Art, Canals and Tulips – yes, it’s Amsterdam!
Hi dear friends, sorry for the delay in-between blogs, my IT expert (aka son Dan) has been away, hence the wait for the next instalment!
Wednesday 5 April - We arrived from Rome last night and made our way, with some difficulty, given most signage at the airport was in Dutch, (and funnily enough, none of us speak it) to our hotel by train, which was considerably faster than the congested motorway that ran alongside it. All installed, we popped into a nearby supermarket and bought a plethora of very tasty treats to have for dinner - a veritable buffet in fact!!!!
Day 1 – up early and we headed off to a well-known chain of restaurants, Bagels and Beans, for a very delicious breakfast – I had the Power Breakfast and as you can see from the photograph, it was quite the assortment of dishes including traditional ham and edam cheese, accompanied by chocolate sprinkles!!! Yes, apparently quite popular here! Back onto the train and we headed into Amsterdam Centraal, followed by a ferry ride over the canal to the Straat Museum, a museum for street art and grafitti.
Unfortunately, we took the wrong ferry and ended up giving ourselves a wonderful 40 minute walk via a heck of a lot of new building sites – I thought I was in Auckland for a minute, and then I realised they had no orange cones around! Finally, we found the Museum and spent a great few hours looking at the most amazing and interesting artworks. The museum was in an old warehouse so had the perfect high stud to showcase the pieces, some of which were many metres’ in height.
A thoroughly interesting morning. Back on the correct ferry this time and into the town centre again. We walked around a few streets, but unfortunately the weather was not kind to us and the rain had kicked in to join the 6 degree temperature making for a pretty miserable afternoon. Ben and I particularly felt the cold having come from much warmer climes. We found a nice little brasserie and were shown to a very cosy banquette upstairs so were able to warm up and have a nice “linner”/ “dunch”??? Finishing at 4.00pm and with the weather not having improved, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. Back in the room I had a cup of tea with far too many speculaa biscuits (for those of you not familiar with these, they are a speciality from Belgium, biscuits made with cinnamon, very crunchy and very delicious) and feeling a little guilty, headed off to the gym with Stella for a Nana and granddaughter workout!!!!! Early night tonight as we have a big day planned for tomorrow!
Day 2 – another early start and we’re back on the train, this time to Madurodam, via The Hague. 39 years ago I took Ben and Rebecca here for the day and I remembered it as the most incredibly detailed miniature village, and thought Stella and Chloe would enjoy it too. What I had forgotten was that it was only miniature Dutch buildings and surrounds, in my mind I thought it was cities from around the world. What I also didn’t count on was the fact that 39 years later, nothing much had been updated, and that it would take us 2+ hours each way to get to it. Yes, you read that correctly, 2+ hours each way!
What we thought would be a straightforward train journey, ended up being absolutely ridiculous – trains, planes and automobiles had nothing on us today, with the same sort of stress levels at certain points. It should have been a direct train from Amsterdam Centraal to The Hague, then a quick transfer on a second train and 5 stations later, an arrival into Madurodam, about an hour all up. We easily caught the first train but when we reached Leiden everyone got off and we were amazed, thinking we were the only ones left in the carriage with lots of space to ourselves – once again our lack of the language meant we had no clue what was happening – next minute the engines turned off, so we got off too! There had been a train crash in Holland last Tuesday morning which I had been aware of but not the fact that it had actually taken place between Leiden and The Hague rendering that part of the rail tracks useless. We were then put onto a bus which took the most ridiculous route through suburbia all the way to The Hague. Then when we got there we had to get the local train to Madurodam. This would have been fine except that when we finally arrived in Madurodam, whilst it was still quaint, it was quick to walk through and my memory of the cities of the world had been a figment of my imagination and it was only of Dutch buildings and surrounds. So guess what, 30 minutes later we were headed back to the station for our return!!! This time we were routed via Utrecht, no bus journey at least. The whole business took us almost 5 hours and also cost us Euro 201.50 for our trouble too. An expensive waste of time, but on the bright side we managed to visit most of the major cities in Holland!!!
It would also have been fine if the countryside had been interesting, but to be fair, all we looked at were dozens and dozens of architecturally poorly designed boxy office blocks and apartments, and flat, uninteresting, rural landscapes, not helped by the fact that weather-wise it was a miserable, a typical Lowlands damp day so it all looked rather bleak – and we only saw one windmill! Some days you should just not get out of bed!
Back into the city centre – we had a walk and mooch around some of the shops located up and down the canals and finally arrived back at the hotel. Not the best of days really but fortunately we could laugh about our train rides and see the funny side of it. The weather promises sun all day tomorrow so we will make the most of it!
Day 3 – Easter Saturday! Nothing like waking up to a cloudless, sunny blue sky. Thank goodness, as we have a lot planned for today. Off we went back to the station to catch the metro, a couple of stops to de Pijp to visit the Albert Cuypstraat market, named after Albert Cuyp, a painter from the 17th century. It’s the largest daytime market in Europe with 260 stalls selling everything from clothing, flowers, fabrics, antiques and typical Dutch delicacies such as herrings, stroopwafels and cheeses. We had a lovely stroll through with a few treats along the way and then hopped back on the Metro and into Amsterdam Centraal.
Ben had an appointment at a sports bar for the Manchester United v Everton match so Stella, Chloe and I had a tasty lunch in the sunshine on the rooftop deck of de Bijenkorf, an iconic luxury department store. We followed this with more window shopping and walking along the canals. The city is packed with tourists, far too many people for my liking; all fighting for space along with the hundreds of cyclists ringing their bells and weaving around all the pedestrians – very stressful and not very enjoyable either. We’re certainly not used to anything like the crowds of Europe back home in Auckland. As planned, we met up again with Ben outside Tony Chocolonely’s flagship Store – I hadn’t realised it was a Dutch brand until our visit. The queue, although quite long, moved quickly and we were soon inside and quickly filling a basket with plenty of slabs which will be taken home to Singapore, Rome and to the UK as gifts!! It was certainly fun and very colourful in there.
After a coffee and a sit down, (yes, my legs were getting tired, we have walked pretty much all day, every day since we have been here, and I’m starting to feel it a little)! we made our way to the Lovers Canal Cruise dock for our 6pm New York Pizza cruise and were allocated a great table in the front of the boat. Winding our way around the canals and enjoying our pizza, we viewed all the comings and goings, and interesting architecture along the route, whilst listening to some great 60/70’s music. We couldn’t have had a better night for it –by far the sunniest evening we have had since we arrived and it was the perfect finale to the day.
Day 4 – Easter Sunday – another early start for our booking at Anne Frank’s house today. Unfortunately, a very grey, cold and bleak morning greeted us as we exited the hotel, somehow it seemed appropriate for the sobering visit to Prinsengracht 263 where Anne and her sister Margot, together with their parents Otto and Edith, hid from the Nazis in a secret annex, in what was her father’s family company building, from 6 July 1942 until 4 August 1944. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. Written on the wall upon our exit is a message that he gave to young people in 1970 “We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realise what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means”. Seems we haven’t learned at all, and the message is just as eerily relevant now more than ever.
On a more upbeat note, we followed this with a visit to Soho House Amsterdam for a welcome hot breakfast and coffee, and a bit of a lounge about on their settees before heading out for our next appointment at the Moco Museum. Located in the historic Villa Alsberg on Museumplein, it is an independent museum with a wide range of inspiring modern, contemporary and street art – think Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, KAWS etc. It was a great way to view the artworks, up and down the stairs in a villa, rather than the conventional large museum style spaces and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. A last round of walking up and down the canals before we made our way back to the hotel. My legs have just about done their run – I have walked so much this week – a total of 153,128 steps and just over 101 kilometres!
Thanks Amsterdam, it’s been fun, but now I’m done!