Amsterdam Part I of II

Brad spent Spring Break in the states with the kids, accomplishing many things - he brought the dogs back (my Mom is watching them for us), spent the week with the kids, visited his family and mine, celebrated my mom's 60th birthday, and drove across the states accomplishing this all.  But instead of going straight back to Stuttgart, we took advantage of his arrival location - flying into Amsterdam - to have a mini-vacation.

March 23, I took the night train from Stuttgart to Amsterdam to join Brad.  His flight came in at 8:00 a.m. and my train arrived at 9:25 so we met at the main train station.  Of course, technology prevented us from making our linking up flawless because his phone wasn't working.  When I didn't find him after one walk through the train station, I headed to Starbucks to get a coffee so I could stand in one spot, drink a coffee, and wait for him to find me.  Of course, as I pick up my coffee, he walks by.  After I catch his attention he gives me that look - the one that says 'I should have known to look for you in Starbucks'...  It was 9:50 in the morning and we had until 8:31 the next night to see Amsterdam and the Netherlands!  Here is a picture of Central Station - note that it's not a clock you see here, but a wind direction indicator.

We went to the tourist office and got the tourist discount card "I amsterdam", which gets you into most of the museums and includes a 48 hour light rail pass.  We then went to the hotel, checked our bags, freshened up, and headed out.  We stayed at the Amsterdam Hilton, using my Hilton points from all my business trips.  I had wanted to use the points when we traveled to Amsterdam to send off Brad and the dogs, but none of the Hilton's allow pets, so we used them this time.  Since I'm a Hilton Gold member, compliments of my monthly trips, we got a room with a great view.  Here's the view from our hotel window, looking down on a canal.

The Hilton is in the background here.

I did learn one thing - having a canal view is nice, but by no means is it unusual.  This city has numerous canals running throughout.  The canals were deliberate city planning and were used to transport goods, for water management, and for defense.  Later that day, during a canal cruise we discovered the main locks allow them to refresh the water in the canals by opening the canals to the sea.  On our trip from the station to the hotel we passed over many canals, and throughout our visit we were constantly walking besides or across canals.  Houseboats and small boats are all over, though Brad and I were amused to discover quite a few small boats that were waterlogged and useless.

We headed out from the hotel, got lunch at a small cafe, and walked to museum square.  Here we saw the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rijksmusuem Amsterdam, which has in its collection many paintings by Dutch masters, including by far the best painter - Rembrandt.  Both Brad and I really like Rembrandt and how he and his peers captured realism in their paintings, including a fabulous use of light.  Van Gogh, and the paintings similar to his shown in the Van Gogh museum had far less interest to us.  While it was cool to recognize paintings, none of this more surreal art really spoke to us.  We were both very disappointed that the Rijksmuseum is undergoing a huge renovation thus a very small part of their collection was displayed.

We walked along the canal then, until I realized we were following the wrong canal!  But we did stumble across a street market, the Albert Cuyp Market with vendors lining Albert Cuyp road selling everything from shoes, scarves, electronics, fish, cheese, and more.  We then headed for the canal tour.  Timing it just right we got our tickets just as a boat was about to leave.  As I've indicated before, you can't go to Amsterdam without doing something with the canals.  I was amazed as we boated along how the people with house boats often had their curtains wide open.  We had noticed a similar thing earlier when walking to the museums - you could look right into the basement apartments along the streets.  I did note that, though we could see everything else, I didn't see any bedrooms.  I guess the level of privacy needed changes based on the use for the room.  

Most of the buildings in Amsterdam are four to five stories high or higher.  Like any large city, people are all packed in closely and as I said in another blog last week, the bicycle is the main form of transport here.  One neat thing is the buildings all seem to lean out.  This is deliberate since the buildings are so narrow, they have these large hooks at the roof level, where you can use block and tackle to lift your household goods inside - you would never be able to get stuff up the stairwells.  These hooks can be seen on buildings throughout the ceiling, and the outward leaning keeps you from bouncing things off the wall as you raise stuff up.

After the Canal cruise, we realized we were exhausted from traveling through the night.  Plus Brad was really feeling the jet lag from his time zone shifts, so we headed back to the hotel to get a nap.  We got up in the evening around 8 p.m. and headed back out, this time to check out the red light district.  I don't have any pictures from the evening because 1) I didn't want to bring my camera and risk a pickpocket getting it, 2) you're not allowed to take pictures of the girls, though this didn't make any sense to me after seeing the district - there is no nudity, even with the girls in the windows, and 3) night pictures never look that great.  We walked around the red light district, both of us underwhelmed because I think we both thought it'd be racier than it was, got supper (steak for Brad and chicken wings for me), and headed back to the hotel, though we did get a chuckle from all the sex stores and the Sex Museum.

The next day, we spent the morning and early afternoon at Keukenhof (see Part II of this blog).  In the afternoon we saw a few more museums - the Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church), the Anne Frank House, and the Tulip Museum.   I don't know if we were in a negative mood but none of these museums really satisfied us.  The New Church, even though built in the 1400's, had so much stuff in it turning it into a museum that it no longer felt like a church nor could you really see the church itself for all the lights and displays inside.  The Anne Frank House was interesting in that it is intact from when they hid out here in the 40's, including still having the pictures she'd pasted on the walls, but for the cost they really didn't tell the story very well and none of the rooms had furniture in them so you really didn't get a feel for how tight the quarters were.  It does inspire me to want to read her diary again now that I have a whole different perspective than I had years ago when I first read it.  And the tulip museum was ONE ROOM!  What a rip.  If it hadn't been free with our Amsterdam tourist pass we would have been really angry!  The only thing I got out of the Tulip Museum was regrets that I couldn't buy some tulip bulbs from the store in the other room (of the two rooms making this place up, the sales room was bigger), and that tulip speculation caused a financial collapse in the 1600's.

We then tried to go to a flea market, but got there as they were putting everything away :-(  Heading back to the hotel we got our bags (we'd checked them with the hotel) and headed to the train station for our night train back to Stuttgart.

Altogether it was a beautiful and fun two days.  Brad repeatedly stated he'd come back to Amsterdam again if he is given a chance.

This picture shows the locks to the ocean that are opened to let water in or out.