AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands: August 21 - August 30, 2009

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Introduction

I got a paper accepted as part of a symposium to the EARLI 2009 conference being held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in late summer. It had been two years since Isaac and I traveled abroad, so he decided to come with me. It was my first real vacation since I started my job last November and I was looking forward to a break.

Day 1 – Saturday 08/22

Our flight was to leave from the international terminal at PHL at 6:35pm on Friday evening; we had been lucky enough to get a direct flight, so I was hoping one or both of us would actually sleep on the plane. We boarded on time, and kicked back from the gate, but unfortunately, thunderstorms that evening along the East Coast was backing up traffic. Although Philly was clear, since we were supposed to head over the northeast of the country, we had to wait our turn, due to the narrowness of the East Coast flying corridor. I think we sat on the runway for two hours. It's really annoying how airlines force you to sit on planes, because once they board you, close the doors and push back, they get to count it as an on-time departure, and if the delay is due to air traffic control, they give you nothing for it. Ultimately, of course, we left. Our flight was very empty, so many people had rows to themselves and could stretch out. Isaac and I had a rough time sleeping, though.

We arrived quite early the next morning at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport (though a bit delayed due to the night before, we had made up some time). We didn't check any bags - an amazing feat for two people traveling for 10 days - but it saved us a line at immigration / customs / baggage claim. We took the Connexxion bus to the hotel; it was a little hard to find the desk in the airport, but I blame that on lack of sleep and jetlag. The bus is a little pricey (22 euro round trip per person), but it goes door to door both ways, so it seemed worth it. The airport is actually really accessible from the city - it only took us about 15 minutes to get to our hotel. We were staying just outside the outer canal belt, across from the Rijksmuseum and near Vondelpark, a place called Hotel Museumzicht. We chose that place due to a variety of factors - it was sort of in between the downtown old Amsterdam sights to see and the conference venue; it was near to the park and I thought Isaac might like that; it had free wifi and an ensuite bathroom (neither of which are very common in budget hotels in Europe); and my travel book recommended them.

Luckily when we arrived our room was already ready. We checked in with the nice woman who owns and runs the place, Larissa, who somehow seemed just as jet-lagged as we felt. It was probably around 10:30am by then. Anyway I always try to stay awake the first full day, to help jumpstart the adjustment to jetlag by going to bed earlyish on the first night. We each showered and took a one hour nap but then forced ourselves to get up and go out. I'm actually not sure anymore that this is the best way - perhaps if we had slept till about 3 or 4pm, we would have gotten up and had dinner and then went to sleep again. Instead, we sort of wandered around Vondelpark (pictured at left) like zombies trying not to be snappish at each other, and without a real agenda.

We stopped at a café for lunch almost immediately, and had relatively decent baguette sandwiches: Isaac had tomato, basil and pesto (ubiquitous), and I had smoked salmon with greens. The service was extremely slow, something the guidebooks warned us about, but which you have to see to really believe. Suffice to say, by the end of our trip, we never ate at a restaurant unless we had at least 1 ½ hours to spare, and we always asked for the check immediately when they came to clear our plates, or we might not see the waiter again for a while.

All would have been well afterward, but we both woke around 1am and couldn't get back to sleep till about 3am. Since we had to be up somewhat early for our first excursion, this was annoying. However, ultimately we were able to get back to sleep, and from then on I do think we were reasonably adjusted to the time change.

Day 2 – Sunday 08/23

Breakfast was included with the hotel, and we were served a traditional Dutch breakfast each morning in a beautiful little breakfast nook overlooking the gorgeous Rijksmuseum. This breakfast consisted of tea or coffee, a soft-boiled egg you eat with a spoon out of the half shell, ham [which we skipped] and / or cheese, and brown or white toast with lots of options for spreads, such as butter, honey, peanut butter, Nutella, and jams. It was very filling, but tiresome to eat the same thing every single day! If I don't have another soft-boiled egg for a while, I will be fine with that!

We had to meet our tour bus at 10am so we left the hotel around 9:20am and followed the #5 tram line toward the bus tourism office, Lindbergh travels. We booked our tours through Viator.com. I often like to just forego the public transit and walk through a city if possible, to see more of the sights and really immerse myself in the atmosphere. Of course, bring a good pair of walking shoes. And if you're American, and thinking of wearing sneakers, be prepared to be the only one doing so, except other American tourists. Europeans do not wear athletic sneakers except to do athletics. Many women sightsee in heels, and even if they are wearing comfortable shoes, the most casual they go is fashion sneakers like Converse. We stood out but at least our feet didn't hurt! Speaking of American tourists, we actually did not see very many on our trip. One of our tour guides said it was not a popular place for Americans to go, but I am still not really sure why. It's really a beautiful city with a rich history. I suppose it's more well-known for other things, which may make it seem seedy and unsafe, but in reality it is really just a laid-back fresh European city with beautiful canals and architecture.

When we arrived at the bus stop, we were informed that the tour we booked (only a few days before) was no longer offered [a trip to Naarden, a medieval walled city], but that they still did the same general thing, which was a half-day bus ride through the Amsterdam countryside and a stop at a local castle. The castle was first, a beautiful medieval castle that the owner still lives in today. We did not have time on the tour to go in, but we took pictures from the outside and walked around outside in the beautiful weather for a little while before getting back on the bus to drive around the countryside. We saw many small towns along the Vecht River area, and many canals---the Netherlands is of course full of them. We stopped at a small restaurant where we had appeltaart, traditional Dutch apple pie. We saw many many horses, sheeps, and cows grazing on farmlands along the roads. It looked just like the pretty pictures of countryside farming you imagine American farms look like, but those are actually few and far between. In the Netherlands, I saw them everywhere.

One thing in Europe is there really aren't any such things as suburbs to speak of. It's a town centre surrounded by farmland. Of course, their way of life gradually changes, and now some suburbs do exist, but they are not as highly prized in terms of development and living style in Europe as they are in America. On the countryside tour, we passed along many canals, which people were out on boats; there were also several locks and the 16th century estates were gorgeous. Many of them had what are known as "teahouses", small little one-room buildings with elaborate architecture---much like an elaborate enclosed gazebo (see at left)---that sat right along the water, so their rich owners could sit out and have tea looking at the canals.

On our way back from the lazy countryside ride, we hit a horrendous traffic jam, so we were about an hour and a half later getting back than we were supposed to. We had not had any major plans so the delay was fine, but a little doze-inducing. We wandered around the northern part of central Amsterdam, walking past and through Amsterdam Centraal, the train station, again looking for public transportation tickets. While we were unable to find any, we did find a woman from the GVB (the public transit company) who was standing around giving help; and she said that you can actually pay the driver of the trams and they will give you change etc., which I hadn't expected because it's very uncommon, at least in the US. So I decided to just pay onboard for what I used and call it done.

One thing we saw at Amsterdam Centraal which was really a culture shock were the rows upon rows of bikes locked up there by commuters (pictured in racks on the right). Amsterdam, and the Netherlands itself, is very bicycle-centric. It seems almost everyone bikes, from little old ladies doing their weekday shopping to young hip kids heading out on the town. Most bikes have no gears, but all have a small bell, because bicycles in Amsterdam have the right of way over all other traffic, including pedestrians! It was crazy to see a wide city avenue, just as wide as any American avenue, but paved completely differently: one lane for bikes, one lane for buses, one lane for cars (going only one way), one or two lanes for trams, and another bike lane. Cars are highly de-emphasized in the city, and so the air is fresh and clean and there isn't a problem with traffic jams or noise. Cars stop for pedestrians waiting at cross-walks (even without lights). Don't cross in front of a bicycle though! The only negative I found in the whole arrangement was that moped riders, of which there were a fair amount (not nearly as many as in Florence, though), could use the bicycle lanes, which I thought wasn't quite in the spirit.

We threaded our way through the twisting, winding canal streets of Amsterdam for a while, seeing sights like houseboats up and down the canals, and the special gabled Dutch architecture (see at left) of the canal houses. Something you might notice in the picture is how the houses lean. I'll mention more on that later. Also, the way the streets are laid out I found to be really hard to navigate. Since there was a pattern to how the canals ring the city center, I got bold and felt like I knew where I was going. But more than once Isaac and I got totally turned around because the streets were leading us more north or south than we expected, for example. I guess the strict grid layout of Philadelphia has spoiled us for navigation without maps. We stopped at a small pastry shop to grab something to eat. Isaac got a chocolate-covered Belgian waffle (I know!), and I got a cheese-filled flaky pastry. Both were delicious. We wandered some more, seeing some of the things Amsterdam is more well-known for, including the Red Light District and the coffeeshops, which yes, do serve coffee, but no alcohol---instead they serve another intoxicating substance you cannot buy legally anywhere else in the world.

We decided to regroup at the hotel before heading out to dinner. We had read and been told that Indonesian is a major ethnic cuisine in the Netherlands, because Indonesia (or the Dutch East Indies) is a former colony. We almost always have better luck finding vegetarian options by eating ethnic cuisines so we were absolutely game to try it out. We went to a place called De Orient a few blocks from our hotel and had an Indonesian rijsttafel for two ("rice table"). Apparently, the Dutch pioneered the rice table idea---serving a little bit of everything at once, in case your guest(s) do not like too much of a particular thing. The meal was absolutely delicious. We were served many small entrees to eat with rice and toasted coconut. There was a lot of tofu, some cabbage, green beans, tempeh, and seitan. Many were flavored with peanut sauce, soy sauce or a combination of both. It was a lot of food but we finished every last bit, including the odd fried rice crisps and the toasted coconut garnish. After dinner, we wandered a bit through the canals for scenery and then went to the hotel and slept, still feeling a little jet-lagged and tired.

Day 3 – Monday 08/24

Another gorgeous day dawned, which was perfect, because we planned to go to the Wadden Islands, aka, the West Frisian Islands, today. There are a few islands jutting out over the North Sea to the north of the Netherlands, which are all farmland and forest and beach. Knowing Isaac, I thought this would be a perfect side trip for him. We took the train then ferry to Texel, the biggest and closest island to the mainland. It is about an hour and a half by train to get to Den Helder, then a short bus ride (but it was probably walkable if you had about 20-30 minutes to spare) to the ferry terminal. Then the ferry ride was about 20 minutes to cross the water to Texel. The ferry was a gigantic boat, with lots of space for drive-on passengers. Isaac and I rode on the top deck, and there were swarms of seagulls all around the boat (see right), encouraged perhaps by the tourists tossing bread into the air for the seagulls to catch mid-swoop. We also saw, completely unexpectedly, myriads of jellyfish in the water as we plowed through. These were not beautiful graceful jellyfish, but squat, fat little gray things. But there they were, floating all around the ferry. It was pretty cool.

It's worth noting, if you ever do this yourself, that we had a little trouble getting all our transportation together. Because we slept a little late today, we missed the first train we wanted to catch, and then at the train station, where all is mass chaos, we missed the next train we wanted [which would have timed us properly to catch a ferry immediately on the other side]. Word to the wise: know your credit card PIN # before going. Many American debit cards are not accepted by automatic ticket machines or other pay-for-service kiosks, because they are on a different debit card network (you should have little trouble at actual ATMs, though). I have never had trouble paying with credit card before in Europe, but in the Netherlands, I found the machine would not accept my credit card without me entering my PIN. So we had to buy tickets from a person, and we ended up a little too late for the train and had to wait 30 more minutes for the next one. So keep that in mind, and check out the schedules to try to minimize your waiting time in between connections. Also, it's very convenient to buy your tickets on the bus or on the tram---the drivers all had change and it was easy as pie (I wouldn't recommend doing so on the train, though; there's usually a fee for on-board purchasing).

Immediately upon arriving at the island, we rented bikes from the shop just across from the ferry terminal. It was probably a little more expensive than going into the town to rent them, but then you'd have to pay for the bus anyway and wait more and we felt we'd done enough waiting for one day. We both got bikes without gears, the Dutch style, and apparently catching on, which were actually easier to ride than I expected. It helps that the entire country is so very flat, being below sea level and all. We rode around the countryside of Texel for the better part of 4 hours. We considered staying longer, but there was a 3 hour gap between trains and we decided to err on the side of getting back earlier and eating dinner in Amsterdam, since I had to get up early and go to the conference the next day. And it turned out that 4 hours of bike riding is quite enough, thankyouverymuch! I need to get more exercise at home to prepare for trips like this! We figure, all told, we rode about 8km, or 16 or 17 miles, which kind of boggles my mind.

We saw lots of sheep, cows, horses, and tiny ponies! Plus some sleepy villages and church steeples. We rode also through some forest paths, very beautiful, and highly bike accessible, being mostly paved. We tried for a while to find the beach but found the map we were given at the bike rental shop to be less than helpful. Eventually we did find the beach, after riding through some heathery dunes, the only hills worth mentioning in all of the trip. So Isaac and I both stuck our feet in the North Sea, so we could say we had, and boy was it cold. The Dutch didn't seem to mind, though; many of them were out swimming like it was the Caribbean.

Exhausted, we ferried and trained home. On the train ride home in the growing dark, we saw many interesting things, similar to our ride there, like cows, sheep, horses, and windmills, but also, a bevy of hot air balloons rising above the countryside, and some black sheep!

By the time we got back, it was fully dark, so we walked through the Red Light District, aka, "De Wallen", at night-time for the first time. Hearing church bells ring from the Oude Kerk (Old Church) while seeing prostitutes nearly naked in the windows was an odd cultural juxtaposition, for sure. We saw many more women, and many more people in the area, than we had the previous day, since it was now night-time. It was hard to tell, but we think most of the passersby were tourists, which must make business pretty difficult. We did not see any male prostitutes or anyone advertising gay sex, but we did see several gay sex shows and shops. For dinner, we ended up eating at a small pizza place in the District, ordering entirely too much food, and I had some Dutch beer.

This is a good time to point out that pretty much everyone speaks English, even on the country island we went to. Our guidebook said something sarcastic like, "if you ask a Dutch person if they speak English, they will likely look at you like you have two heads." Apparently it is taught quite early in school, and many young Dutch people speak English without any accent at all! In the first few days, I tried vainly and in vain to speak a few Dutch words, but my pronunciation was so hideous, they never knew what I was saying even when it was simple and obvious like, "check please". Isaac, out of mortal embarrassment, begged me to stop, so I did, because there was really no need.

Another cultural note of interest is to be warned that Europeans do not believe in free anything, even water to drink at a restaurant. I have had some luck in other countries asking for the American standard of tap water, but in Holland they looked down their nose and brought me still water (in a glass bottle) anyway. A German colleague told me it was because she supposed the attitude is that you ought to pay for what you eat and drink. So, note to self: bring your own water bottle to travel with you, unless you don't mind paying high prices for small plastic bottled water sold mainly to tourists. Although they do recycle, because I try to reduce my impact on the environment as much as possible, I'd like to bring a Nalgene or other permanent type of bottle with me. As long as it's empty when you go through security, or you put it in your checked bags, it's ok to bring.

Day 4 – Tuesday 08/25

Around the middle of the night I woke up with an allergy attack, probably from all that good country air I got while bike-riding on Texel. It caused me to get a little bit sick and felt somewhat yucky. Today was the first day of the conference, and it didn't begin till mid-morning, so I was able to sleep a bit later and rest to try to get better quickly. While I was out, Isaac went to the Van Gogh museum, which was nearby the hotel. He has declined to provide further details here, so you can bug him about it!

In Amsterdam I felt that the city seems quite busy all the time, although it is small and the city itself has only about 750,000 inhabitants, which is half that of Philadelphia, but it seemed just as fast-paced.

We did find it hard to find places to eat, however. There were so many Argentinian steakhouses, which basically have nothing Isaac and I can eat. We ended up never really eating a traditional Dutch dinner, because of the meat issue [although modern Dutch dining is more robust]. We mostly ate ethnic foods. For example, this evening we had Nepalese/Tibetan, at a little spot called Sherpa, just off the Leidseplein. Plein means "square", and Leidseplein is the city's nightlife focal hotspot, and was not far from our hotel. I had Tibetan while Isaac had Nepalese food. The Nepalese was very very Indian---he had saag paneer [spinach and cheese] and it came with naan. The Tibetan food was interesting and unusual---I had spinach-stuffed raviolis covered in a tomato sauce, plus some kind of stewed potatoes. It was delicious and hearty but not a marriage of ingredients I usually look for. I'd recommend it if you ever have a chance to try some. [Note: after having read more about the cuisines above, especially Tibetan, I'm not sure what we had was really that authentic... but probably a bit more palateable to the western taste!]

We wandered a bit after eating but Isaac was still getting over his cold that he had before we left for Amsterdam, we were both still very tired from the bike ride, and I wanted to give my new cold time to recover, so we grabbed two ridiculously elaborate pastries for dessert from an open patisserie, and went home to rest and relax.

Day 5 – Wednesday 08/26

Today was our day trip to Belgium. Having never been there, I was excited. We had decided to do this day-trip because Isaac wanted to squeeze in another country on the same trip. Belgium is quite close and not too difficult to get to and from in relation to Amsterdam, so we settled on that. Isaac was disappointed he did not get another stamp in his passport when we crossed the border, though!

We did another tour by bus via Viator.com / Lindbergh Excursions. Normally I might have tried to arrange our trip myself, but the weeks leading up to Amsterdam were extremely busy for me and I didn't have time to plan like I might have liked. So we went the tour route. I don't think we were dissatisfied, but it was a lot of time on buses, and I am not sure I'd want to do that again. Trains seem somehow more comfortable; plus they do not fall prey to the frequent European highway traffic jams.

We departed at the same time for this trip as for our first trip---around 10am. Speaking of which, how much nicer a 10am start time is than a 7am or 8am! The Dutch like to get started late. We were on the bus for about 2 and a half hours to Ghent, the first Belgian city on our tour. We had only about an hour and a half to stay there, which at first I was upset about, but actually there was not much to see and the city was all under construction. In my opinion, it also was not kept up that well from the medieval times. Personally, I did not like it much. We did buy Belgian chocolates there, though...yum. We saw the three main sights our bus guide pointed out to us to go find: the main church, St. Michael's Bridge, and the city castle; but we basically walked through the city and that was it. Apparently the city is mostly a university town now, and it was fairly empty while we were there.

We then drove another 45 minutes to Bruges (or Brugge), where we had about 3 hours. I loved everything about this city, and thought it was much more well-kept up than Ghent. It was also more crowded than Ghent, which had been something of a ghost town. The first thing we did, on the advice of the tour guide, was take a boat cruise through the canals of Bruges. The canals are very beautiful, surrounded by lovely buildings. The name "Brugge" means "bridges", a reference to the canals, and in fact, Brugge has been called "the Venice of the North." They do not allow private craft in the Bruges canals, unlike in Amsterdam, which kept them from being as crowded. The boat guide was humorous in all the expected ways (i.e., "don't worry the alligators in the canals only eat small children"). There were some lovely swans resting on one of the banks, near the so-called Lake of Love, aka, Minnewater. All in all, a very enjoyable ride.

The bell tower (see at left) is one of the more well-known sights in Bruges, but after the bike ride and being sick for a day, I decided not to climb it and opted to wait for Isaac instead. However, when Isaac went up, he found it closed, which was a shame. The bell tower is the same one in the movie In Bruges, and we even recognized the small inner courtyard from the movie itself. As we walked around the main square, with a really gorgeous town hall (see below), I snapped pictures left and right trying to capture the feel of the place. I suppose if you live somewhere like that, you get used to it and the awe of being in a place that's been settled since the Romans; for instance, the belfry was built in the 1200s. But as a visitor, the weight of time and the vibrant energy of the city were an interesting contrast. You could almost imagine that not much has changed for the residents in all that time. We then tried to decide on a place to eat, but most places were the sit-down-slow-service type of places. We chose a small eetcafe called De Vuyst on the Simon Stevinplein, which turned out wonderfully. The service was so-so, and we had by now learned to be fairly aggressive in asking for the check and so on. I had a traditional Belgian waffle with real chocolate melted over it---no Hershey's syrup thankyouverymuch---and a local Bruges beer, and Isaac had cheese croquettes (basically deep fried cheese balls) and Belgian frites, with a local Bruges beer as well. This meal was extremely simple but exceedingly delicious and satisfying.

It was then time to leave, around 6pm. We had a very nice ride out of Bruges through the residential areas (no subdivisions of course) instead of along the highway, which was bound to be jampacked. One thing I noticed about Dutch and Belgian houses of this are is that many windows were open straight through the house, with no curtains. It was about a 4 hour ride home, because of a half hour stop at a boring European rest stop with a boring restaurant, AC Restaurant. As we rode back, the landscape was dotted with windmills, both of the modern kind and of the traditional kind. We saw one emerge up out of the coming dark that appeared and disappeared along the highway too fast for me to take a picture, but its looming silhouette was one of the perfect memories of our trip. It comes up about 15 minutes after the rest stop, if you ever take that tour yourself, so you can be prepared to snap a photo. We also saw one double windmill, two windmills about 50 yards apart, looking perfect in the countryside. We even actually saw one moving one, the only active traditional windmill I think I saw the whole time. There were also many medieval defense towers dotting the land, which was an unusual sight. Many of these towers, built in the 1400s or 1500s to ward off attackers from the medieval walled cities, have lasted all this time barely looking like they have aged at all.

Something else I noticed was that as we rode home and it became darker and darker, all the animals were still out in the pastures. I don't know if it was due to the summer or not, but I had expected to see some sheep and cow herders bringing the animals in for the night and was a bit disappointed to see them all still standing around without any humans around. We saw very few signs of human presence on the farms, actually. One set of sheep was standing in a circle all facing outward. There was a late sunset, too, about 9:45pm till it was completely dark due to the higher latitude of Amsterdam compared to Philadelphia.

Comparing the Netherlands to Belgium, I did notice that there were not as many bikes in the Belgian cities as we had seen in Amsterdam. The food was a bit different but you can get frites most anywhere in Europe. The countryside was very similar to the Netherlands, cows, sheep, horses, along the highways, etc. In fact, even the language was generally the same, as we were in Dutch-speaking Belgium (Flanders). We did not go far enough south to hit French-speaking Belgium (Wallonia), unfortunately for me.

Day 6 – Thursday 08/27

Another day in the city. I planned to go to the conference in the afternoon so we started the day by heading to the Heineken Experience, a museum in an old brewery. They do not brew beer there anymore, but it was the site of the first Heineken brewery many years ago. We got there around opening time and went through the whole thing, including having two free beers (smallish), in a little under two hours. It was a fun thing to do, but very touristy, kind of like a big Heineken commercial. In fact, they were playing Heineken commercials or product placement reels in several of the rooms. There were these odd space pods (see at left) you could lie in and choose your favorite Heineken commercials from the decades (mostly European commercials, as it turned out). There was some history and science of beer making and the Heineken brand, but it was short-lived. I gathered the real focus of the tour was to get you to the bar at the end quickly. One item of note was that there was a "Brew You the Ride", which is basically an immersive theatre that is supposed to make you feel what it is like to be brewed into beer. It was a bit too gimmicky for me. Oh, also note that the whole thing was in English, and all the guides spoke English only, very convenient. Word to the wise: there's no bathroom on the way out, so be careful after drinking your two free beers!

Again, we had trouble finding a lunch place. From my reading of our tour books, I think it's just because the Dutch don't prioritize lunch very much---they just grab and go, and have something simple like bread and butter, perhaps with some lunch meats and cheese. To that end, there is any number of takeout Chinese ("Wok to Walk"), vending machine food places, and McDonald's on the street. I'd recommend taking the first place you see that is reasonable to you; waiting doesn't help if you're just wandering and hungry or short on time.

We ended up at the Westerkerk, and had some frites with mayonnaise in the Westermarkt square near the Homomonument. We had planned to climb the tower of the Westerkerk (see at right), so we arrived and asked about tickets; the attendant said that there is a guided climb with a limit of 6 people every 30 minutes, and the next available one was an hour and a half from then. The attendant said that usually in fact it would have been full up for the whole day already by the time we arrived, but the weather was deterring some people (although it had really stopped raining by then). Our guidebook said nothing about any of these details, although it rated this tower as the best one to climb for the view, so that was a big negative mark for the book. So we got the tickets and wandered around the area for a while while waiting for our tour, stopping in for tea and chocolate mousse cake at a small café called Jennifer's. We also saw a statue of the famed Dutch author Multatuli, which sits on the widest bridge, called Torensluis. We eventually started the tour to climb the tower. Warning: this climb is not for the claustrophobic! I've done a lot of such climbs, and this was by far the closest. The stairs and ladders were extremely small, steep and tight. I am amazed I made it up all the way! It was about a 46 meter climb, or 150 feet. I did really like our tour guide, who climbed with us and talked about history and such at each landing, presumably to give us a break from climbing.

Our tour guide told us quite a number of interesting facts about Amsterdam history and the glory days when Amsterdam was the trading capital of the world and apparently the richest city ever in history, measured considering inflation of course. He told us that, back in the Golden Age, Amsterdam was essentially one giant warehouse / storehouse, as it became the trading focus of all of Europe going to and from the East Indies, through the Dutch East India Company. All goods went through the port of Amsterdam and its traders became the richest people in the world. Note that, although it is next to a Protestant church, the tower is not actually a church tower, but rather a city tower. Amsterdam has always been a city of religious tolerance and separation of church and state was not just lip service. In fact, our tour guide told us that the original traders of Amsterdam founded the city there as a haven away from the power and wealth of the Catholic church. They wanted to have their own independence and make their own profits without paying tithes to a church, so they founded Amsterdam in the unlikeliest of places, a swampy lowland, building the entire city on enormous wooden pikes. The view from the top of the tower (see at right) is gorgeous from many angles, highlighting what an attractive and green city Amsterdam is.

After the tower, we decided to go to the Anne Frank Huis (House), which is right nearby. In fact, Anne wrote about the bells from the tower ringing. There are frequently long lines to get in almost all the time, so try going early or late (it's open till 9pm). It is quite a sobering experience, but very nicely done museum, and the people touring it were quiet and respectful. Pictures are not allowed. It's actually a fairly quick visit, for the obvious and depressing reason that the house is extremely tiny. We saw the actual diary Anne wrote in, pictures she hung on the walls in her bedroom to make it more homey, and pencil lines marking the growth of the children during the two years the families hid in the house. We saw the tiny window that Franz and Anne looked out of from their small attic room, the only window that was not covered all day and night. You can also see this window from the Westerkerk, and our tour guide had pointed it out. It was a very sad experience, imagining the 8 people hiding in 6 rooms for 2 years, and then ultimately being betrayed and captured. They said they have still never discovered who betrayed them, and Anne died in a concentration camp two months before Holland was liberated by the Allies. It's an understatement but we left the experience feeling a bit more somber.

Later, we had Surinamese for dinner, walking through the western part of the city, which we had not really explored before. Surinamese food is like a mishmash of a variety of cultures, reflecting the history of the former Dutch colony as a place where the African slaves rebelled and escaped into the interior. Former slaves (the fried yucca in the center of our meal), Caribbean cultures (the spiced brown beans in the clear dish to the left), Indonesian transplants (the cabbage, beans and tofu over rice) all combined their influences on modern Surinamese cuisine to make a really delicious and filling meal. Both of us really enjoyed what we had. We ended up at the hotel a bit early this evening so I could finish preparing for my talk at the conference the next day.

Day 7 – Friday 08/28

Today I had my talk at the conference. I took the tram to the venue, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). That reminds me to mention how easy it was to ride the tram. Just like on the bus, you can pay the driver and he will give you change! When you buy a ticket to go a certain number of zones, you get a Smart Card that is good for a certain amount of zones and time (mine was an hour), which you swipe at a machine when you enter and leave the tram car.

In the evening when I got back, Isaac and I had planned to finally take a canal tour. After looking around a bit to see what left from nearby and where they went etc, we decided on the 75-minute cruise with the Blue Boat Company. Another major canal cruise company offers a hop-on / hop-off cruise, where you can use the canal boats to get to and from some of the major tourist destinations. Those tour boats were always full of people. We were looking more for a real guided-tour-type cruise, and had already seen most of the destinations on the hop-on / hop-off tour. The boat we were on did have a "computerized" tour guide, meaning it was pre-recorded, but it was not so bad that way. They said the same thing in a couple of different languages, and the driver pointed out the sight being talked about on the recording as we went by.

The tour covered a lot of the same sights we had already wandered around and checked out on our own, but here are some of the other major highlights. At its height, Amsterdam had some 26,000 warehouses, echoing what our Westerkerk tour guide said about Amsterdam being one giant warehouse. Following that up, the boat tour also mentioned that the whole city is built on wooden pikes in the ground, that go 120 meters down! Another interesting note is that the guide said that people used to drink beer because the water was polluted, and they didn't have coffee or tea until they began trading with the tropics. It was a bit cold out on the water, but there were many pretty sights and the 75 minute tour was a really nice length. I'd recommend sitting outside for pictures if you can---when we boarded, the outside was taken, but the interior of the boat can get in the way of a lot of the pictures.

In many of the canal house photos in our gallery, you can see that the houses lean, sometimes quite a lot. The reason for this is related to the use of Amsterdam canal houses and warehouses. The upper floors would be the storerooms, so most buildings had a winch hook at the top story for lifting cargo into upper floor windows. In the buildings were straight up, the cargo would smash into the façade all along the way. Therefore, the merchants built their houses with a slight lean forward, to allow the cargo to be lifted from the ground without damaging it or the house façade. The leaning was so common that a law was passed limiting the ratio of lean to be 25:1 maximum! In the photo on the right, the combination of leaning houses, flat façades, and being on a corner made this spot look particularly Escher-esque, even in real life.

After the tour, Isaac really wanted to have Indonesian dinner one more time before we left Amsterdam, so we went to a place called Bojo, just off the Leidseplein and which was supposedly very popular. Actually inside it was quite empty, which we were surprised about until we realized we had accidentally entered the half that did not serve alcohol. The other half was hopping.

On our way home, probably my most favorite memory from the whole trip happened: we were passing through the Red Light District, which is of course so-named because of the red light in the prostitutes' windows that give the whole area a kind of reddish glow. As we were walking along a canal, we saw a whole procession of swans, serenely floating through the canals. There were probaby 20-30 of them. It was absolutely gorgeous. I am not sure where they were going or why they were passing through, but it was an amazing sight. Right after that we got stuck in a really terrible thunderstorm with incredible rain. It was really the only bad weather we saw the whole time we were there, so we were fairly lucky for that time of the year. We ducked under an awning to wait it out but ended up running home mostly soaked anyway.

Day 8 – Saturday 08/29

Today was our last full day in Amsterdam! Although I was starting to be ready to return home, there was certainly more we could have seen. We wrapped up our trip with a potpourri of sights and neighborhoods. We started the day by doing the diamond tour at Coster Diamonds, just around the corner from our hotel. Our guidebook praised it as the only diamond workshop to give tours with active working diamondsmiths, but it was an extremely short and rushed tour. It seemed like you were mostly dependent on luck whether you got there if anyone was actually sanding any diamonds. The tour (free) seemed mainly designed to get us into the shops to buy expensive diamond things, but what do you expect from a free tour? Word to the wise: take pictures before the tour begins, or you won't have time.

After the tour, we wandered north through central Amsterdam again and walked past the Bloemenmarkt, the mostly-floating flower market, selling all kinds of tulips, amaryllis, etc. Anything grown from a bulb. Also, they had marijuana seeds and grow-your-own marijuana starter kits. I thought about buying some bulbs to bring back home but I hadn't done any research on what was allowed to import to the US so I decided against it. We ate lunch at a small café near the Bloemenmarkt, having pannekoeken one last time on our trip.

Afterward, we went to the Amsterdam Torture Museum, after rejecting the Amsterdam Dungeon, which was going to be 50 euros for both of us and seemed exceedingly steep for such a touristy place. The torture museum was more low-key and had actual implements as well as sketches of how they were used. Surprisingly my camera took very good pictures of the dark rooms. They had both physical instruments (not sure if they were real or just replicas) and sketches on the walls of the instruments in use. It was a very dark time in history that saw the invention and use of these objects! The human mind is certainly very creative when it comes to thinking up ways to hurt one another. Many of the objects had a definite sadomasochistic feel to them---splitting people in half up the middle starting from their genitals, or having people sit on painful things, etc. See, for instance, the chastity belt on the left. Must have been all that good old-fashioned religious repression inspiring the Inquisitioners!

Then we just wandered up the Singel Canal, the biggest canal, which used to be the city limits until 1585. We also saw the narrowest house in Amsterdam, and in the world---#7 on the Singel---which was no wider than the door. Back in the day, property taxes were levied based on canal frontage, so this house was built very narrow to avoid taxes. The house itself angled back so there was a bit more room behind the front, but it was still quite small. We finally saw a street stand selling haring, which our guidebook said was a common Dutch street treat. It is basically raw herring served with onions or pickles, or just by itself. You are supposed to basically eat the fish whole. I told Isaac he should try one and I'd take a picture, but he was too chicken! We also went on the Poezenboot, a floating cat shelter run by volunteers on the Singel. It was small-ish, but full of cats and we petted a few but did not stay long because it was also full of visitors and a bit crowded. But it was a really cute idea and if I lived in Amsterdam, I'd adopt a cat from the Poezenboot!

That night, our last in Amsterdam, I remember that we saw a beautiful sunset over the city streets and canals. We are at a vegetarian place called The Golden Temple. Near as we could tell, a theme for the restaurant might be "meals with flat bread". It was the most eclectic menu we'd ever seen, with Indian food (flat bread: naan), Mexican food (tortillas), pizzas (crust), and Middle Eastern food (pita). The food was all vegetarian, some with vegan options. I'll definitely go back if we ever make it to Amsterdam again. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped again in Leidseplein to have our last Dutch beers, and had some more Belgian chocolates in our room before packing and heading to bed. I remember hearing it rain most of the night while we slept. The airport bus was due to pick us up at 8am the next day to take us home...

Day 9 – Sunday 08/30

The return trip was long and tiring, again. We had arranged for the Connexxion bus to come for us at 8am (our flight was around 10:30am), and it did. We had a fairly easy flight but due to the tropical storms, the jet stream was stronger than usual and we had to stop in Bangor, Maine, for refueling. We arrived home and unwound from the long trip; both of us had to go back to work the next day. I fell asleep somewhat early, but adjusting the other way (toward Europe) is easier, I think. I was still jet lagged and exhausted the next two days at work.

To wrap up, we really had an awesome time in Amsterdam! It was such a beautiful city and it had this lively energy too. Although the service was slow everywhere, the people were generally friendly, and everyone spoke English, making it really easy to be a tourist. Speaking of which, there were a lot of tourists; sometimes it was hard to tell who was a tourist and who was a native of Amsterdam. The city has a rich history and I'm planning to try to learn more about the Golden Age of Amsterdam. Most places had an English menu, too, even non-touristy ones; but sometimes they were a bit over-zealous in their translations... We saw a couple places that translated "café latte" as "milky coffee"; but the best was when we saw "lasagna" helpfully translated as "dough dish from the oven".

That's pretty much it! I would highly recommend visiting Amsterdam but also getting out of the city a little. The island trip we took was really nice, and I would have liked to see more of the other islands, too, if we had had more time. Anyway thanks for reading!

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(c) 2009 Lisa Anthony. Last revised 10/5/2009.