The white-aproned cheese monger informs me that the silken wedge of heaven on my tongue is Emmental. He seems to have understood that I wished to inquire despite the fact that the intensity of my bliss has rendered me momentarily speechless. As I emit noises more apt to a barn animal, my boyfriend John tugs me away before I can buy the whole wheel, and together we glide on among the stalls of the open-air market.

Photograph provided by the author.

The slight drizzle that dampens our cheeks on our second day in Amsterdam barely registers with us as we scurry excitedly throughout town. Weaseling our way between gregarious raincoated women discussing kaas and komkommers, we sample the various delicacies each table has to offer. We glare into the glassy black eyes of zalm—salmon, we learn —laid out at the fish monger’s stall. We watch a woman making flensje—soft, sweet, paper-thin crepes with fillings like spek (bacon), stroop (syrup), and suiker (sugar) or slagroom (whipped cream). Nibbling on brood, we pause to sit and listen to a ragtag band of street musicians playing folky instrumental versions of what we recognize are American rock songs. I am falling in love, I think. This is only my first date with Amsterdam, but already I am falling hard.

Happily stuffed to the gills, we wander on as food stalls give way to flea market treasures. There is everything from antique opera glasses to Rembrandt drink coasters. There are baskets of thimbles and porcelain beer mugs.

In the evening, we walk along the Prinsengracht canal. The bridges we pass are rimmed with arcs of glowing bulbs, and as darkness sweeps through the city, lights from within the bricked walls flicker on through the windows.

In the following days, we view the yellowing photos of long-gone princesses and movie stars that Anne Frank pasted to her bedroom walls in the Secret Annex on Prinsengracht Street. Across town, we stand before canvases thickly coated in colored hash marks that form the faces of Vincent Van Gogh–painted himself–at the museum dedicated to his artistic legacy. We run our fingers along racks of vintage clothing and through bins of hand-painted doorknobs in the neighborhood of the Nine Streets. On an obligatory stroll through the Red Light District, our faces become illuminated in the ominous lights of the neon signs.

We take a train to the old university town of Leiden, where I lead us through the Hortus Botanicus, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. Afterwards, we rent bicycles, which we ride many kilometers to the tiny picturesque island town of Kaag. In Kaag, John rents a sailboat and we spend several leisurely hours traversing a small breezy lake ringed with dark wooden windmills with wide white turbines.

Late that night, back in Amsterdam, our salty bodies slip easily into sleep.

How different this is from New York, I think, sitting across from John at an eetcafe one afternoon. We have stopped for a beer and bitterballen–fried balls of meat and dough, a ubiquitous bar snack in the Netherlands. We have spent the morning roaming around an area called the Jordaan, a neighborhood that somehow manages to be tranquil without being sleepy.

On the narrow streets around us, nearly everyone glides by on two wheels. Babies peep out of carriers bolted to the front of parents’ bicycles, while dogs crane their little necks out of baskets saddled to the back. During rush hour, I have noticed, the air is filled with the polite dings of bike bells.

A waitress stops and places our order on the table in front of us. On a canal across the way, houseboats are moored one in front of the other. Some are decrepit, but some are spectacularly imaginative, painted in bright hues, with hammocks and small outdoor seating areas. There are even some with rooftop gardens.

“I always think it’s interesting to look at the streets of other cities,” John says, breaking apart a couple of steaming bitterballen so that they cool faster. “Yeah,” I say. “Here you’re probably a lot less likely to suffer hearing loss from all the honking we deal with in Manhattan.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he says. “I mean the actual streets. Like what they’re made of.” I cock my head to one side like a puzzled dog. This always elicits a smile from him. He smiles, then says, “See? These streets are made of old cobblestones, in weird arc-shaped patterns. I just wonder why they would have arranged them like that. They probably were built hundreds of years ago, so maybe we’ll never know.”

“As opposed to New York,” I say, “where the streets are mostly asphalt, and even the cobblestone ones are made with bigger stones, arranged in straight rows.”

“Right,” he says, sipping his beer.

We must look so funny, I think, suddenly. Here we are, surrounded by glittering canals and stately brick homes, and the two of us sit at a café table staring at the ground. But not just any ground; this street is hundreds of years old, an easily miss-able feature of the landscape.

It occurs to me that travel is not only about discovering a far-off place, uncovering its intimate quirks, and what drives the people who inhabit it. Travel is also about the combination of travelers, who, by importing themselves into the landscape, bring something to it for each other.