Amsterdam Day 3

My new friends let me borrow a bike for the day so I expect to see a lot more of the city. Unfortunately it’s raining. Given the facts that it’s raining, I plan on going to some museums today, and I’m on a bike, I think I will leave my backpack and big camera in the room and just take dad’s camera and the guide book.

 

After an art museum and the Van Gogh Museum, it’s official!!!! I am a Neanderthal. It seems, I have absolutely no idea what the difference is between the work of a master artist and a talented 10 year old. There were things I liked and things I didn’t. It seemed to the opposite of what the expert seems to be impressed with.

 

After the museums I rode the bike around the rest of the city I missed on my walk. Had lunch with a nice German couple, then continued my ride. Got back to my hotel around 5:30 ish soaking wet. Arranged to take the bike back and dry out. They invited me over for dinner. Leaving the hotel for dinner was a bit of a mess. I get down to the bike and realize I don’t have the bike light they let me borrow so I had to go up to the room. I get to the room and realize I don’t have my room key, It’s in the room. So I go back down to the desk and get a new key. Get back up to the room and decide that I don’t need the backpack or the guide book so I just grab the light and a small map instead. When I get maybe 2/3rds of the way there I realize that I wrote all the directions to his place in the guide book and that is back in my room. I figured I might as well take my best guess and see if I can find it. Well, no problem. I remembered the road and I just happened to see him standing more or less in the window as I rode by. They fixed me a great dinner, we had some wine, chatted a bit and by about 10 I headed home. Great end to my Amsterdam trip!!

Amsterdam Day 2

Beautiful weather day. First since I’ve been in Europe.

I’m writing this entry the day after because by the time I got home I was too worn out to do anything but get ready for bed. I think I walked 60% of every street in Amsterdam. I started by walking the park areas around here. Then I headed just north of the center of town. I passed the Ann Frank House so I stopped in for a look. It was interesting. I’ve seen this place on TV but it’s much more personal when you are standing in the rooms themselves. My reaction surprised me very much. I imagined most people was thinking “How horrible” and it was. But I kept thinking “I bet everyone in killing fields of Cambodia (or the camps for that matter) would trade places in a sec”. I guess being at the killing fields affected me more than I thought.

 

Anyway, enough of that. I had lunch next to a group of girls from the states. We swapped stories about Amsterdam and had a few laughs.

 

Next I headed to the navel museum. This took me though the major part of the center of town. Found it but unfortunately it was closed. From there I wanted to check out a traditional windmill. Unlike in America (where windmills were mostly used to do things like grinding grains), windmills are used to pump water. Over 50% of Amsterdam is under sea level. I found it interesting to check out the blades. When I look at their shape, I see a design way beyond their understanding of aerodynamics.

 

From there I just started walking the water ways. They are in concentric circle around the city. By the time a walked 2 of these all the way around and back, I was at the hotel and it was time to get ready for dinner. The same guy that drove me from Brussels to Amsterdam invited me to meet him and his girlfriend for dinner. While there we ran into another couple of friends of theirs so they joined us.

 

I had a great time hanging out with all of them. We started at a restaurant and then after a walk ended up at a whisky bar. By the time I made it back home it was almost 2am.

Day 1 of Amsterdam

After class was over I rode up to Amsterdam with 1 of the students that lives in Amsterdam. It was a little after 4 pm by the time we got to the hotel. I was told I needed to make sure I got a ticket for the trip home before they were sold out. So, first order of business was to head over to the station to pick up some tickets. The only thing I knew was the station was somewhere to the west on the other side of town. So I just started walking west. It wasn’t long before I saw a trolley with “Central Station” on it. I guessed that was where I needed to go so I started following the tracks. I lot easier than following a bus

Every time the tracks split I would ether follow the one going west, or wait for the next trolley that said “Central Station”. It wasn’t long before I found the station. After getting the ticket in hand, I went for a walk about. I didn’t really have any objective or plan. Just wanted to see where my feet led me. Found my way back to the hotel somewhere around 9 pm.

My first impressions of Amsterdam as not what I expected. I guess I expected a …. more seedy place. Other than the “café’s “ it’s just a nice, pretty, city with interesting architecture and a lot of water. At just about every turn you will see the lights reflecting of the water.