With the weather not quite nearing July in Provençal levels, the suggestion to start throwing steel balls around sounded ridiculous at first but once we got there started to actually make sense. In further discovering Amsterdam East, my ex-colleague and I went walking from brunch, past beautiful Oosterpark, and into the Mooie Boules next to the iconic Brouwerij windmill-bar. I can’t ever recall playing pétanque in my life so it was another scratched off item on this day of firsts, and not long after we started the place got busy with other people who thought the same as we did. Who knew.

Shows how much I know about this city that a place to play pétanque was nowhere in my radar. I could only manage one round of a game that in other times would be as boring as melting wax, but in this case turned out to be fun. If I didn’t run out of gas and started sweating a bit I could have gone on but as there were still errands to be done for the day, it was back to the west part of town for me. I lost by the way.