This morning started as many good travel days do: meditation, questionable hotel coffee, no real plan. Today, however, carried a bit more weight than most. Today, Aimee turned 50. And somehow we found ourselves celebrating it in Amsterdam.
I'd been curious how she'd take to this city. Amsterdam can be a lot — old and young simultaneously, a 700-year-old canal house one moment and twenty-year-olds on bicycles carrying flowers, dogs, and a week's groceries the next. Thankfully, she loves it. The sun wouldn't set until after 10 PM — an extra gift from the northern latitudes. (I also reminded her of the giant birthday cake I'd commissioned from a designer back in February — a whole separate celebration still waiting for us back in Seattle, for whenever we finally got around to it. Fifty is worth stretching out.)
The thing about Aimee is that age doesn't seem particularly interested in her. Tell someone she's a grad student studying marine biology, astrophysics, or advanced fox sciences and they'd believe you immediately. Meanwhile she somehow manages to work harder than anyone I know, spend her career keeping people safe, take care of everyone around her — and volunteer for giant swings hanging off buildings. An unusual skill set. Fifty trips around the sun. Roughly 18,263 days. And she still looks at a swing dangling off a tower and says, "Let's go."
The morning soundtrack came, improbably, from George Michael — "I Want Your Sex (Mosimann Remix)," a track Aimee had found the day before. Not what I'd have predicted for a 50th birthday in Amsterdam, but travel has a way of making unexpected things feel perfectly reasonable. We wandered with no particular agenda — coffee for me, matcha for the fox, a little shopping, and the canals doing their slow shimmer in the morning light. By now we've become reasonably proficient at Amsterdam navigation, which here means landmarks instead of street names: "take a left at the leaning building, past the cheese shop, cross the bridge with the bicycles." The city was already fully awake — delivery bikes, café tables spilling onto the cobbles, the smell of fresh bread and canal water and somebody's cigarette, church bells somewhere off to the east. It's the kind of morning that makes you walk slower on purpose.
Then the Fox Saw the Swing
And then it happened. Across the IJ River stood a tower. Atop the tower: a giant swing extending out over the edge of the building. Aimee spotted it immediately. "Let's go do that." Of course. So we hopped the free ferry and a few minutes later stood beneath the A'DAM Lookout, wondering how our day had escalated so quickly. Twenty minutes earlier: coffee and shopping. Twenty minutes later: preparing to swing 100 meters above Amsterdam. Life comes at you fast.
The elevator shot us to the top in about twenty seconds with lights and music, and suddenly all of Amsterdam unfolded beneath us — canals, church spires, bicycles, the entire low country stretching toward the horizon. Then, the swing. Aimee, who occasionally expresses concerns about heights, appeared completely unbothered. I, meanwhile, began conducting an extensive risk assessment. Is this inspected regularly? What are Dutch swing regulations? Is there redundancy in the cables? Why are my shorts suddenly feeling loose? The nice Dutch kid working the attraction secured us in, and off we went. There is something uniquely unsettling about realizing there is no longer any building beneath your feet. Just air. At one point I looked over. Aimee was laughing — absolute joy, like she spends every Tuesday swinging over European capitals. I had achieved maximum white-knuckle status. Eventually the ride ended. We survived. And there is now photographic evidence.
The Netherlands largely exists because the Dutch collectively looked at the ocean and said, "No." Roughly one-third of the country sits below sea level, protected by centuries of dikes, pumps, locks, and water-management systems sophisticated enough to hold back the North Sea. Honestly, after seeing that swing, I trust them. If anyone can safely suspend tourists over a city, it's probably the people who successfully engineered an entire nation.
Back on solid ground and still slightly adrenalized, we celebrated appropriately: a beer for me, a Hugo Spritz for Aimee, a paper cone of hot fries between us, and Stevie Nicks — "Edge of Seventeen," just like the white winged dove — drifting out of a café somewhere, because apparently Stevie Nicks follows us internationally now. Then it was time for the part of the birthday I'd actually planned: a canal cruise.
There's a particular magic to seeing Amsterdam from a boat — it's the perspective the city was actually designed around. Streets are almost an afterthought here; the canals are the real avenues, and stepping down into the boat felt like finally being let in on the secret. Ours was a small open launch, low to the water, the kind where you could trail your fingers over the side if you were brave about canal hygiene. We pushed off into the long golden light of a late Dutch afternoon that had absolutely no intention of ending.
From water level the whole city reorganizes itself. The famous canal houses lean and tilt above you — some tipping forward on purpose, hoisting beams still jutting from their gables so furniture can be winched up the outside rather than dragged up those impossibly narrow staircases. Every house is different: a different width, a different gable, a different century, all shoulder to shoulder and reflected upside-down in the water. Houseboats line the banks, some ramshackle and geranium-covered, some nicer than most apartments, all of them clearly home to somebody. Bicycles by the thousand chained to every railing. Ducks. Swans. The occasional heron standing on a moored boat like it owned the lease. And people everywhere — on stoops, on bridges, on their own little boats with speakers and coolers and an entire evening's worth of ambition, waving as they passed.
We'd waited for the boat near the Homomonument. In the moment, we'd been told a grim and dramatic story about it — but the truth is both quieter and more important. The Homomonument, unveiled in 1987, is the world's first major monument commemorating LGBTQ+ people persecuted for their sexuality, including those murdered during the Nazi occupation. It's a memorial and a place of ongoing remembrance and pride, not the site of a single atrocity. Amsterdam has a remarkable way of balancing celebration with remembrance. Nothing is forgotten here.
Australians & Bridges
Our canal boat held about ten people, and we lucked into a delightful group of Australians. One gifted us lapel pins — mine a koala drinking a beer, Aimee's a koala drinking wine. Remarkably accurate character read for two people they'd known for four minutes. We took the back seats, which turned out to be the best seats in the house for the trip's running gag: every time we approached one of the low stone bridges, the whole boat would collectively yell "BRIDGE!" — as if there were any chance of missing the large stone object directly overhead. Some of them really are low; you watch the archway come at you and instinctively shrink down even though there's a foot of clearance. For reasons I still cannot explain, I removed my hat each time, as though a bucket hat added meaningful altitude. It does not. The bridges remained undefeated, my hat remained unnecessary, and the Australians found the whole ritual deeply satisfying.
Amsterdam's canal ring — the Grachtengordel — was dug primarily during the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age as a single, astonishingly ambitious piece of city planning. Combined length: roughly 100 kilometers, across about 165 canals. Bridges: over 1,700. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010. The canals aren't just beautiful — they're infrastructure: transportation, flood control, drainage, and climate management all at once. Locks periodically flush portions of the system with fresh water from the IJ and beyond, which is why, past certain points, the water runs clean enough that locals dive in on hot days. Even a 17th-century city, it turns out, runs on excellent plumbing.
We drifted out toward the wider waterways as the light went from gold to amber. We passed a boat of Spanish women attempting to round a corner while appearing to have personally sampled most of Amsterdam's available beverages — traffic slowed, a small maritime negotiation ensued, lessons were learned eventually — and watched the whole floating party of the city glide by: sound systems and sparklers, someone's birthday, someone's engagement, someone's ordinary Monday that just happened to involve a boat. When the cruise let us off we weren't ready to be back on land, so we settled in at a floating restaurant for nachos and bar snacks while Spain took control against France on a screen in the corner. Past 10 PM and still light out — a fact my body refused to accept the entire trip. The long way home wound through the Red Light District, cleaner and less chaotic than the version I remembered from twenty-five years ago, but still unmistakably itself. Cities evolve. This one manages to do it while wearing sequins.
France–Spain played out on a screen aboard a floating restaurant while the birthday sun refused to set. Spain looking sharp, controlling the ball, doing Spain things. The tournament keeps threading itself through the trip — a canal, a screen, a beer, a birthday.
Fifty Years Around the Sun
By the time we returned to our room, Amsterdam had given us another perfect day: canals, history, beer, boats, a giant swing, and somewhere in all of that, a birthday. Fifty trips around the sun. Countless people helped, countless lives improved — and somehow, after all of that, she still looks at a swing hanging off a building and says "Let's go." I suspect that's the secret. Never stop saying yes to adventures, even if the person next to you is quietly reconsidering all of his life choices while dangling over Amsterdam. Happy Birthday, beautiful fox. Here's to fifty. And to whatever comes next.
The Roundup · Day 04
🍺 Beer of the Day. Poesiat & Kater IPA holds the crown, with honorable mentions to several Heinekens consumed in the name of cultural research.
🎂 Birthday Moment of the Day. Looking over at Aimee while suspended over the edge of a building and realizing she was having significantly more fun than I was.
🧠 What I Learned Today. The Dutch can apparently engineer anything — including a swing capable of simultaneously creating joy and existential reflection.
🎵 Song of the Day. "I Want Your Sex (Mosimann Remix)" — George Michael, the fox's own birthday-morning pick. Honorable mention to Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" on the A'DAM rooftop, as always.
❤️ Moment I'll Remember. Watching Amsterdam glow in the evening light from the water while celebrating fifty years of the cleverest fox I know.