June, 2009
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©2010 James Teitelbaum. All rights reserved.
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Persistent prologue: I write these travelogues for myself, so that twenty years from now, I will be able to remember as much about these trips as possible. I include as much detail as I can cram in, so as to get it all fixed in writing before the memories fade. I share these with friends, family, and any complete strangers who find them, because people express interest. I know that these writings do ramble on a bit, but I do not require an editor; these writings are here as aids to my own memory, not as attempts at serious travel writing -- although anecdotes from these journals have formed the core of my more formalized and proper travel writings, which have appeared in print and on the web elsewhere.
These are called "canals". Keep reading if you think they're sexy.
Researching what I wanted to do and see on this trip, I made a loose itinerary: three days in Amsterdam, one day in Haarlem, three days in Brussels, two days in Bruges, and then back to Amsterdam for two days. This ended up being a good plan, but in retrospect I could have spent one more day in Brussels, and a half day less in Bruges. But that said, my regular readers know that I am an art lover. Several of the major museums in Amsterdam were closed, so had they been open, another day or two there might be have been good too.
I procured train tickets on-line for the inter-city travel. From RailEurope, it costs $54 to go from Amsterdam to Brussels, $24 from Brussels to Bruges, and $66 from Bruges back to Amsterdam. There was a problem with one of my three tickets, which I noticed before I left on the trip, and RailEurope fixed it right up for me. Good deal. The tickets were booked for specific times of day, but the tickets were considered “open tickets” meaning that I could actually travel at any time of day as long as I traveled on the proper day. All three routes had many trains leaving all day, more or less hourly. So, locked in to traveling on certain days, I booked hotels in the various towns.
To avoid the 3% foreign transaction fee on my credit cards, I wanted to use cash as much as possible on this trip. I wouldn’t need tons: the flights, train tickets, and hotels were all paid for in advance on-line. My bank traded me $897.53 for €615. You’ve got to love the sinking American economy. Rebecca brought an identical sum in Euros. We’ve discovered it works really well for each of us to bring the exact same amount of cash, and then to combine it, and have one of us just pay for everything. Therefore, all costs are split exactly equally (except souvenirs, for which we are each on our own). Any left over cash at the end was divided back up between us. We did this in Spain, France, Japan, and elsewhere that we’ve traveled, and found that it was a comfortable way to share finances.
One more note before we begin:
Before taking a big trip, I find it useful to assemble all my flight
and hotel information - plus key sightseeing information and even
certain maps to specific destinations - into a single PDF document,
print it, and have it handy. This keeps all of my key travel plans
organized and consolidated.
This time, there were a few blank
spaces in my document.
So as to make Rebecca laugh, I dropped some funny
pictures of monkeys into our travel itinerary.
Rebecca thinks monkeys are hilarious.
And really, they kind of are.
Little did we know, that thus primed for simian hijinx, apes would
become
a theme for this trip...
We go.
Thursday, June 11th
We’ve been having unseasonably cool weather in Chicago, so on a drizzly
and grey June afternoon, with temperatures in the low 70s, I waited too
long for the rather late first bus, met Rebecca at the second bus stop
and waited too long there also, and then got the blue line to O’Hare
airport just barely in time to get our bags checked.
I had managed to find round-trip non-stop flights on KLM for about $760, leaving both to and from Amsterdam at convenient times of day. This was actually lucky, because all of the other flights, on all airlines, leaving three days before or after my selected dates, were $200 more and had stops. Not sure why there was such a good deal on this one day, but I didn’t question it.
The flight took off at 4:15 pm.
Of all the trans-Atlantic flights I’ve been on (I’m counting fourteen
off-hand), this KLM vessel had the most severely cramped seats and the
fewest comforts. I’ll roll my flights to South America and Asia into
that appraisal too, actually.
So, add another dozen flights to that fourteen.
Watch out when flying KLM!
I guess that’s where my bargain came from.
Naturally, the flight was intolerable: screaming kids right next to us, and a guy in front of me who insisted on pushing his seat back all the way down for the whole flight, painfully bruising my knees. Those of you who think it is fun being six-foot-four have never experienced airplanes, back seats of cars, or Japanese doorways from this perspective. Anyway, the flight felt like riding in a cattle car. KLM might want to rename “coach class” to “cattle class”.
Friday, June 12th
We arrived at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport (AMS) at 7:05 am, local time, after seven hours and one minute in the air.
The first thing I noticed about Amsterdam, looking out the airplane windows, was a bunch of windmills and canals. This of course, is what Holland is known for. However, the windmills were the giant steel industrial ones, and the canals wound through an area of great chemical storage tanks and filthy factories. This is no different from the landscape in the vicinities of other airports worldwide. The quaint parts of Holland would be found elsewhere.
Waiting for luggage, I noticed that most of the signs here are in English first and Dutch second. I was distracted from this observation by a gaggle of Asian beauties in Singapore airlines uniforms waiting for their own luggage, but I soon managed to refocus on the signs. Reading Dutch, there are a lot of words that are remarkably similar to English. However, the pronunciation and accent are so radically different, that spoken Dutch couldn’t seem much more different from English when first heard. But I did notice that I was able to figure out a lot of the Dutch signs (not to mention menus) by reading them aloud. Boek is book, trein is train, brood is bread, beir is beer. Fysio is gym (say it out loud, it makes sense, “physio-”). Remembering that most J’s in Dutch are silent (sorta), then as long as the Dutch presented to me was written, and not spoken, we’re golden (or: wij gouden!).
Customs was a dream: we didn’t
have to fill out any
sort of cards or
forms, and the young man at the immigration desk barely glanced at me
before putting a nice, heavy, robust stamp on my passport. I don’t
think he spoke a word.
And then there’s that moment of
disorientation.
Out of the familiar hermetic bubble of the airplane, it is time to get
situated.
Where are we, what is this place about, how do we get where we need to
be?
A direct rail link connects Schiphol to Amsterdam
Central station.
Trains run every 10 minutes from platforms 1 and 2 in the main arrival
plaza (€3.60 one-way).
Have change on hand to use the ticket machines,
and to avoid the lines and a €0.50 surcharge at the ticket office.
Most
credit cards in Europe now require PIN numbers to use. I didn’t have a
PIN for my card, so the ticket machine wouldn’t take it. About one in
four ticket machines take cash, and they don’t make change.
I had to
buy a small bottle of water for €2.25 (over $3.50!) just to break a
€20.
The train car that took us to
Amsterdam Central
station was built in
the early 1990s, and looked it.
Time for an update.
For some reason
whenever I think of bad design from the early 1990s, I always think of
the television show Babylon 5, which was supposed to take place
five hundred years from now, but which looks quintessentially and
hopelessly 1993 to me, now and forever. So I was in a Babylon 5
train, riding across a small piece of Holland, to Amsterdam Central
train station. This train station is quite grand, with a great clock
tower and lots of elaborate parapets (see photo to the right). Outside
is madness, with many
tram and bus lines converging in front of the station, and a high-rise
parking garage next door.
This high-rise contains not a single car
however; it is filled with ten thousand bikes.
It is impossible to discuss Amsterdam without
discussing bicycles.
The wise and healthy people of this nation all recognize the advantages
of pedaling.
Amsterdam may be the single most bike-friendly city I have
ever experienced.
There are dedicated bike lanes on almost all major
streets, and there is bike parking everywhere.
I have seen many, many
bikes in towns from Barcelona to Kyoto, but none more so than in
Amsterdam.
|
We had a long day ahead; the only way to defeat
jet-lag is to stay
up until one’s normal bed time on the first day of a trip, no matter
what time it is upon arrival. It was not even 9:00 a.m. yet, so we had
a solid fourteen hours ahead of us. Amsterdam is made up of concentric
crescent-shaped canals. Central
Station and the red light district are both basically within in the
centermost, or smallest, crescent. My prepared documents, decorated
with apes, included maps of several walking tours of the city.
We arrived at The Royal Palace at Dam
Square (photo immediate left). Someone had very deliberately laid out
about five hundred slices of
white bread in an intricate and gigantic bull’s-eye pattern on the
cobblestone plaza. I guess the royal family must love either Wonder
Bread mosaics or pigeons. The bread was just being noticed by the
pigeons, who would doubtlessly devour it over the course of the day,
and then shit it all over the palace, the tourists, and the street
performers who we would see in this spot later. For now, the only
people in the plaza were me, International Rebecca, and an amorous
couple who were passionately making out on a bench, oblivious to
everything around them. A national monument exists on one side of the square, while the palace is in the middle, and the New Church is on the other side (The Old Church is elsewhere in town). Neither Rebecca nor I are Christians, but when traveling in Europe, visiting churches is inevitable. If nothing else, one must admire the architecture, which of course is an interest of mine anyway. The church was not yet open, and the national monument took all of a minute or three to absorb, so we continued down one of the main middle-class fashion shopping streets, Kalverstraat (Straat = street. See, Dutch is easy!). |
So, with thousands of people,
trams, bikes,
busses, and other
madness swirling all around us, we exited the station, almost
immediately crossed a bridge over a canal, and found ourselves at the
head of Damrak, one of Amsterdam’s main commercial streets. We hung a
left, and took a very short walk to the edge of the red light district
(RLD), and then to our hotel, the Luxer (at Warmoesstraat 11). 
Walking down Damrak towards both
Dam Square
and the wider, outer canal rings, the city was just coming to life.
Most of the shops were still closed, but long shadows cast across the
buildings were growing steadily shorter. I liked some art deco
stattuary above some shops (photo to left and a few inches
up). We skipped over the Damrak Sex
Museum, but found the Stock Exchange building to be modestly
interesting architecturally. Our walk took us to Begijnhof, which is a walled community of forty-eight residences established in the year 1346 for women who wanted to do good for the community, but who did not want to become nuns. The women were called Begijns, and hof = house. The last official Begijn died in 1971. Begijnhof is still used as modest housing (for women only), but they maintain the convent-like atmosphere from ye olde days. They welcome visitors but demand silence, and prohibit photos. We relaxed on a bench for a bit as noisy construction workers, passing airplanes, and scrappy garbage collectors made mockery of the requested silence.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I say: I took a quick and discreet photo or two (below left).
Next on our walk was Spui square, where people were
setting up for a
book fair. Lots and lots of art books and ancient editions of
literature were being readied for sale, but it was still very early in
the morning and they were not open for business. Also on the square is
a great art nouveau facade above the Tokyo Cafe, which used to be the
M. Buttinghausen Photography Studio (above right); the wonderful sign
still clams
that Mr. Buttinghausen is still in business. Across the way are
Athaneum Boekhandel (follow the logic here: boek handel = book handle =
book handler = book seller. See, Dutch is easy), and three bars simply
named Amstel, Heineken, and Grolsch. I assume there is truth in
advertising here, but I wonder if there might be some product overlap
in these taverns.
“Henieken? Sorry, we don’t have
that, you’ll have to
go next door. This is the Grolsch bar”.
Time for a snack. How can one
resist ordering
something called an
Appelflop? Our apple flop from Outmayer bakery was €2, and was
basically a tart like the ones we continually inhaled in France in
2007.
Good stuff.
Next we discovered the bloemenmarkt (bloomin’ market... flower market... see...). This is a series of florists all set up on small barges on one side of the canal called Singel. On one hand, these florists all had some nice flowers, and they sold bulbs for a price that seemed (to me) rather reasonable prices (three orchid bulbs for €10, a Venus fly trap for €3.75, and three bags of ten assorted tulip bulbs - thirty total - for €10 total). On the other hand, bloemenmarkt is very touristy, and all of the flower vendors also sell cheap Amsterdam souvenir fridge magnets, t-shirts, postcards, wooden shoes, and other kack.
This walking tour ends at Rembrandtplein (Rembrandt
Square. Okay,
getting “square” from “plein” is a stretch, so sue me, but here we
go... plein = plain = large open area... ah, I give up). On the way
there I discovered Tuschinski Theater, a mind-meltingly cool-looking
art nouveau movie theater. It was closed, but I returned for photos of
the lobby later on.
Fantastic. A must-see for building nerds.
Rembrandtplein is a tiny park
hosting a statue of the
great Dutch
artist (just one of many great Dutch artists, I might add), surrounded
by cafes.
One cafe came recommended: Cafe Schiller (at Rembrandtplein
24). I had read: “Renowned art-deco cafe virtually unchanged since
1913, popular with literary and artistic folks. Welcome respite from
other noisy watering holes. The restaurant at the rear serves terrific
French fare. The art deco theme extends next door to the larger
Schiller Brasserie”.
Turns out it is really expensive, and not all that
interesting.
We were hungry, not having eaten much since the meager airplane breakfast, hours ago (the apple flop was all of four bites). A quick and casual lunch was consumed at the counter of Croissanterie St. Magnifique (Leidestraat 18, with Leidestraat being the main big street perpendicular to the canals, crossing all of them... Leide Street = Lead or Main Street...). For €9, we got something that appeared to be pizza-like, but it was just a big rectangle of baguette with a vaguely cheesy flavor to it, and a mystery bun with marinated pickles, onions, mushrooms, and cheese on it (heated). That was pretty good. Then we paid €2 for two bananas from a street cart; that’s a buck and a half per banana. Outrageous.
We continued down Leidestraat to Leidesplein (check
it out: Leide
street leads to Leide square, it all makes sense). We were now
officially on the second of our two walking tours, with this new one
picking up where the previous had left off (at Rembrandtplein).
Leidesplein, like Damrak, and like the red light district, is yet
another super-touristy part of Amsterdam. Lots of bars and restaurants
here. I am tempted to say it is less sleazy than the neighborhood of
our hotel, but it is nonetheless full of frat boys and their ilk
whooping it up at the beer bars. Nevertheless, near here is the
fantastic art deco
American Hotel, which we investigated.
We thought about eating brunch,
but their buffet was phenomenally expensive, and they were just about
to wrap it up for the morning.
Nearby is a park filled with a few dozen life-sized brass sculptures of Komodo dragons romping among the tulips. There is also a long, narrow street filled with tons of restaurants off of the Leidesplein, but we never ended up eating at any of them; they all seemed like tourist traps.
Moving on, we walked over to the Museumplein, which
is the big open
park surrounded by all of the museums. The bad news is that the
Stedelijkmuseum (modern art) is closed until 2010, and the Rijksmuseum
(the big main comprehensive art museum) is mostly closed. Part
of it remains open as “Rijksmuseum, The Masterpieces” until the rest
reopens. The Rijksmuseum is somewhere between a joke and a pity at this
point, since it has been closed for years, and the opening date keeps
getting pushed back. I hear that the latest prediction is 2012. Also
in
the
area are the Van Gough museum, and several smaller institutions.
The Van Gough is actually fully open, but to be honest, ol’ Vince has
never been one of my favorites. However, given that there are so few
art options at the moment, I think I will go in there with the idea of
trying to find something new (to me) in his art.
But that’s for later.
Now, we were at the end of our walk, about four hours
after we
started. We’d planned on spending most of the day on this pair of foot
tours, and were surprised at how compact Amsterdam really is, and at
how fast we’d completed the hike, even at our leisurely pace. It was
barely 12:30 p.m., and we had already begun to make our way back
towards the Royal Palace area. The pigeons had devoured most of the
bread,
and were replaced on the plein by a horse-drawn wagon offering rides,
and street mimes dressed as Batman, The Mask, the grim reaper, and a
knight. The New Church was open, so we had a fast peek at that, noting
the gift shop and the cafe inside.
What would Jesus do?
Why, he’d buy a
snow globe and stay for a cup of $6 tea, natch.
We also looked at Magna
Plaza, a mall built in a huge old brick industrial building. The most
interesting thing in there was a cheese cart, although I was grateful
for the chance to rest my feet while Rebecca investigated a select few
fashion shops.
Damstraat links Dam square with the main drag in the red light district. The street is lined with cheese shops, chocolate shops, bakeries, and a whole lot of people. A shawarma shack on Damstraat took €4.50 from us for a rather diminutive falafel on pita. Ever since being quite pleasantly surprised at the stellar falafel that we accidentally discovered at a random little alcove in Barcelona (2005), we’ve been on the lookout for a repeat experience. No dice. Especially not this time. It was a pretty crummy falafel. They bragged of being “the best in town”. Note to self: any place that advertises itself as being “the best in town” almost certainly isn’t.
We finally checked into the hotel properly, and
relaxed for a bit.
The Luxer’s lobby is a bit cramped. The check-in desk and the bar are
the same area.
Bartender or desk clerk?
Same job.
The people working
there are not exactly what one might be accustomed to in hotels; no
uniforms, no ties, skirts, or white shirts. Collectively, the handful
of people we encountered over our stay looked as though they might be a
rock band. A stoned rock band who had their heyday about fifteen years
ago, in fact. Some of ‘em were rude, some of ‘em were nice, but in the
end all that matters is whether the room is clean and quiet. It was
clean enough, but we did find lots of various pharmacy products behind
a desk that we had to move at one point (and by pharmacy products I
don’t mean bad-people drugs, I mean alka-seltzer, aspirin, and
handi-wipes). There was a ton of stuff back there! It may all still be
there, for all I know. We had a lovely view of a church out the
window... under renovation... with mighty brass bells ringing rather
loudly beginning at 8:00 a.m. every morning.
Clean enough... just.
Quiet enough... just.
We walked a short distance in the direction opposite
from our
morning walk, and discovered a small Chinatown. We checked out a
Buddhist shrine, but having had our fill of Asian religious sites in
Japan a year earlier, we didn’t stay long. With our walking tours
prematurely exhausted, we decided to jump a tram to the remnant of the
Rijksmuseum.
In brief:
Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is
spectacular.
Paintings by Jan Steen of people engaging in revelry. There
are symbols in the works indicating that the paintings are warnings
-
the raucous parties are not approved of. But the cautionary
elements are subtle
enough to be missed completely. Steen was a jokester, painting his self
portrait looking pretty cocky, in a bergher’s garb.
Paulus Potter, Orpheus and the Animals (1650).
Nicolaus Knupfer, A Brothel
Scene (1650).
Three Vermeers (Woman Reading a Letter, The Kitchen Maid
- the strongest of the
three
- and View of Houses in Delft). It is impressive to have three
Vermeers here, because there are only thirty-five paintings in
existence that are certifiably attributable to the artist.
A huge and impressive landscape by Jan Both, from ca. 1650, Italian
Landscape with Draftsmen.
An atmospheric landscape by Claude
Gellee, Harbor View at Sunrise.
Jacob van Ruisdale's The Windmill at
Wijkbijduurstede (ca. 1670) is considered a quintessential Dutch
painting because it has a flat landscape, lots of water, a big sky, and
a windmill.
More strong Rembrandts. Jeremiah
Lameting the Destruction of Jerusalem, Musical Allegory
(aka The Music Lesson), Anna with the Kid, early self
portrait, Old Woman Reading, etc.
Aert van der Neer’s River View by Moonlight
(1650), this guy specialized in painting at night. It is a night scene
of a Dutch town with a full moon shining above the harbor and some
horses pulling a cart along a muddy road.
Adam Willaerts' Shipwreck Off A Rocky Coast (1614)
three ships sinking while a big catfish looking thing swims around.
Very
interesting and very intricate is Fishing for Souls by Adriean
Pietersz van de Venne.
Although we had to submit to an
electronic security
scan upon
entering the museum, once inside the atmosphere was relaxed, and the
guards were unobtrusive. I suppose that when one visits as many museums
as I do, differences in the attitude and nature of the guards starts to
become apparent. Crappy guards who are rude, who follow patrons around
like stalkers, and who stare at people can really ruin a day at the
museum. The worst guards are at the museums in Toronto and at the Art
Institute in my home town of Chicago (I am a member of that museum, in
fact, and may not renew if they don’t teach their employees some basic
manners). Also the Picasso museum in Barcelona. Those are the worst
three out of the many dozens of art museums I have visited. The
Rijksmuseum guards do their jobs, they are present for emergencies, but
they don’t draw undue attention to themselves or make people feel
uncomfortable.
Back at Rembrandtplein, we had dinner at Three
Sisters, directly
across the square from Cafe Schiller (which we’d investigated this
morning and deemed unimpressive). Three Sisters was even less
impressive. Rebecca got some bland pasta with rubbery chicken chunks in
it, and I got some tough chicken skewers in peanut sauce. I also got a
Jillz beer, which turned out to be cider, and Rebecca got a glass of
white wine. No brand or country of origin was specified. At €13 a
plate, plus our drinks, we were in for €31.70 or almost $50 for this
crappy meal.
The service was lousy, and the atmosphere - which seemed elegant at
first with plush red leather chairs and lots of dark mahogany wood -
was falling apart. Rebecca’s chair seemed to have been chewed on by a
Komodo dragon, or a rabid ape. She determined that someone might have
preferred to eat
the stuffing in her chair rather than their food. The bookshelves in a
second dining room were filled with fake books.
As if this was not bad enough, they tried to overcharge me on the bill
(emphasis on “tried”; I was having none of that). Also, even paying
customers have to pay extra to use the toilet. There are pay toilets
all over Amsterdam, as we quickly discovered, but most restaurants
waive the fee for paying customers. Not Three Evil Sisters. We shan’t
be visiting any of Three Sisters’ other three sister locations any time
soon. Good thing we don’t have to tip in this country!
Fortunately, there was much better food in our future!
Continue!
We decided to call it an early night; there would be plenty of debauchery in the coming week. A late evening trip to Albert Heijn (the local grocery store chain) in the direction of the Buddhist shrine yielded water, bananas, and cheese for the room (€5.82).
As it crept up on 11:00 p.m., it was still a little
bit light out.
We’re approaching the longest day of the year, but this is still pretty
late for such daylight to exist.
Strange.
Saturday, June 13th
Hopped a tram across town to
our museum of the
day, the
Tropenmuseum.
Tropen = Tropics.
Cost was € 7.50 for me, and €6.00 for
Rebecca, still milking her student discount (she finished her Master’s
Degree a while back).
This is the museum that unashamedly celebrates
Dutch colonialism. It is easy to forget, in these modern times, that
the Dutch were once among the most powerful of the European nations.
They ruled the seas even more so than the Spanish or English for many
years. The Dutch explored, and subsequently colonized, vast territories
in southeast Asia, the Pacific, parts of Africa, Latin America, and the
Indian subcontinent.
In these sensitive times, many nations want to
behave as though they are ashamed at having exploited or colonized
other cultures.
Not the Dutch.
The Tropenmuseum is filled with pride
for the Dutch accomplishments.
Maybe it is because their global stature
has diminished so much that they feel as though they have to revel in
their glory years, 250 to 400 years ago. They do so without feeling
shame for what would be considered inappropriate behavior today. After
all, back then everyone was doing it, so why cry about it now?
Presenting history without disclaimer or apology is refreshing. “This
is how it was, this is what we did, here is what we accomplished, and
if modern thinking doesn’t agree, tough cookies, that was a different
time.”
So, we marveled at a big
collection of Papua
New Guinea art, an assortment of Indian textiles, a room-sized cabinet
of natural
curiosities, and a big collection of Mexican kitsch (like pinatas and
lenticular Jesus portraits). I also liked the display of Indonesian
shadow puppets (wayang), which is an artform I saw performed live in
Chicago last year. In addition to traditional Indonesian puppets, they
had modern ones representing heroes like Batman and teletubbies, plus
villains like George W. Bush.
Another cool exhibit is a collection of
African ritual costumes in a series of glass display cases. A computer
shows pictures of the costumes on a screen near the displays. If you
touch a picture of a costume on the screen, the display case that the
real costume is in goes dark, and a movie of the costume in use is
projected on the glass front of the case.
The museum also has a bunch
of weird mannequins within life-sized dioramas recreating historical
scenes. Certain body parts on each mannequin are made of lucite that
lights up from within (for unclear purposes), making the mannequins
look like weird cyborgs from a sci-fi movie (seen above and to the
right, and also in the displays above and to the left). We were
completely baffled as to what was being illustrated by an old lady's
ear and arm lighting up.
There is no mention at all of the Dutch
discovery of Easter Island
in 1722, but I guess the museum is about Dutch colonialism, not Dutch
exploration per se. It was the Chileans who eventually took
over the governing of Easter Island (until this day); the Dutch never
actually occupied the island. But nevertheless since the subject
is close to my heart (I wrote a
book about Easter Island), it would have been satisfying to see some
mention of this monumentous event.
We grabbed lunch for
€8.60 at a supermarket in
a Muslim
neighborhood: two bananas, a pack of cheese, two small baguettes, a 1.5
liter bottle of water, and a bottle of red wine.
We ate it at Oostpark
(east park; left), a nice park near the Tropenmuseum. We shared a
picnic
table under a small shelter with a black woman and a Chinese woman, but
we didn’t talk to them much.
A short post-meal constitutional meander
around the park revealed Amersterdamians (if I may) of both Caucasian
and Middle Eastern descent enjoying their Saturday, but rarely in each
other’s company.
We hoofed it over to the Leidseplein, with the
intention of catching
a boat tour of the canals. The one I’d researched departed from very
near to the American Hotel (the art deco palace that we poked our heads
into yesterday). My pre-trip research lead me to believe that the best
tours were from the Rederij Noord-Zuid (a.k.a. The Blue Boat Company).
They have tours every 30 minutes (10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.). At 75
minutes in length, this is the longest advertised cruise. The tour
takes in Central Station, the Golden Bend, the Harlemmersluis
floodgates, Bridge of Fifteen Bridges, the Skinny Bridge over the
Amstel, and the harbor. After buying the tickets (€12 each) we had a
half hour to kill (a tour was just leaving as we arrived), so we
decided that we needed more wine. Wandering around a slightly upscale
neighborhood near the Museumplein, there were no beverage shops to be
found. Eventually, a purchase was made at the subterranean Albert Heijn
supermarket near the Van Gough museum, and we dashed back over to the
boat with minutes to spare.
More canal porn for your pleasure.
|
In addition to the places listed above, the
cruise
also took us past
the Anne Frank house. The modern museum next door dwarfs the original
house, and the lines to see either of them are nuts.
The canals of Amsterdam, by the way, are
filthy. Speaking of sewage, all over Amsterdam one can
find
little piss
stations, like a green metal phone booth with a drain on one side.
There is no toilet, nowhere to flush, you just piss into the drain in
the booth. I don’t know where the liquid goes, probably right into the
canals. Some of these pissitariums don’t even have a privacy enclosure,
they’re just sort of open urinals right on the street, usually in
crowded nightlife areas. With thousands of people around, you can just
stop, pee in front of everyone, and be on your way. And yet, every
restaurant and bar in town charges for use of the restroom, often even
for customers. |
|
We also saw hundreds of
boats, lined up on
either
side of every
canal like cars parallel parked along the street. From rickety little
row boats that barely looked like they were able to float, up to
full-on houseboats that didn’t seem to have moved an inch from their
permanent mooring in decades. Every shape and size of vessel
imagineable, no two were the same. Boats do not outnumber bikes here,
but they may well outnumber cars. Singel encircled the city in the
Middle Ages. It served as a
moat around the city from 1480 until 1585, when Amsterdam expanded.
Runs from the IJ bay, near Central Station, to the Muntplein square,
where it meets the Amstel river. It is now the inner-most canal.
Singel should not be confused with the Singelgracht canal,
which
became the outer limit of the city during the Dutch Golden Age in the
17th Century.
The Herengracht (Gentleman's Canal or Lord's
Canal) is the first of the three major canals in the city centre of
Amsterdam. The most fashionable part is called the Golden Bend,
with many double wide mansions.
Keizersgracht (or Emperor's
Canal), is the second and the widest of the three major canals.
Prinsengracht
(Princes’ Canal) is the third most important.
Back on shore, a guy in a purple shirt was playing chess with three-foot-tall pieces against a guy in a black shirt. Admittedly full of wine, I explained the significance each move to Rebecca, who knows the basic rules of chess, but she isn’t completely up on the strategies and subtleties. The guy in black was kicking ass. He seemed like he was going to win in no time flat. The guy in purple rallied however, and fended Mr. Black off to a stalemate.
It was 7:30 p.m. by this point, and the sun was
showing no sign of
setting.
Full daylight.
The next stop was Jordaan, a neighborhood said
to be a historic area good for shipping and dining. Dining was the
goal.
On the way, we encountered a street performer with a big crowd
around him. We had seen a performer yesterday who was not funny,
charismatic, or talented. Today's performer had all of the same
traits. Or lack thereof. His schitck was tired and clumsy, and when he
finally started juggling fire, it was pretty ho-hum stuff. Note: don’t
go to Amsterdam for the street performers. When watching people play
chess is more fun than watching someone juggle fire, then you know
you’re dealing with a pretty lame fire juggler. We witnessed some
pretty clumsy break dancers too. Get your act together, homies.
|
We lamented that Amsterdam is among the most
Americanized of
European cities. It seems as though there is an H and M, a Ben and
Jerry’s, or a KFC on every corner. The whole city, at least within the
major canal rings, seems to be geared towards tourism. If one were to
remove the Leidseplein, the canals, the Damrak, the Museumplein, the
Red Light District, the Blomenmarkt, Rembrandt Square, and a few other
small attractions, there would be virtually nothing left. Wandering
among the
massive evening crowds along the Leidseplein, we asked a random Dutch
guy how he felt about all of the American corporations all over The
Netherlands. Turns out he works for American Express, so he is okay
with it all!
Dinner in Jordaan was at Biologique 59. We ate
on the
front patio
next to two of the owner’s friends. The owner spent most of her time
talking to them and behaved as though it was a bother to have us in her
establishment. Rebecca got a slightly tarted up falafel. It is true
that we had been (and always are) looking for a tasty street-food
version of falafel, but paying triple for a mediocre version that
pretended to be all fancy-pants was not what we’d had in mind. My
dinner was a sort of insubstantial omelet of cheese, egg, and ham. That
and a glass of wine for us to split came to €21.60. Back to the room to relax, but first we walked all over town looking for a simple market to get some water and other stuff for the room. We couldn’t find anything open in this town after 9:00 p.m. Finally, the nice lady who was just closing up the fancy wine shop across the street from the hotel sold us a bottle of Ramon Roqueta tempranillo 2007. Three bottles of wine (plus one glass with dinner) between two people over eight hours is actually not that much booze, so I am going to attribute Rebecca’s deciding that she was a monkey to the Katy Perry music blasting out of the apartment building next to the hotel. It must have had some weird effect on her brain causing a temporary state of de-evolution. Then we contemplated the cheap painting of two dogs hanging above the bed. I think the black terrier is going to poo on the white terrier, but Rebecca decided that there was a doggie ass-rape about to take place. We debated whether the fact that the dogs were black and white made the painting a race allegory. The Katy Perry party next door was clearly making us crazy. Time for a late-night walk. There are a million people out on the street on
Saturday at midnight
in the Red Light District, throngs of bodies everywhere, and there
still isn’t even a mini-mart open. Stock up in the day time. It was
nearing midnight, and I thought of that old Cheap Trick song: “Saturday
at midnight / see you in the red light”. |
|
The street within the
RLD that the Luxer hotel
is on, is a narrow
and old one, full of restaurants, bars, and “coffee shops”. These
“coffee shops” are where one goes to smoke pot. Like a bar in most
other countries, you have to buy the stuff there, and you can’t leave
with it.
The main order of inquiry from those whom I
told about this trip was
always (almost without exception) whether or not I planned to spend the
trip stoned.
No.
Listen, I don’t have anything against pot, and I favor legalization of
marijuana for a variety of reasons (not limited to the endless
commercial uses for hemp, medicinal uses for marijuana, and the fact
that smoking the wacky weed is probably less impairing to a person’s
facilities than drinking is, plus it is non-addictive, and frankly,
having some fun is no crime).
Truth is, I just don’t like the stuff. Not to
my taste. If I really
wanted to get some at home, it isn’t going to be a problem (I work in
the music biz, fercryinoutloud), but I just don’t care for it. Rebecca
more or less feels the same way on all counts (not to speak for her).
During idle conversation we thought maybe we’d try it just for part of
the “Amsterdam experience”, but truth be told, we just never got around
to it. It just wasn’t a priority and we had other things to be doing.
Like drinking Belgian beer...
All along the canal are
big
and seedy-looking clubs. Between them are small storefronts, each maybe
fifteen feet wide, if that. In the windows of these tiny stores, girls
lounge seductively, on display the same as any other product would be.
There is a curtain behind them so you can’t see into the rest of the
room. The masses of people - the curious and the desperate, the
tourists and the locals - walk the street, window shopping for a
hooker. I am not sure exactly how the financial transaction is
performed, but I did catch a glimpse behind a curtain once or twice.
There are clinical-looking bedrooms back there; sink, bed, shower. Cold
and uninviting looking. Like a hospital room. The ladies perform their
business, clean up (hopefully), and are back in the window minutes
after finishing their transaction.
Rebecca and I strolled past several dozen of these hookers. We were just one of the countless pairs or groups of curious tourists doing so. There were as many women tourists out on the street as men; the RLD is part shopping mall for sex, but it is perhaps more so a train-wreck tourist attraction. International Rebecca wanted to play a game she called “would you rather”, meaning that I had to choose between two girls in adjacent windows; more often than not I wanted to say “none of the above”, but she always made me pick. The girls were, for the most part, rather seriously unappealing to me. At the end I did confess that there were one or two of the entire lot that looked good... but then again I’d been drinking wine all day. Rebecca surprised me by saying that she had found as many as three or four of them attractive. Still, out of maybe fifty that we saw, that’s not so good. Having never utilized the services of a prostitute in my life, I mused that if someone were desperate enough for sex to pay a hooker, then perhaps that person was in no position to be choosy about looks.
Someone handed me a business card suggesting that we
take a “Happy
Ho Tour”. This guided tour of the RLD includes “drink in a nice bar”,
and “photoshoot behind one of the windows in the RLD”, among other
attractions. No thanks. We left the hustle of the RLD behind, and
headed back to the room to sleep off the wine under the kitsch painting
of the mysterious puppies. Thankfully, the party next door had ended.
| |
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