But, it’s still light out!

Posted on July 12, 2011 by hjones

I gave Jeff a reasonable amount of time to decompress from work before we set out for dinner. There are a ton of little Bistros and restaurants on Spuitstraat where we were staying. We did a loop around and decided on Italian.

View from our table at Dante Italian Restaurant

No matter what you eat, you have to start with a beer right?

Beer #1

The food was really good, rustic and tasty.

Antipasto Misto

 

Pizza with spicy sausage and mushrooms

Something that I learned almost immediately about service in the Netherlands is that it is    really      really       slow. I’ll make some ignorant assumptions as to why. First, there is no tipping here. All the servers make a living wage, however, this means that there is absolutely no incentive for my waiter to bring me another beer toot sweet.

I'm smiling because I still have a sip of beer left

The servers are friendly, but you can expect to spend at least one and a half to two hours eating dinner out. Another assumed reason is that it is simply the culture here to take your time, relax and enjoy. As I walked about during the day I would see people at a café having beer or coffee on my way out to a museum and then see them hours later when I returned still chatting and enjoying the early summer weather.

Still here, huh?

After dinner we took a walk to the Waterlooplein area.The buildings here were larger and grander and the canals were more expansive.

Canal in Waterlooplien

Then we made our way around to Rembrandt square. This place was hopping. It’s pretty much all bars and “Coffee Shops” and was teaming with people. It’s easy to stay out way too late when it’s still broad daylight at such a late hour.

Still light out at 10:00pm

 

This time of year (June -July) the sun is up at 5:30 and doesn’t set until after 10:00. It feels like absolutely everyone in the city is outside. This sounds pretty good until you realize that in the winter, the sun doesn’t rise until 9:00am and sets by 4:00pm. No thanks.

We had another beer and then Jeff continued his search for a scotch that is as good as Lagavulin but at half the price. This has been an ironically expensive venture.

Lagavulin facsimile

 

Meets his approval, but you can't get it in the states. Boo!

We might have had another round. Jeff didn’t have any meetings until later the next day so we didn’t have to get up too early in the morning.  Good thing.

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On My Own…

Posted on July 9, 2011 by hjones

Ok people, here’s the thing. I’m a bit of a wimp. I don’t like to drive on a road with more than two lanes. If Jeff were broken down in Boston, I would gladly call him cab home. I’m not driving in there! I’ve never navigated a city on my own, and here I am in Amsterdam with eight hours to kill until Jeff comes back from the office. Thankfully, one can get about the city without a car, actually it’s preferred. You can rent a bike (nope still too scary), take public transit (Do I get off at Scheepstimmermanstraat or Kloveniersburgwal?) or you can walk. I chose to walk.

Walking in Amsterdam is an interesting challenge. There are four lanes to contend with. The side walk, the bike lane, the car lane and the trolleys.

Go ahead, try and guess which lane is for pedestrians.

The bikes are the main form of transportation here. Everyone rides bikes from the hipster urbanites to the octogenarian granny, and they mean business. When you hear the little “ring, ring” of the handlebar bell you’d better get the heck out of the way. The cars might slow down, bikes won’t.

There are no helmets or little tight black shorts either. You’ll see men in suits and ladies in skirts and heels riding.

People whizzing by in bikes.


Biking through the ages

The craziest thing is that people pile the whole family on the bike. This behavior would get your kids snatched up by child services here!

Baby in peril

Let papa know if a car is coming, dear.

This child is in a bag, people. A bag!

My first stop was the flower market near our hotel, tons of bulbs and Delft pottery in booths lining an entire canal.

Free samples = breakfast

I don't drink tea but I still wanted these

Then on to the Rijksmeuseum.

Rijksmuseum

The bummer about visiting these amazing museums is that you can’t take pictures to share what you’ve seen. At least you’re not supposed to. I’ll let someone else break the rules and take this off the internets.

Contraband photo of Rembrandt's "Night Watch"

Next stop was a canal tour. This was a great take. Well over an hour. It took you all around the city and then out to the open water.

Canal view from the cruise


These people got the good seats.

This guy is cool.

Shark!!!! Oh, wait, it's just the Nemo Science Center.

Back to the canal.

Something that made this trip so much better for me was the I Amsterdam Card.

"I Amsterdam Card"

This prepaid card allows you entrance to dozens of museum and sights. It also allows unlimited use of the public transit. There were some discounts and freebies too. This not only saved money (it paid for itself the first day) but it gave me a guide as to what to see next. I highly recommend it.

I tried to get an iced coffee (apparently that’s heresy here) then moved on to another museum when suddenly my crocs attacked me. My feet started to blister, so it was definitely was time to head back.

Just a couple of hours to rest, then out on the town with Jeff …

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Two Tries Get To The Netherlands

Posted on July 8, 2011 by hjones

This was our second attempt to get to The Netherlands. Finally, after an emergency appendectomy, two injured knees and a cancer scare, we were on our way.

 

The last Boston beer before taking off

My travel companion

The flight from Boston to Amsterdam is about seven hours, not bad if you’re in first class. We weren’t.

What a seven hour flight does to a person

We arrived at Schiphol Airport about 8:00am. No need to rush to the hotel because our room wouldn’t be ready. This worked out well because we had to wait an hour for our luggage to come around. Apparently they didn’t off load our bags. Maybe my clothes were trying to make it to Paris.

We stayed at the NH Hotel in Amsterdam. We decided to take a cab. We didn’t need those 30 Euros anyway. What I didn’t know is that there are 13 NH Hotels in Amsterdam alone. Yeah, we went to the wrong one. It was a nice morning for a walk, just not trailing 100 pounds of luggage on a cobblestone street.

After we stored our luggage and begged, begged for our room to be ready by noon, we set out to see a bit of the city. We walked to Museumplein where the Rjiksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum are located and had delicious sugar waffle with cherries and a cappuccino.

Delicious sugery waffle and the first of many, many cappucinos

I will be making some ignorant generalizations about Dutch people through out this trip report. Here’s one of them; everybody smokes. You can’t smoke indoors, but you can just about everywhere else.

It's still fabulous to smoke in Europe

It was getting near time for our room to be ready, so we headed back. We stayed on Spuistraat, which was a great spot for anyone, but especially us. It is centrally located and packed with cafes, bars and bistros.

Spuistraat

NH Hotel is nice and mid-priced.The rooms are small, clean and well appointed but nothing fancy.

The view was pretty sweet

After a “Disco Nap” we set out to meet Ken, a colleague of Jeff’s, for dinner. He has been living in Amsterdam for a number of years. I guess he’s an ex-pat, but he was very interested in coming back to the states. Does that count?

There are local Dutch specialties like asparagus and “Frites” (these are just French fries folks, nothing to get excited about), but for the most part the restaurants here are either ethnic, like Mexican, Thai etc. or pub grub.

Argentinian Marinated Steak

 

Cappucino!

After dinner Ken took us for the obligatory tour of the Red Light District. This was kinda weird. Everybody knows about this place. Prostitution and pot are either legal, or at least decriminalized here. The “Coffee Shops” as they are called are all around the city. This doesn’t seem as strange. People just hang around here but instead of drinking a beer they are smoking a joint. The Red Light is different. We made a very quick pass though the main part. You could see the young women in the windows with the eerie red lights glowing. It seemed surreal. They are real people up there, you know? They are someone’s daughter or sister or even mom. It was sad to me.

We stopped at another place for a beer before we headed back to collapse. I had a big day of museuming ahead of me.

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