On the Amstel River in Amsterdam

Thanks to friends Jeff and Judy for the recommendation, we stayed at The Bridge Hotel in Amsterdam, which is right on the Amstel River, a 10 minute walk to the much more touristed sections of Amsterdam, and thus it felt like we were outside the city. We had a large room, with nearly floor to ceiling windows, that looked out over one of the canals with many houseboats. Like many hotels in Europe, we didn't have air conditioning, but the windows opened so we had a lovely breeze from the canal, and it really didn't get too hot most days. [We did wonder about the lack of screens in European windows---and the bugs that inevitably fly in. This was true in every place we stayed.]

Amstel (no Road, Avenue, Street---just, Amstel)

 

This fountain was in a nearby local park. We visited it on our first and last day. I think of it as our Trevi Fountain in Amsterdam--but different.

 

View from a bridge on the Amstel River at sunset. Our hotel is somewhere on the right down aways.

 

This is NOT The Bridge Hotel---it's the Intercontinental Hotel, about a 10 minute walk along the river from the Bridge Hotel. Fancy, no?  We did find a great locals pub nearby here, though, Amstelhaven, where we sat by the open doorway to get the breeze but not the rain, and where we ordered food from the Dutch menu we barely understood.  But we tasted Bitterballen for the first time here, a Dutch pub classic: we had a vegetarian version stuffed with olive tampanade, but it's more commonly stuffed with meat.

 

Our trip from Bruges to Amsterdam took a quick bus ride to the train station in Bruges, then the local train to Brussels (back to our South/Midi station), then another local train to Rotterdam, where we ran across the platform, along with many backpack carrying travelers in their 20s, to our connection to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, we ran into the first class car, so had to trek to find seats in a 2nd class car. Since none were to be found, we just sat in first class and hoped no one noticed us. 

 

Arriving in Amsterdam's amazing train station (it's a stunning building architecturally, but a madhouse inside---makes Penn Station almost look mellow), we easily followed the hotel's directions to catch a tram outside, which took us on a lovely above ground tour of Amsterdam on the way to our hotel. Our stop: Waterlooplein! (Napoleon! said our train conductor in our attempt to communicate despite the language difference.)

 

 

I didn't take this picture--it comes from Wikimedia commons--but this is what the Central train station looks like from the outside. And there are the trams.  We enjoyed those trams. Amsterdam is not quite as pedestrian friendly as Paris, oddly, and the cobbled streets were starting to make our calves ache. So we hopped onto one of these once in a while to take a break. 2.70 euros per trip was worth it (that's $3.63 each one way). They go all over central Amsterdam.

 

Outdoors in Amsterdam

While we struggled with the bicycle-centric streets (where pedestrians often got a 3 foot wide sidewalk, with obstacles, while bikes had a lovely wide path), there was much we loved about our visit to Amsterdam.

The canals:

There are 165 or so canals, and over 1200 bridges over those canals, making for some very picturesque walks.

 

 

Lots of small boats on the canals.

 

No, we didn't see any Stand Up Paddle Boards on the canals.

 

Bikes are locked up along nearly every part of the canals.

 

Houseboats: there are many of them on the canals in Amsterdam.

 

View from one of the many bridges, though this one surprisingly didn't have bikes chained to every part of the bridge: we only saw that on the Amstel River, interestingly.

 

We ate lunch with this view at a café.

 

Sunset on the Amstel, our favorite canal.

 

 

View of a canal from our obligatory boat ride along the canals.

 

 

 

The street markets and cafes were also pleasures, as was the famous Vondelpark:

A big street market in Amsterdam: we bought bread, cheese and pepper sweets (another pic of those below)

 

This is a photo of part of the flower market, that stretches for blocks.

 

 Cannabis Starter Kits are available at the flower market.

 

A café near the Red Light district, where we ordered what became our favorite Dutch treat: peppersweets! (Basically, cream or goat cheese stuffed sweet/spicy peppers)

Despite the photo with wine, we did drink beer in Amsterdam: here is a photo that another tourist took of us at a brewery.

Another picture of the brewery, Brouwerij 't IJ

 

 

 

Vondelpark 

 

 

BUT, there really are a lot of bikes in Amsterdam, and they drive fast. 

 

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

Amsterdam: City of History, Pot, Prostitutes, Cat Boats, Bikes, and Tilting Houses

So much of the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam is in just walking the city, a beautiful city, with a painful history, and a present that is simply charming.

We stayed at The Bridge Hotel, located on the Amstel River, a few blocks from the edge of the busy parts of the city. It felt almost residential. A block from our hotel was a small bridge with a sign memorializing the Jews who had lived on that particular canal....before the Nazis arrived.

The sign explains that 200 Jews who lived along this canal were murdered during WWII. Along the left walkway are plaques identifying the names of the Jews who lived across the canal in each building.

 

 

We booked tickets to the Anne Frank "Hus" months earlier having heard that the lines to get in were hours long without a reservation.  Good thing:

 

 

This is the line for the Anne Frank Museum, several blocks long.



 

That nondescript building (the older part is the original office building) is the Anne Frank Museum.

 

The museum is well-worth the visit.

 

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We walked by many a pot shop, but did not have any urge to visit one. Most looked like biker bars or college student hang outs: and a smoke filled bar just isn't my thing no matter the type of smoke. I did like the name of this pot shop though:

 

 

 

We also walked through the Red Light District (in order to get to the cat boat and the public library---that's true!), and while we followed the signs that warned us against photographing the actual prostitutes sitting in their windows, I did get a picture of this one, Bella, a prostitute rights activist, who has a statue in the heart of the Red Light district. And yes, that's a church behind her: the church has been there for a long time, and it continues to be a safe haven for prostitutes.

 

 



Bella.

 

Not far from the Red Light district is the famous Poezenboot, or Cat Boat, a sort of Humane Society for cats.  They were closed the day we found them, but the women who worked there were doing some Sunday maintenance and let us visit briefly. 

 

 



 

 

Bicycles rule in Amsterdam. Truly. They get more real estate on the major roads than do cars, trams or pedestrians. Somewhere near 50% of those living in Amsterdam use a bike as their primary mode of transportation. People park their bikes ANYWHERE it seems, too, including in the pedestrian right of way. Let's just say it took us a few days to get used to this, and even by the 4th day, Mike was nearly killed by a bicyclist or refused to yield for him (bikes can ride in both directions) when we were trying to cross the road.

 

I wished I had taken more pictures of much more crowded bike parking scenes. In Haarlem, at the train station, bikes get an entire parking lot. That was cool.

 

Tilted houses and windmills? Yep, Amsterdam has those, too.

 



 





Side Trip: Damme

During each of the major stopovers during our travels, we took a side trip. From Paris we went to Versailles, from Amsterdam we went to Harlem and Zandvoort, and from Bruges we went to Damme.

Just as Bruges was the smallest city we visited, Damme was the smallest side destination.

Sternwheeler tour boat takes people from Bruges to Damme

Damme also served as our bicyle ride for the trip. It is much easier for us to pedal without heavy traffic than with; our bicycle ride in Italy was in Lucca, a town very similar to Bruges.

Damme's windmill

The day and night before were very wet and very windy, but for our ride it was merely damp and breezy. (It’s a good thing. We later found out that the widespread storm was powerful enough to kill a man taking shelter at a bus stop in Amsterdam.)

Dark and windy

Lunch in a shoebox café was lovely; we each had a local beer and sandwich made with local cheese. 

This is about as busy as the main street gets

There’s no longer much to Damme, but the past echoes. The canal we followed from Bruges is arrow-straight, created by the emperor Napoleon … or, rather, his Spanish prisoners. Now there are waterfowl and the occasional tour boat. The church was a marvel in its day, but was stripped of its icons during the religious wars. The church and the town’s artists (more on them later) continue to bear witness to the past. From a history of the Church of Our Lady, posted in four languages inside:

"The church of Damme is not only a work of art of Gothic architecture; it is also a witness to the faith of our forefathers. Nowadays it keeps watch over the flat countryside and dreams of a great past, when merchants from the whole [of] Europe sailed up the Zwin, bringing riches and prosperity to Damme."

Looking six kilometers from Damme's bridge to Bruges

 In and around the church were artworks of the present -- bringing a big-city feel to the streets of the village.

Church's entryway

Medieval church; modern art

 The ride home brought us a tailwind, thankfully.

Stacey happy to be back in Bruges

The occasional large tractor that rumbles across the town’s cobblestones reflects a countryside that looks pastoral, but is in one of the most intensively farmed regions of Europe. Much of it is reclaimed salt marsh. Beyond the fields, modern windmills harvest energy from the sky.

Windmills look over a dairy operation

Bruges seemed a little larger (though not huge by any stretch) upon our return, but after a couple of navigational challenges, we relied on instincts to get ourselves safely back to the bike shop.

Bronze brightened by national colors -- a common sight

 

The World Cup in Paris, Bruges and Amsterdam

We couldn't have timed our trip better: all three countries we were visiting were in the World Cup games in July.

Not that I'm a big fan, but I remembered from our trip to Italy in 2008, that the street scenes during games are such fun, so I was looking forward to seeing how these three cities enjoyed the games.

While we were in Paris, on the 4th of July, France played Germany---and lost. We did see crowds outside of a few pubs, trying to watch on the big screen, but surprisingly few people wearing French, or German, colors:

 

Mostly student types (from the Sorbonne nearby?) sit in the alley drinking the cheaper beer at the pub behind them, but watching the game at the more expensive pub across the way.

 

A mix of tourists and Parisians watching the game from the sidewalk and street (luckily for all, drinking alcohol on the street is not a crime in Paris).

 

 

The Hotel Navarra, in Bruges, Belgium, was so excited about the World Cup they turned one of their conference rooms into a soccer room for the World Cup, serving drinks and appetizers for those who wanted to watch the game with others. While Belgium missed the finals by losing to Argentina on July 5th, clearly, enough Germans, Dutch, British and French tourists took advantage of the space: we couldn't find an empty seat.  We went back to our room to watch in comfort as Germany slaughtered Brazil that night. The next night, the Netherlands and Argentina tied, and my guess is the room was packed that night, too: Dutch is the language spoken by most of the people who live in Bruges.

 

It was only in Amsterdam, however, that World Cup fever was everywhere. Many streets had Holland's orange flags for the Netherlands-Brazil game on July 12th (see below). And when Germany played Argentina the next night, we heard the crowds that took over Rembrandtplein singing both the German and the Argentine national anthems. [Hearing the German national anthem  is still disconcerting: it is the same tune as a hymn we sing in church, for one, and it also just reminds me of all those WWII movies.]

 

 

One of many streets in Amsterdam celebrating "The Orange".

 

We didn't go to a pub to watch the games while we were in Amsterdam. Most evenings, after a late dinner, we'd get a bottle of wine to drink in our room from our favorite store,  Albert Heijn.  We started calling it Albertsons. They are everywhere in the city. [You can see just how many people ride bikes in Amsterdam from these two photos.]

 

 







In Bruges

If you haven't yet, go watch the movie with Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes: it's a dark comedy that takes place in Bruges, Belgium, and is basically the reason we spent 3 days in this medieval town a little out of our way.

The images in the background would be of Bruges (and it looked very similarly grey and dark and cool when we were there, though a Twitter friend was there a week later and it was in the 90s, hot and sunny).

To get there, we took a first class high speed train from Paris to Brussels (the cost was surprisingly similar to 2nd class--1st class included lunch). The views of the French countryside were beautiful, and only confirmed that we need to visit the rest of the country of France someday.

Then, we struggled in the Brussels South or Midi train station (South and Midi are the same station, and no, that's not at all confusing, dear Belgium) to figure out how to buy tickets in the machine. Luckily, a friendly tourist helper in a yellow "?" shirt (universal sign of help!) politely informed us that we were in luck: July was a special travel deal month in Belgium: half price for train tickets! But, we would have to stand in line and purchase them from a person, since our American credit card, even the one with the chip instead of the strip, doesn't work in those machines.

Rick Steves did warn me about that, but clearly I forgot.

We stayed in the Hotel Navarra, a hotel that was originally a 17th century mansion, was renovated in the very late 18th century in anticipation of Napoleon's visit (he never showed). It was a Red Cross center during WW1, a student dorm in the 1970s, and the hotel was renovated again in the 1980s and early 2000s, to be a fabulous, and inexpensive, 4 star hotel. 

 

View from our "garden view" room at Hotel Navarra



Bruges was lovely: it was grey, cool, and rainy for most of our stay, alas, but we still enjoyed walking the streets along the canals, tasting beer, and our 40 minute bike ride along a dirt bike path by the canal Napoleon had built to the tiny town of Damme. 

 

Some canals are not along streets---a very Venice-like view here.

 

Walking on cobblestones for a week is a bit of a work out on ones calves.

 

The Tower: Mike climbed it, while I waited in the square, reading the International New York Times.

 

No one wears helmets in Belgium or Amsterdam.

 



 

 

We skipped the hotel breakfast, and ate twice at our favorite venue in Bruges, Books and Brunch, where we had delicious, home cooked (the owners, a husband and wife, took turns in the kitchen, with the husband making breakfast) hot meals, surrounded by books (ok, they were in Dutch, but there were English books upstairs).

We did see the tourist sights in Bruges: we toured the De Halve Maan Brewery (and tasted the beer); we skipped the Friet (French Fries) Museum, but did visit the Chocolate Museum (where you get free tastes).  We also saw the Michaelangelo statue, Madonna and Child, at Church of Our Lady. For those who saw Monuments Men, this piece plays a big part.

We drank delicious Belgium beer, of course, at a local brewery and at the oldest pub in Bruges, Herberg Vlissinghe.

While the beer in Damme was served in bottles and mugs at a cute sandwich shop called Tijl and Nele, it was still yummy!

We returned to Bruges after a few hours, and after a lovely dinner with Michael's friend Rebecca and her boyfriend (Belgium: it's such a small country that she came from the south in Brussels, he came from the north in Antwerp, to meet us in Bruges), we took some evening pictures of the town square.

Was Bruges worth the visit? Oh, yes. Despite the rain and chill.