I made it to Amsterdam! It's a great pleasure being back after a long time, and while the city seems to have gotten even more beautiful, walking infrastructure feels like it got worse.

🍟The first place I went to sold fries and krokettes, which are deep-fried mushy meat sticks. The food truck had a very professional sign that showed all the available payment options, including Bitcoin. The vendor didn't flinch and pulled out their personal phone where they showed me a Lightning invoice from Bitkassa. I had just set up my Bitrefill eSIM and misconfigured something, so a friend had to pay for me. Embarrassing!

🎤I attended Bitcoin Amsterdam, and I very much appreciate how the organizers make sure everybody accepts sats. The food court was great, and over the days I tried several things. They also had a few bar and a proper restaurant, all set up with Beebox. The payments always went through smoothly, although I found that after making the successful payment, it would still take a while for the green tick to show up on the merchant screen. Every second counts, I believe. Almost nobody in front of me in the long lines paid with Bitcoin.

🚰The Lightning beer tabs are always a highlight, and the exhibition hall had a full set of them. I paid 5299 sats for a third of a cup of sparkling water, which felt a bit much, but then I think the tab was simply malfunctioning for that pour. Otherwise there was nothing to buy at the exhibition hall.

🧋There was supposed to be a mobile bubble tea cart in the park nearby, but I couldn't find it. This was my only Lightning disappointment in Amsterdam.

🥩For dinner I walked to a nearby restaurant serving South African BBQ. There was a lot of Bitcoin branding and I suppose the place had been advertised for some event, as there were a lot of people there. I couldn't order à la carte, but they had a buffet for 30 euros. Before I could even ask for it, I was asked if I wanted to pay with Bitcoin to their Bitkassa app.

🍸I headed to Cafe Nassau nearby, where the entire night I didn't see a single other Bitcoiner (except of course the people I was with). They were also using Bitkassa and it went quite smoothly, but where are all the people?

☕The next morning, I went to Hummingbird Cafe in the old town. I asked to pay with Bitcoin and was referred to another staff, who seemed to be the owner and very happy to see me, introducing themselves by name and asking me about the conference. They said that not many had paid with Bitcoin that week. They were using the LNBits Tpos, run by a group called "Lightning Checkout."

🫘In the afternoon I headed to Rhumaa Cacao Bar, where I arrived just in time before closing. The bar is located inside an arts and craft store, and everything can be paid with Lightning, not just the cacao. I got some postcards and tasted a very bitter and yet delicious unsweetened hot chocolate, brewed with water instead of milk. They also gave me a roasted cacao bean to taste, which I had never tried before. The shop had stickers from "Wexo," but accepted sats through Wallet of Satoshi. I got to chat with the owner and he had only started to accept sats a day before!

🍰A short walk nearby is Melly's Cookie Bar, and while it was hard to imagine from Google Maps or the website what exactly they offered, I was very positively surprised by the delicious and massive chocolate cake slice that I ordered together with a nougat hot chocolate and stroopwaffles. They also used Bitkassa as a payment processor.

🍻I walked to a bar called Brandstof, where I had a beer. I met the owner who told me they are very interested in Bitcoin and asked around their friend circle, where he got the recommendation to use Bitkassa.

All in all, my experiences using Lightning in Amsterdam were great. There aren't too many places but BTCMap is well maintained, and everywhere I went the staff knew about Bitcoin and how to handle it. Bitkassa dominates but there is some healthy diversity in what people are selling and how they accept Bitcoin. I'm devastated I didn't make it to Arnhem, the real European Bitcoin City, on this trip.