Saturday got off to a painfully early start --- I had to get up at 4am in order to make a 6:10am flight to Amsterdam. Since we had to get up so early, Jill and I had thought that we might need to take it easy, spend a lot of the time sitting, and maybe even take a nap in the afternoon. In fact, we ended up having probably the most active day of any travel day that we have had.
After taking the train from the airport to Amsterdam Central Station, we walked over to our Saturday night hostel in the Jordaan neighborhood (in the northwest area of the city center). We dropped off our bags and thought we would visit the Anne Frank House since it was so early, but the line was already quite long. So then we went to walk around the Nine Streets area nearby to check out the shops --- I ended up buying a long-sleeved navy blue dress that I love.
We continued our walking tour to include the Nieuwmarkt area and the Waterlooplein to check out the flea market there.
Looking really, really tired:
After stopping for lunch, we also did a tour of the Dutch Royal Palace.
It was incredibly moving and quite astonishing how central the location of the house is --- it is hard to imagine the difficulty of staying quiet in the "Secret Annex" during the day given how many people must have been in and around that building all the time. It also makes me want to re-read Anne Frank's Diary... adding that back to my reading list.
We did manage to rest for a little while at the hostel after this, and then went to a nearby Spanish restaurant in Jordaan recommended by Lonely Planet called La Oliva. I had an absolutely fantastic dinner: a beef filet with red wine sauce, roasted potatoes, and mushrooms.
As you might imagine, we went straight to bed after dinner. According to Jill, I lasted about 5 minutes before completely passing out once I got in bed.
Sleeping in until 8:00am on Sunday morning felt luxurious after the previous day. We moved hostels on Sunday, so while we were still able to leave our bags at the first one, we wanted to check out the Red Light District and Medieval Center of Amsterdam which were quite close (parts of which we had already seen on our walk on Saturday). The area of Jordaan, Nine Streets, and the Anne Frank House is strikingly different in personality from the Red Light District. As expected, there were lots of "coffee shops" and headshops advertising marijuana products and we did pass several store windows with sex shows, clothes and toys, and prostitutes. Very different than any other city I have ever been in. We did tour the "Sexmuseum" which had imagery of sex and prostitution across history, but I couldn't bring myself to go in the Hemp, Hash, and Marijuana museum --- it smelled too much like pot and I didn't want the smell to get in my clothes.
We then visited a completely different area of Amsterdam called the Begijnhof. The Begijnhof is the only inner court of Amsterdam founded during the Middle Ages and, as the name suggests, it was home to the Beguines, a loose semi-monastic community of nuns but without formal vows. Although the last Beguine died in 1971, the community is still entirely women. It is also the site of the English Reformed Church and the oldest wooden house in Amsterdam (1528).
Then we went back to get our bags from the first hostel to move to our second hostel, the Flying Pig, near the Museumplein (area with several important Amsterdam museums).
We then walked to the nearby I AMsterdam sign, which was quite crowded with tourists taking pictures, but once it started raining -- the area cleared out and we were able to take more pictures from a nearby cafe where we got lunch.
Can you see me?!?
At this point, it was already so late in the day that we decided that we didn't have time to visit the Van Gogh museum, which is currently moved from its Museumplein location to a temporary set-up at the Hermitage Amsterdam, which was quite far from where we were. We decided to just go from our late lunch to the Heineken Experience, a tour of the famously Dutch Heineken Brewery (Jill really wanted to go and I was fine with doing it even if beer is no longer an option for me).
It really was an experience! Not only did you get to see every stage of the beer making process and have it explained, but there was even a 4D "ride" called Be the Brew where you stood on moving platforms with heat lamps, fans, and even sprinkles of water to make it seem as if you really are the beer being brewed and bottled. There are a ton of interactive steps along the self-guided tour --- unfortunately the "bottle your own beer" activity was out of order but we did take this high quality photograph of ourselves:
By the time we finished touring the Heineken Experience, it was just after 5pm. It had been raining off and on the whole day, and neither of us wanted to walk around more areas of Amsterdam at that point. We decided it was movie night! We found a 7:20pm showing of The Perks of Being a Wallflower nearby, and there was even a reasonably priced sushi place on the same block where we were able to get dinner beforehand. The movie was great --- not what I thought it was going to be about, and now I want to read the book. One of my favorite parts of the movie, though, was actually a beer commercial that they showed beforehand --- the sound of opening this particular beer sent off a chain reaction of different individuals opening up a beer themselves, culminating in a man at a sidewalk cafe opening a beer and a limousine stopping after hearing the sound and you hear a man say, "Sir, we can't stop..." and the sound of President Obama saying "Yes, we can." Best beer commercial ever. (No intention of spouting political ideology but I was just so entertained that I wanted to share --- in other news, I did wake up at 2am this morning to watch election coverage, fell back asleep, and then got up again at 5am to watch all of the results.)
That was the end of Sunday night. Monday morning we checked out of hostel #2 and decided to carry our bags with us so we could go straight to the train station in the afternoon. We started off the day checking out the Albert Cuypmarket, an area of a few blocks that has a daily street fair during the week.
I got a delicious apple for breakfast (it was called an Elstar, has anyone seen this type before?), and a raspberry smoothie, and some chocolate fudge, and a 6 euro multi-colored scarf. It was a blast --- and we even had pretty good weather for at least the first part of walking around. We got a light lunch of tomato soup and then headed back toward the Heineken Experience to wait for the Heineken shuttle boat to take us along the canal to the Heineken brand store, which happens to be right across from the Hermitage Amsterdam, where the Van Gogh collection currently is. Unfortunately, the boat didn't come and we ended up walking... so no canal rides during the trip. But we did get to see the art of Van Gogh as well as an additional temporary exhibit on the other Impressionists. I loved it! I definitely learned some new things about Van Gogh --- one of his inspirations was Japanese art, which I never knew, and I didn't realize quite how quickly the timeline of his painting progressed. He was born in 1853 and then taught himself to paint at age 27, but he only painted for 10 years until he shot himself in 1890 --- with most of his works being completed in the last 2 years of his life, which he painted at least one painting per day.
Pictures of the final walk through Amsterdam:
We had thought that we would explore more of the area around Nieuwmarkt after the museum exhibits, but we ended up walking straight to Central Station without stopping... and so we arrived in our terminal at the airport about 4 hours before our 9pm flight. It gave me the chance to buy a diamond star necklace and a bunch of chocolate at the duty free shop at least!
All in all, a truly fabulous trip to Amsterdam!
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