Tuesday, May 15, 2012
We got up and ready at 9am on Tuesday and headed in to
Amsterdam. The weather forecast called
for rain, so we planned on spending the day at some of Amsterdam’s great
museums. Before heading into town,
however, we stopped at the rest stop from the night before (it is a favorite of
Uncle Roy’s) and ate at the “American style Truck Stop.” They had Dutch food, but it kind of did feel
like being in an American diner a little bit.
Our first stop was the Van Gogh museum, and we arrived just
before the rain. The Museum was actually
organized by Van Gogh’s brother and nephew and most of their collection was
given to them by the family, so they have over 200 of Van Gogh’s paintings and
numerous letters and sketches. It is
quite an extensive collection displayed alongside stories from his life, which
make it very interesting. Unfortunately,
the museum was very crowded with groups of schoolchildren and Asian tourists,
so it was often difficult to get close to the paintings.
After Van Gogh, we went to the Rijksmuseum, which is famous
for housing the work of great Dutch painters such as Rembrandt and Johann
Vermeer. The museum is actually
undergoing extensive renovations right now and only a small portion of it is
open to visitors. Luckily, they have
moved most of the most famous pieces into the temporary space, so we were able
to see Rembrant’s Night Watch and Vermeer’s The Milkmaid.
The Milkmaid (and me)
Night Watch
By some miracle, the rain held off, so when we got out of
the museum, we were able to spend the rest of the day exploring Amsterdam on
foot. The first thing that struck me about Amsterdam was all the bikes! I had heard that biking was a popular form of
transportation in Amsterdam, but I wasn’t prepared for all the bikes all over
the place! I mean, at any given point,
you could probably see about 200 bikes from wherever you were standing. And it turns out that most of the bikes are
just clunkers and it’s basically like an unwritten rule that people just
steal/borrow/use whatever bike they want.
I guess the assumption is that if you put a bike in, you get one out. No one really locks up their bikes or knows
which one they are using.
While we were walking around Amsterdam, we got pata mit
mayonais and some Heinekens at a canal-side café. After that, we had tickets to visit the Anne
Frank House, which we did. The Anne
Frank house was really interesting. You
actually get to wander through where she and her family hid for more than 2
years and where they were captured and sent to their deaths (only Otto Frank,
Anne’s father, survived the war). I also
found it very interesting that Anne had actually aspired to be an author, which
is why were diary was so well written and was able to be published as it
was. At one point during their hiding,
they heard on the radio that the Dutch authorities encouraged people to keep
all writings from their time in the war in hopes that one day the truth would
be known. I guess that was a successful
plea!
After the Anne Frank house, we kept wandering around the
city, and wouldn't you know it, we found some wooden shoes!
We also made it to some of the main areas including the red light
district. It was only about 5pm when we
went there, so not many of the lights were on, but we did see our first glimpse
of the district right near the oldest church in Amsterdam. I was totally not expecting to turn my head
and see a large, barely clothed woman standing in the window!
We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and drinks at a bier
garden before heading back to the red light district after dark to really take
in the *ahem* sights! And what a sight
it was! All over the place there were
women in the windows. It’s entertaining
at first, but also quite disturbing that this is a real way of life for these
women. Allegedly they do this on their
own accord and have no pimps, but we heard that some of them are in fact under
the control of a man or a company.
We caught a train back to the train station near Uncle Roy’s
house where Michelle and Sergio picked us up at around 11pm.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Michelle and Sergio both had the day off of work and school
on Wednesday, so they volunteered to take us all over Holland on a tour! We spent the day in the car with them and had
a lot of fun! Our first stop was a
quaint little windmill in a nearby town.
We actually think people lived inside it and had pictures taken with
their house!
After the windmill, we
headed to the area of Holland where the tulips would be in bloom but
unfortunately, they were no longer there.
We drove by the huge Heineken brewery on our way to our next stop, a
beach town that I can still not remember the name of. It was a cool day, but we were able to have
lunch on the beach at a place that had an indoor eating area. We then drove through The Hague (Den Haag),
where the international criminal court is.
From the Hague, we headed to Rotterdam, where Taylor’s cousin Jeffrey
went to school. The city is much more
modern than Amsterdam because most of it was destroyed during World War
II. From Rotterdam, we drove back to Roy
and Jose’s, passing through Gouda, where gouda cheese comes from, and stopping
at a nice little shopping area in Alphan an den Rihn along the way.
Crazy houses in Rotterdam
Taylor with 18 kilos of cheese
Wednesday night we went to dinner at an Indonesian
restaurant owned by one of Taylor’s second cousins. It was about a 2 hour drive with traffic, but
the food was amazing and it was nice to meet some of Taylor’s Indonesian family
that I had not met.
We got back from dinner late and chatted with
Taylor’s dad for his birthday before going to bed.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Thursday was our last full day in Amsterdam. We decided to join the locals and do a bike
tour at noon. The tour was offered by a
company called “Mike’s Bikes” and they were primarily Americans and Canadians
who enjoy the *ahem* coffeeshop culture of Amsterdam, if you know what I mean
(they smoke a lot of pot). Our tour
guide Ashley was a character, and we went all over Amsterdam on the tour. We saw a lot of areas that we had been already,
but also a few that we had not, such as the Jewish Quarter and the city’s
Vondel Park, which was designed by the same architect as Central Park in New
York.
Beers after our bike tour
After the tour, we went to Leidseplein, a nice little square
with lots of outdoor bars. We had beer and lunch and just relaxed for a few hours before catching a train back to Roy and Jose’s.
Thursday night, Jose and Michelle cooked
a delicious dinner of chicken with mushrooms and cream sauce with rice.
We relaxed and packed up Thursday night and prepared for
our flight in the morning to Berlin.
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