Amsterdam

Posted by Anura Samara, 6 April 2015

A long weekend in Amsterdam. Canals, bikes, tulips and windmills.

Everyone knows that Amsterdam is the city of canals and bikes. Let’s start with the canals (more on bikes later…).

The canals

Our accommodation was in fact on a canal boat. The canals are lined with boats that people live in – in fact, solidly lined right up to the bridges. The boats can be everything from converted old working canal boats to modern affairs that would easily put many modern apartments to shame. Ours was more in the style of a converted boat – long and narrow, but with good sized living areas and a kitchen with a view over the canal.

One of the great things about staying on a canal boat was to experience the city as the locals do. When you step off a canal boat, you are immediately thrust into a suburban area with others doing something similar. Even on the boat, you experience local life as the residents use the canals for their commute, for work or just for pleasure. But being a small city, practically everything we wanted to see was within walking distance.

On our first day, we took one of the canal boat tours. Sure, we said we would never do a ‘hop-on, hop-off’ ride again but this was a complete circuit to give us a sense of the city. The canals vary widely, from narrow ‘lanes’ to the water-based equivalent of a highway and like city streets they catered for both the local businesses and the more genteel members of society.

In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we then booked a dinner cruise. With only three occupied tables, the service was great and the food was really good (the first time in my life I’ve knowingly had an amuse bouche. And it was nice to see the city at night from the water.

Museums

We’re really not museum people, preferring to be outdoors experiencing a new city rather than being cooped up inside for hours. And as someone who likes to go around and read everything, yes it can be literally hours to go through a museum. Having said that, we knew there are some signficant ones in Amsterdam.

Rijksmuseum

I have actually visited the Rijksmuseum once before, way back in 1985 but the only thing I can remember is seeing Rembrandt’s Night Watch.

The museum has been completely redeveloped now (not that I could spot any differences!) and the interior is open and modern and really guides you through a journey. But we skipped all of that to make sure we saw the Night Watch Gallery and the Gallery of Honour – these are the two galleries with the more famous pieces. The Night Watch itself is impressively displayed, particularly with the lighting. But when you browse around you’ll see that there are several similar paintings of other military companies. Why is this one so famous? Heading back to the Gallery of Honour, we really wanted to see some of the more famous paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer. One of the great things about a well-curated museum is that in the process of finding them, you stumble on other great art too.

Anne Frank Museum

The Anne Frank Museum was on the same canal as our boat. We had walked past the queues on our first morning, and during the course of breakfast watched it grow until it snaked around the church on the corner and back to the street again.

To avoid this, I got up early on our last morning and stood in the queue at 7:30am, a whole hour and a half before opening time. Even then I wasn’t the first – there were about a dozen people ahead of me. It was a bit chilly, but the queue was friendly enough and we chatted to pass the time. Towards opening time, one of the staff came around with free chocolates and of course there was wifi available to keep me occupied.

Of course, Anne Frank is no more or less important than any of the other millions of victims of the Holocaust but it’s because she left a diary that was found, preserved and published that we can put a human face on at least one of those victims. The museum is both the preservation of the house she lived and hid in, as well as a journey through her family’s story from the pre-Nazi prosperity, the persecution of the Jews, hiding, concentration camps and then the post-war efforts by her father. As a preserved property, there is something totally surreal about walking through the actual secret door that her family passed through, to stand in the few small rooms where so many people lived for many months in hiding. The rooms themselves have photos showing what each was originally like. Back in the annex is a series of displays with photos, artefacts and interviews with her father.

The Anne Frank Museum is a great experience, not just about remembering the Holocaust and understanding it’s impact on real people but also in the way that the museum has been built to both commemorate and educate.

Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh is such an iconic figure – he was in a Doctor Who episode! – that we just had to see the Van Gogh Museum. The queue was a bit longer than for the Anne Frank museum, but there were helpful guides to tell us how long the queues were and to make sure were in the right one (yes, even people with pre-purchased tickets had a queue.

After about an hour-and-a-half, we were in. As you know, we don’t want to spend forever inside a building looking at each artwork. Luckily, the audio guide has an abbreviated tour that takes you to just the highlights – still spread over every floor, but usually only two to four items in each gallery. It’s a good program, because it doesn’t just take you to see his more famous works but also to other works which show how his style developed over time, works that show off his relationships with other artists and works that link to events in his life – so you actually learn something about the man.

Day trip

We had booked a daytrip to see some of the areas around Amsterdam. After a bit of stuffing around with loads of tour buses and people mingling around, we were eventually put on a bus although our itinerary was switched around. After two half-day trips, we remembered why we don’t like this form of travel – there’s just too much of a hurry-up from stop to stop to do anything more than just scratch the surface of each place you visit.

Keukonhof

Keukonhof was the destination for our morning visit. Unfortunately, our time in the Netherlands was just too early for the major flowers so we missed seeing those spectacular fields of colour on our drive.

Keukonhof itself is a large park, with multiple pavilions, ponds and streams, flower beds with odd sculptures cropping up everywhere and lots of activities. For example, in one area with a traditional windmill and boat there was some traditional Dutch dancing, guys demonstrating the use of old, wooden-wheeled bikes, traditional food (eels!) and lots more. The pavillions were good, as it was an opportunity to see loads of different flowers which aren’t ready to bloom outside just yet. It’s big enough with enough variety to be a really good day outing for both locals and tourists.

Zaanse Schans Windmills, Marken and Volendam

After a quick stop back in Amsterdam (this was two half-day tours back-to-back) our next stop was Zannse Schans. This is a small, riverside community of traditional buildings including working windmills, workshops and homes. You get a sense of how low-lying the area is with small ponds or streams of water criss-crossing the area. As the windmills are working, you can go inside and see the machinery used for cutting logs into planks of timber.

Unfortunately, the weather was terrible – windy, cool and rain coming through in bursts – which meant there were few opportunities for photos. We were glad to get back to the bus.

Our next stop was the Clog Experience in Marken. We had a demonstration of how clogs are made – it’s not a very traditional experience, just two machines to carve the shape from a single block of timber and then hollow out the inside. But the accompanying discussion about the history of the clogs and why wooden shoes are so practical was good, and we got to try on pairs to see what they are really like.

We then wandered through the small village of Marken – a treat in itself – to get to the ferry which would take us across to Volendam. Volendam is a larger town, but the port is in the older part with narrow streets and older buildings. We had time in a cheese shop where there was a display of the cheese-making process. Having seen something similar in Gruyere, it would have been good to have had some explanation of what makes Dutch cheeses distinct from, say, Swiss ones. Volendam was the dinner stop – we took our tour guides recommendation of somewhere to eat, but probably exploring the streets would have found somewhere a bit quieter. And then it was tie to be rounded up to be guided back to the bus, parked in a much newer part of town.

Ah, bus tours. They offer a neatly packaged experience but possible too much packaging and not enough experiences. Yet again, a reminder that you might see less but you’ll have an infinitely better experience if you get on to the local public transport and explore under your own steam.

Bike tour

We booked a bike tour with our friends at Urban Adventures.

Our guide was Sean, an American who has lived in Amsterdam long enough to know their way of life. There were just three on the tour – the two of us plus another Australian lady who had just flown in that morning. We had brought our helmets along – apart from the lycra-clad types, we were the only ones to wear helmets.

The tour took us around the back streets and introduced us to the different areas within the city, with commentary on biking culture along the way. Amsterdam is definitely geared for bikes with separate lanes and apparent priority over everything else. And it’s flat – about the only ‘hills’ to tackle are on some of the approaches to the humped bridges.

After touring Amsterdam, we then went down to the river and caught the free ferry to Amsterdam Noord where we had a completely different experience. It was much quieter and when we rode along Nieuwendammerdijk it felt like a completely different world – older buildings with quiet waterways. We stopped for morning tea before heading back to the ferry and the end of our tour.

Categories: Netherlands

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