Amsterdam

At the end of January (how can it already be the middle of March?!) I met my friend, Darcy, in Amsterdam for a long weekend. She was there for work, so I went to keep her company over the weekend. We had a great time exploring A’dam. I had some inside tips from several of our neighbors who have lived there, so we had an idea of how best to spend our time.

Darcy and I started our tour of Amsterdam by boat. We took an hour-long boat cruise through the canals. It was a great way to see the city and learn about the architecture and history of the old buildings. I found the hooks at the top of each building to be interesting. These are used to move furniture in and out of the buildings since the stairs in most of them are very narrow and steep. I can’t imagine my parents hoisting furniture up to the third or fourth floor using this hook and a pulley during my many moves in college. I think Dad would have said, ‘Forget it, you don’t need to move again.’

We spent the rest of our time exploring by foot. We meandered all over the city through the different neighborhoods. Out of curiousity, we even walked through the infamous Red Light District. For fear of one of us ending up in a canal, we decided to skip exploring the city by bicycle. The sheer number of bikes is crazy – about 700,000 in total. Amsterdam is considered one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. Bicycles come at you from all directions and at all different speeds. They don’t slow down for nothing or nobody! We considered our weekend a success because we managed not to get run over or cussed out by a biker. I read somewhere that theft of a bicycle is not regarded as a real crime in Amsterdam. It’s more like not giving back a book to the library. Each year tens of thousands of bikes are stolen with an estimated 25,000 ending up at the bottom of the canals.

We took in a few museums as well. We visited the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House. The latter was well worth the line we stood in to enter. I recently re-read The Diary of Anne Frank, so it was very eerie and sad to picture Anne and the others hiding for more than two years in this building only to be found by the Nazis so close to the end of the war.

As always I enjoyed sampling the food. Amsterdam is known for the wide variety of cuisines. My friend, Ayelet, recommended an Italian restaurant in a quaint neighborhood, which was within walking distance from our hotel. We also had a great meal at a Thai restaurant. Dutch cuisine tends to be on the heavy side with meat and potatoes, which didn’t sound appealing to us, but we did try the Dutch pancakes. Why they don’t call them crepes, I don’t know, because that’s what they are. Pancakes, crepes, whatever you wanna call them, they were good. I went for a savory one. I think I need to go back someday to try a sweet one with fruit, chocolate and whipped cream.

Several weekends later it was Matt’s turn to explore Amsterdam with some of his friends. I think his weekend with his buddies was a bit different than mine with Darcy as it consisted of more time in the pubs.