Minus 4 deg over night, frost on the rooftops and we headed
out about 9.00am figuring we’d find the IAmsterdam sign and have a bit of a
wander before meeting my TA friends for lunch.
First stop after the sign was the Van Gogh museum – this is a spectacular
building which sees 10,000 visitors a day in high season. You’re allowed to take photos as long as you don’t
use a flash. What can I say about
Vincent that has not already been said – so I’ll just let you enjoy a few of
his paintings. Standing almost in touching distance of these first two was magic.
We’d arranged to meet my TA friends at the Notting Hill Hotel
and were going from there to the Albert Cuyp market and lunch at an amazing
Middle Eastern restaurant called Bazaar housed in what was once a
synagogue. Amazing building, wonderful food
and excellent company.
After lunch it was off on our walking tour. First stop was a place called Edy Bar – hard to
describe but essentially a local bar, decorated with memorabilia of a now dead
Dutch crooner, populated by billiard players (I’d never seen billiards played
before) and locals having a quiet drink on a Saturday arvo.
Having had a ‘drink with Edy’ we hopped a tram back to
Centraal, which is actually built on a man-made island which apparently caused great controversy at
the time because it moved the harbour foreshore a couple of hundred metres into
the harbour from its original place. Down
to the harbour for a view of the north side of Amsterdam, then it was off on a
personalised walking tour round the city. Past Saint Nicholasskerk, along the street
that is built on top of what was the first dyke in Amsterdam to Dam Square
and its fat pigeons, and stopped on the way to
sample the wares at a place called Wynand Fockink
that had been distilling Genever (Dutch gin) since the 1680’s. They do hundreds of flavours - I highly recommend the coffee version!
Through the red light district
(and the snickering groups of boys on stag weekends) over canals, past the
skinny houses (built narrow because in the old days people were taxed according
to the width of the house -obviously the wealthy showed off by building wider
houses) and the infamous ‘coffee houses’ which do not sell coffee at all but
rather cater to Amsterdam’s liberal soft drug policy (and no, we didn’t stop to
sample the wares), and into the nine
streets of the Jordan.
We covered a lot of ground; our tour, punctuated with stories and anecdotes, was a fascinating insight into this wonderful city – much like our walking
tour with Dagmar & Matthias in Mainz in 2012. My TA
fiends partner had left us to do some shopping (and she’d done this ‘tour' a
number of times before) and we had arranged to meet her back at a little bar
whose name translates to Monkey Bar - built in the 1500’s it got its name
because apparently sailors would come in from adventures in wild and distant
parts with monkeys to sell to finance their needs for booze and women while on shore
leave. This quirky little bar measures
about 4m x 4m and late this arvo it was packed.
Last stop was the Skylounge atop the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel
with its fantastic 180degree views over Amsterdam for a drink before heading
back to the station for our TA friends to jump on their train and for us to hop
on our tram back to the flat with the treacherous stairs.
Tomorrow we have a booking to visit Anne Frank House and
spend some more time exploring the Jordaan – and who knows what else we’ll find
on the way. We’re both really liking
Amsterdam.
Just great reports! Love reading them and seeing this first time view of Amsterdam thru your eyes.
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