Tag Archives: Amsterdam

Reporting in from Den Haag (sort of)

Posted on by

**So I started this post like three days ago, but I’ve been pretty busy and typing on a Blackberry is kinda slow. Anyway, I’m going to finish it as if I did it all in one sitting. If there are a lot of errors and typos, sorry. If I feels inclined I’ll fix it later.**

I obviously didn’t get a post in last night. Cris and I had an extremely full day and I wasn’t up for it when we got back to the hotel. So here’s a quick rundown of what we packed into our last day in Amsterdam.

We started out at the Rijksmuseum. I’m not sure if a bunch of it was closed or not but the building on the outside is way bigger than the area we were able to walk through on the inside. Inside was a pretty interesting mix of artwork and artifacts from the golden age of Dutch history when the Netherlands was the great economic power in the world.

The next thing was the highlight of the day for me and that was the canal cruise. The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect and the city was really able to show off. We had already walked some of the areas the tour went, but it also took us to some places we hadn’t gone so that was cool.

After our tour we walked to a couple of old houses that they turned into museums. They have some of the old original furnishings and decorations in the houses and you can freely walk through and check them out.

From there we went up to the botanic garden to get a piece of Dutch apple pie in their cafe, which is supposed to be some of the best in the city, and to check out the butterfly house.

Next, we went to a little flea market because Cris likes to do random stuff like that and then to the Rembrandt House. The Rembrandt House was a really well done museum, I thought, but it was the end of our day and we were running low on time again. The saddest thing about Rembrandt is that as great of an artist as he was he was flat broke by the time he died and he was forced to sell off all his possessions.

That was the end of our touring day, but I have to comment on the place we went for dinner. Its called Pasta e Basta and its a musical Italian place. While you eat they have a guy playing the piano and every couple of songs one of the waitresses would sing a song as she walked around the restaurant with a portable microphone. Good food and a very entertaining meal. Definitely a good way to cap off our visit to the city.

Today we left Amsterdam to come down to The Hague, or Den Haag as I like to use the real name since its one of the few things I can actually say in Dutch. The Hague is okay. Perhaps we just didn’t know the right place to go in the limited amount time we had to spend here, but the city wasn’t near as interesting as Amsterdam to me.

Last night (Wednesday) after my mettings ou hosts took us back up to Amsterdam for a night dinner cruise through the canals. If you ever visit and you have the time and money I would definitely recommend doing both cruises. The city is quite beautiful at night and is worth seeing both during the day and at night from the canals.

I’m now on a train from The Hague to the airport in Amsterdam. I’m very tired…and the train is crowded…and I have to sit on a plane for over eight hours. This is going to be a fun day.

Share

More Close Encounters of the Two Wheeled Kind

Posted on by

Another day walking through the streets of Amsterdam and more near misses with cyclists riding like crazy people through the city.  If you missed it yesterday, I noted that there are cyclists everywhere in this city.  Today I note more accurately that they are everywhere in the city and they don’t feel they are confined to any avenue of transport.  They have their own bike lane but we were almost run over by cyclists, in bike lanes, car lanes, and sidewalks today.

Despite the constant obstacle course, we had an awesome, full day of sightseeing around Amsterdam.  We got the day started a little later than we wanted due to messing up the setting of the alarm and jet lag, but its probably for the better.  Cris and I both felt well rested and eager to hit the ground running when we did get started.

First a couple of observations about Amsterdam in general, now that I was able to look around with a clear head.  The city is absolutely beautiful.  Pretty much everywhere you look you could take a picture and you’d have a postcard worthy photo.  All of the buildings look interesting and its hard to know what exactly to look at because they’re all unique.  Its also an incredibly easy city to walk…well except for the bikes of course

So after grabbing a quick breakfast, we headed up to the Anne Frank House.  The museum has been done very nicely.  They allow you to walk through the spaces that they lived in, giving little bits of description of what the room was used for and who stayed in what space.  Per the request of Mr. Frank there was no furniture placed in the rooms, but they have a few artifacts, mostly books, that the Franks and others had while they were in hiding.  Its shocking to see how little space they actually had to live in, and to think they were there for years is unthinkable.

After the Anne Frank museum, we walked a little until we came across the Tulip Museum.  Very small for how big a deal tulips are here.  Random fact I learned: tulips are native to the Himalayas.  Who would have thunk it?

After the tulip museum, we continued to walk around to various points of interest in the city.  Just to note, this is when we got our first strong smell of marijuana in the city; so weird.  Along our walk we stopped at a theater museum they have for Dutch theater.  They had a bunch of displays about costuming and backstage work that goes into putting on a show.

We also walked through the city center called Dam Square.  On the square is the national monument, the Royal Palace, and the New Church.  All very, very cool architecture, but we weren’t able to tour the palace or the church because they were closed.  Dam Square is also a center of shopping and restaurants so this is where we really came across our first big crowd since we’ve been here.

After grabbing a quick bite we continued on our walk to the Old Church, which is, surprise surprise, one of the oldest churches in the country.  They were getting ready to close as we got there so we only had a few minutes to check it out, but I’m glad we did.  First, the entire floor is made up of tombstones, and there are some 2500 people buried under the floor of the church.  One of most famous people buried there is Rembrandt’s wife.  Totally random thing they had was a “Tombstone of the Month,” where they highlight one of the people that is buried there.  Two other notable things about the church is the huge pipe organ they have and the stained glass windows.  There were doing work on the organ so we couldn’t see all of that, but the stained glass windows were amazing in their detail and color.

From church we went straight to and through one of the most notorious parts of the city; the red light district.  First, I want to note that the Old Church is across a canal from the edge of the red light district so you can see the red lights from the front of the church.  That’s just weird.

The red light district, or at least the part we went through, isn’t necessarily what you would think.  Basically, you have narrow pedestrian alleys off of main streets where the girls are trying to sell their services.  They do this by standing in glass doorways in next to nothing.  Let me just say that its uncomfortable to walk down a street like that, if you’re not interested in buying what they’re offering.  I guess I can at least say that I did it now, for whatever that is worth.  Its a life experience.

After our walk through the red light district we strolled our way back through the old city on the way to our hotel.  Nothing to say about anything in particular on the walk.  Only thing really to note here is that the city is a new kind of beautiful at night with the lights reflecting off the water of the canals.

A quick note on dinner is that we had Indonesian for the first time tonight and it was good, but we don’t know what we had.  We ordered a sort of Indonesian tapas dish that had a bunch of small samplers, but they didn’t tell us exactly what was included.  So I guess I like Indonesian food, but I can’t say that I’m able to really recognize the differences between the different kinds of Asian food.  I guess my palate just isn’t refined enough.

Tomorrow is our last day in Amsterdam before heading down to The Hague and its going to be as filled tomorrow as it was today if not more.

Share

Greetings from Amsterdam

Posted on by

So this might have been one of the longest days of my life…sort of.  Even though I’ve slept some since I woke up yesterday morning, it hasn’t been a good solid eight hours of sleep and so it feels like I haven’t slept at all.  Between the red-eye flight and the jet lag I’m all screwed up.  That being said, we were able to get a little sight seeing in and I’ve already had some pretty strong impressions of Amsterdam.  Here are my stream of consciousness thoughts cause that’s basically the only way my brain is working at the moment.

When people said everyone spoke English here, they weren’t kidding.  I think the only person who didn’t speak English well that we’ve encountered so far was a busboy where we had dinner, and I think he might have immigrated from somewhere outside of Europe.

The city is short and sort of spread out, but very very cool.  Its grey and rainy but for me that only adds to the charm of the city.  The architecture is very unique and is definitely the flavor.

Despite the grey weather, the people strike me as extremely friendly and very willing to help out any time you have a question about anything.

A possible exception to the friendliness are the cyclist, of which there is an overwhelming abundance.  There are a ton of them, they ride fast, and to someone unfamiliar with the city it only takes one near miss to realize that the smooth part of the sidewalk is actually the bike lane and you shouldn’t walk there.

If you ever come to Amsterdam, I can definitely recommend staying in the Museum Quarter.  Our hotel is just across the street from the Rijkmuseum (one of their biggies) and just a few short blocks from the Van Gogh Museum.  A short walk in the other direction from the Museums is an area full of restaurants where we got lunch and dinner today.

Our hotel is pretty nice, though I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed in a room where the ceilings were as high as the room is wide.  Very, very small compared to a stateside hotel, but its pretty nicely appointed and it’ll definitely do the job for a couple of days while we’re here.

The Van Gogh museum was a pretty good visit and, as I said, easy for us to get to.  I became a real fan of Van Gogh when I saw a good bit of his work at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.  Wouldn’t you know that when we visit two of his more famous paintings, The Potato Eaters and Starry, Starry Night, are in New York on tour.

I think I had more thoughts than this when I started, but I can’t remember what they are anymore.  We have a few things planned for tomorrow including the Ann Frank House and the Heinekan brewery museum tour.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more of a rested day and we’ll get in everything we want.

Share