

At about 10:30 we were going to head back and Tristan mentioned he wanted second dinner. So we went over to city chicken and destroyed a couple birds and some hummus.

Solid day, sad the trip is almost over but glad we got together for something this year.

10/14/2026:

Got up and headed to the airport. Kenta and matt had already left earlier in the morning. Never got our train card checked by the BVG rail people. I bought some sunscreen because it’s better in Europe (thanks FDA!) and boarded our flight. One thing I really like was the board the plane from the front and the back. The other nice things are the luggage tags which don’t stack to your skin only the tag itself and the bag and you don’t have to peel anything! Super cool.

After landing in ams we took a train to our hotel (hotel met) and then went and walked to the foodhallen.

It’s a cool space but we didn’t get anything to eat. Instead I bought some coffee from DAK nearby and ate some gelato in a park. We then walked to the Vondellpark which I could only describe is the “Central Park” of Amsterdam probably a bit better to be honest.

Ally got really hungry so we went over to a pizza place and got pizza. We were both pretty tired so just headed back to the hotel and got some sleep.

I like Amsterdam. In certain ways it’s chaotic but the area near the vondel park and the west and southwest side of the city are just great. There’d certainly be challenges to living there but it’s a neat place.

10/15/2025:

Headed to the airport early to catch our flight to SLC. KLM had a really stupid system setup which was exasperated by the fact that 75% of people don’t know how to use the automated luggage check in machines and there were only like two attendants helping people.

Other than that the flight was uneventful, worked on my decision models article and played some poker.i don’t think I’ve ever stayed 100% awake on a 10 hour flight but it wasn’t that bad. I also ate this which is apparently pizza…

Landing in SLC shortly and then we have a short flight to PHX. We landed without issue and walked around SLC for a while because we had a small delay.

General Thoughts:⌗

Fun trip, great to spend time with friends and get some quality time with Ally. I love the train system in Europe, I like being able to go to some random town for a few dollars by hoping on a train. There’s so much stuff to see, I’d love to take a few weeks and just hop on trains to different cities and spend a day or two in each.

To be perfectly honest I was a little worried I’d be bored just spending time in these cities and I was wrong. They are cool, but definitely different than a outdoor trip where we backpack or ride bikes.

I am reminded of how fortunate I am to get to do a trip like this, and how much fun I have with Ally/my friends. Until next time!