Europe Trip Part I: Amsterdam

Friday 5/19

I arrived in Amsterdam after an overnight flight during which I got maybe three hours of fitful sleep - the flight itself has a duration of nearly eight hours, but the takeoff, landing, beverage service, meal service, etc., leave little quite time to sleep. Thanks to some advance research I had no trouble finding the train to the city; however what was supposed to have been a fifteen minute ride turned out to be much longer, as the train ground to a halt about ten minutes into the trip, then just sat. And sat. And sat. The train crew would occasionally give updates over the PA, but only in Dutch, which wasn’t of any help to me. The only word i could catch was “Politie” - police. So we were stopped due to some sort of police action. Since the train was fairly empty there was no one nearby I could inquire of as to what was going on. Finally I heard a woman at the far end of the car speaking on the phone in English, saying that the train was held up because someone was on a railroad bridge, threatening to jump.

From the Dutch Rail web site: "Person on the Tracks"

So, travel adventure number one: after about 45 minutes the train finally started moving again, and the crew made an announcement (this time repeated in English) that we’d all have to get off when the train stopped at Sloterdijk Station (ironically, where I was to meet the bike tour group two days later) and take another train the rest of the way to Amsterdam Centraal Station. I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing - would my ticket card work a second time? Where did I need to go? How do I find the right train? Well, a combination of just following the crowd and checking the station signs led me to the right train and I finally made it into Amsterdam - a full three hours after my flight had landed.

I had read about Amsterdam’s mellow cafes (distinct from the “coffeeshops”, which is their euphemism for cannabis stores), and after depositing my suitcases in a locker at the train station I headed for Cafe Cobalt right near the train station, which turned out to be the perfect little European café - complete with contented café cat. I ordered French toast (in case you’re wondering, the Dutch term for French toast is “wentelteefjes”) and coffee, needing a caffeine kick to keep me going through the day after a nearly sleepless night.

Café Cobalt

Wentelteefjes and coffee

I had downloaded a free app containing walking tours of Amsterdam. The app is a barebones affair - no audio or other media, just guidance to locations of the sites on each tour, and a description of each. I set out on the tour of historical Jewish Amsterdam. The first stop on the tour was Waterlooplein market, which started out as the “Jewish Market”. These days it’s a flea market of mostly junk - though someone looking for vintage clothes could do well shopping there. From there I went to the Jewish Museum, which traces the history of how The Netherlands was more tolerant of religious diversity than most more religious European countries during the Renaissance/Enlightenment periods and so became a haven for Jews, who also meshed well with the commerce-oriented bent of the Dutch. Sadly, like many chapters in Jewish history, the Jews were welcome until they weren’t; the museum also treats the Nazi era as well as well as something of a Jewish cultural revival today.

Waterlooplein Flea Market

Canals are everywhere in the city

Admission to the Jewish Museum also gets you into the historic Portuguese Synagogue, built in 1675 and still in use today. The Esnoga, as it is also known, has not been updated - the building has neither modern HVAC nor even electric lighting - the sanctuary is still illuminated by giant candle chandeliers.

The Esnoga (historic Portuguese synagogue)

From there I just walked and walked through the central area of the city, touching on the edge of the red light district, as well as the trendy Jordaan district. I did poke my head into a “coffeeshop” just to see what they’re like - nothing special, and surprisingly skeevy for a long-established and mostly legal industry. There are a lot of weed-related shops in the city. And lots of cheese shops. I’m guessing there isn’t a clear head or coronary artery in the whole city.

Cheese, cheese, and more cheese ...

... and lots of cannabis-related businesses

Finally, as my hotel check-in time approached, I made my way to the train station. After retrieving my backs I fumbled around for a bit trying to find the right tram to get me to my hotel - but I figured it out.

If the “Centrum” area of Amsterdam, where I had spent the day, was like Amsterdam’s midtown Manhattan, the hotel I stayed in was kind of the Upper West Side. I stayed in Amsterdam’s museum district (ironically, while my hotel was directly across the street from the Rijksmuseum, the major art museum, I didn’t get to go as tickets were sold out - the Van Gogh Museum was sold out as well, and there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting tickets to the Vermeer exhibit). The neighborhood was peaceful and artsy, but still near the action.

My hotel was quite nice, but the room was the smallest hotel room imaginable. Smaller than rooms in Manhattan. Smaller tha a cruise ship cabin. Really tiny. But it was OK - I wasn’t there to hang out in the room. 

My tiny hotel room

I walked a couple of blocks and across a canal (pretty much every walk in Amsterdam involves crossing at least one canal) to a shopping street where I grabbed take-out vegetarian ramen (not as good as the place Ted had taken us to in California, but still quite good), and a big cookie from another takeout joint (which also offered tempting vegetarian sandwiches). I ate dinner in my room and then finally succumbed to my exhaustion and got a good night’s sleep.

I didn't visit the Cannabis Museum, only walked by - if I had gone in perhaps I would have learned the reasons for the Hebrew on the sign (it says, "Welcome to the Cannabis Museum").

Bicycles are everywhere!

Yeah, right

Saturday 5/20

In the morning, based on my walking tour app, I decided to explore De Pijp, said to the the Bohemian part of town - a 10 minute walk from my hotel. My first stop there was the Albert Cuyp market. While the Waterlooplein Market had been for the most part used junk, Albert Cuyp was much more modern and upscale, with vendors selling prepared food, cheeses, clothing, flowers, seafood, vegetables, sundries, housewares, and more. Since my breakfast had been just part of an oatmeal cookie, my first order of business was to get a fresh, warm stroopwafel from one of the market’s vendors. A stroopwafel is a thin waffle sliced in half and spread with warm caramel, making a sandwich. At home I’ve had prepackaged stroopwafels, but I had never before had a fresh one. Excellent, though very sweet. Not exactly the most balanced breakfast, but what can you do? Fortified, I strolled the market and the surrounding neighborhood. Lots of interesting shops and international restaurants. I took a break and got a coffee at - gasp - Starbucks. Yes, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are common here. In fact, the very first thing I saw at Schipol airport when I walked off the plane was a Starbucks - something I found a little depressing. 

Albert Cuyp Market

Unsurprisingly, there are cheese vendors there

And stroopwafels

Flower vendor at Albert Cuyp Market

This was a surprise

I had considered doing a canal boat tour in the afternoon. Canal boat tours are a big thing in Amsterdam, but bicycles are more my speed, so I booked a two hour bike tour from Yellow Bikes. 

OK, let me talk about bikes in Amsterdam for a minute. The Netherlands is said to be a cyclist’s paradise, something I can confirm from my week of cycling there, but Amsterdam is something else. It’s a crazy Mad Max admixture of cars, pedestrians, and bikes, and the rule seems to be that the most aggressive person has the right of way. Bikes come at you from everywhere - sometimes seemingly out of nowhere. It’s an old city of narrow streets, not based on a grid, so even if you look both ways before crossing you can wind up tangled with a bike which has appeared out of an alley or side street which juts in at some strange angle. The Netherlands has more bikes than people (even though 20,000 bikes per year wind up in Amsterdam’s canals!) and lots of great bike infrastructure. But Amsterdam - sheesh! Also, most people are biking for transportation and so are in street clothes. I saw only a few Lycranauts in matchy-matchy Spandex™ riding performance bikes - though those folks were the only ones wearing helmets. I guess helmets are not a thing in The Netherlands. 

By Day 2 I had a better handle on the transit system and had no problem catching the right tram to Nieuwezijds Kok to meet my bike tour. While walking to the tram stop I discovered that my hotel was adjacent to Amsterdam’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue, home to boutiques from all the major luxury brands:  Chanel, Gucci, Hermes, Rolex, etc. I guess those stores are a tourist attraction in themselves, as people were waiting in lines for admission to many stores. I also made a note of an amazing looking bakery I passed in that neighborhood.

For our bike tour we were each issued a “Dutch bike” - heavy cruiser bikes with step through frames simlar in style to American bikeshare bikes. A lot of the Dutch cyclists ride bikes of this type, which are comfortable and stable, if heavy and slow. It was a pretty nice two hour ride. Went through some of the city’s neighborhoods and past a number of sites, including the Ann Frank House, which I had skipped on the previous day’s Jewish Amsterdam tour, since I’ve visited there before. We cruised a loop through Amsterdam’s big park, Vondelpark, which was teeming with people on what was apparently the first warm, sunny weekend of spring. And it was from our tour guide Jort that I learned the factoid about the 20,000 bikes tossed into the canals each year.

On the bike tour (helmets are not a thing in The Netherlands)

The bike tour also got me a taste of what it’s like to navigate Amsterdam as a cyclist rather than a pedestrian. At another point one of our group had a very close call complete with cursing (in English) when one of the riders on our group started moving at apparently the wrong time. You see, at some intersections there are separate signals for cars, cyclists, and pedestrians, so it can be confusing to people unaccustomed to the multiple signal system to know when to go. Also, there are cycletracks (separate protected bike lanes) which seem to always have the right of way, even over green lights on the perpendicular street - or least the people riding in them behave like they do. 

Our guide Jort points out the Picasso statue in Vondelpark

A very narrow house (the red brick)

After my tour, since I hadn’t eaten since my morning stroopwafel,  I grabbed some food at a fast-foodish Asian place. Then I headed back to the hotel, stopping at the bakery I had noted earlier to get a blueberry muffin for Sunday’s breakfast. I was due to meet my group at 9 AM at Sloterdijk and so I wanted to have a quick breakfast on hand. I sat in the hotel’s lovely courtyard and jotted down my trip notes so far, then took a quick nap.

Hotel courtyard

At dinnertime I headed out to the nearby Leidseplein, a big plaza with lots of cafes and such. It’s also the center of the city’s nightlife scene. My first goal was to find The Melkweg, a famous nightclub where John and I had hung out when we were in Amsterdam decades ago. The Melkweg has multiple performance spaces, and while the band didn’t grab me, I had thought of attending a showing of a Little Richard biopic film in their theater, but figured I’d probably fall asleep sitting at a movie and so decided against it. I picked up a falafel sandwich at a fast foodie place for dinner (good falafel!), and stopped in a supermarket where I picked up some yogurt to augment my breakfast (which required discerning which containers were yogurt and which were “kwark”, an apparently similar dairy product unknown in the US), along with a beer to round off my evening.  The last think I did was to track down and log a geocache in the neighborhood of my hotel, and then I went back to the hotel to re-pack and sleep.

Outside The Melkweg

Damn good muffin

Their little free libraries are a touch more elegant than ours (this is also where the geocache was hidden)

For the bike trip, if you want to “clip in” you have to supply your own pedals - thry’ll only supply flat pedals. I had indicated that I was going to be bringing pedals, but in re-packing my suitcase I realized that I had forgotten to pack the pedals - duh! - so I sent a quick email to the trip leaders saying I’d need their flat pedals after all. Not a problem.

Amsterdam at sunset

Continue to Part II