Europe 2013, Part 2: Amsterdam

On Sunday, April 28, 2013, I took a train from Cologne, Germany to Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

My Australian friend Tim Stokes and his wife Allison had spent 10 years in London. He would do consulting for a few months to earn enough money to travel around Europe for a couple of months and then go back to work again. They did this for several years until children came along. So when I asked him what would be cool to see in the general area of Cologne, he recommended Amsterdam, and I followed his advice.

We didn't have quite enough frequent flier miles to get Linette to Germany, but we did have enough to get her to Amsterdam, so we decided to meet there.

I arrived by train on Sunday afternoon, and the first thing that struck me about the city was its amazing system of canals that ring the city.

Below is a satellite picture of the concentric canals of Amsterdam, which were planned and constructed in the 1600s.

The other most notable thing about Amsterdam is the bicycles. They're everywhere! It is said that there are more bicycles than people in The Netherlands.

Every metal post in Amsterdam, it seems, has bikes locked to it.

Near the train station is a parking garage for bicycles.

It has a capacity for 2500 bikes, but as soon as it was built, they realized that they needed room for 9500.

I enjoyed walking the streets and watching the little boats travel down the canal. This is one of my favorite pictures, where a dad and three daughters are riding on a boat, and one of the daughters is lying right on the bow, reading a book as they glide down the canal. So fun!

I loved seeing this couple kayaking down the canal, as I had thought how nice that would be.

Along some stretches of the canal, people have boats that they actually live in, with an occasional trip down the canal required in order to keep their license to park there.

In the evening, the bridges have lights on them so that boats can make it under them safely. It also makes them stunningly beautiful.

The hotel I was staying at offered a "free drink" at their restaurant/bar, so I went in and got a bottle of 7-Up. It was so tiny! (8 ounces, perhaps?) While there, I saw a family having a little dinner, and I had a wonderful conversation with them. The guy was from New Jersey in the United States, and had a great "Joisey" accent. The gal was from northern England and had a "lovely" accent. They were there on "holiday" with their two kids, and it was so nice to visit with them.

Meanwhile, Linette flew across the U.S., and then to Amsterdam, where she then had to buy a train ticket, catch the train, get off at "Centraal" Station, and navigate the walk under a tunnel and along the canals to find our hotel. (We did a practice run on Google Street View before I left).

I was so glad to hear a knock at the door Monday morning and find that Linette had made it!

That first day, we bought a hop-on-hop-off canal boat tour ticket, and used it to get acquainted with some more of the city.

Sometimes the kids would wave at us as we went by.

At one stop, there were some very dramatic-looking Rembrandt scenes on a wall, so I joined in for a moment.

We were scheduled to go to Keukenhof Gardens later that week. This batch of tulips is made of wood!

We also heard some people practicing for the big Queen's Day celebrations that would be taking place the next day. We heard a girl singing "Part of your World" (from The Little Mermaid) in Dutch, which was cute.

It was really fun to explore the city.

We saw some of the "Delftware" (blue and white porcelain) that the Dutch are famous for.

This is a real guy, painted silver like the surrounding statues.

I thought this boat was especially pretty.

Ok, so I thought the "Smart" cars in Germany were tiny. But Amsterdam had them beat with this dinky vehicle. Believe it or not, two people fit in it side-by-side. It's the only car narrow enough to share some roads with bicycles.

This mom had a 3-seat "family bike" with a basket on the front, so you can take both kids to the store.

We saw these kids eating Chinese food and dangling their feet over the edge of the canal. That looked really fun, so we did the same thing that evening for dinner.

Everyone we met in Amsterdam spoke English just fine. So when Linette saw these girls playing hop scotch and tried to speak with them, she was surprised to find that they didn't understand much English. Apparently they largely pick it up at school, but then it is reinforced by things like most of their TV shows being in English.

One other thing we did that day was to walk through the Anne Frank House. I fortunately got tickets in advance, which avoided a 2-hour line there. Anne Frank's family went into hiding in this house during World War II. They had a whole upstairs area that wasn't obvious from the outside. Anne kept a diary during their seclusion from 1942 to 1944. Eventually, a neighbor reported them, and their whole family was sent to a concentration camp. Anne died a few months later, just a couple months before the camp she was in was liberated. Her father Otto was the only survivor.

That visit was a poignant reminder of how important it is to maintain love and respect for all people--especially those who seem different from yourself in some way. When we think of people as "them" instead of "us"; or assign a label to someone (<race>, <color>, <religion>, "jerk", "loser", "idiot"); then it is human nature to justify all manner of ill treatment. The Holocaust is an example of how there is no end to how horrible people can treat each other when they don't think of them as human, and when they don't take personal responsibility for their own actions ("I was just following orders.") History is full of similar atrocities, and everyone has to do their part to improve the amount of love and respect we all have for each other, and to maintain freedoms that can help to avoid letting things like this happen. I'm sure there are no easy answers, but if we ever feel ourselves feeling hate or contempt for a group of people, that's a red flag that we should probably examine ourselves and see if we can drum up some compassion.

Queen's Day

When we were booking a hotel in Amsterdam, it was strange how few rooms there were available. We finally booked one, and our hotel e-mailed me to tell me that April 30 (the second day we were there) was "Queen's Day" (Koninginnedag), which is the queen's birthday. For that day, they shut down the bus system, and 800,000 people typically come to town for a huge party. This year, though, it was even bigger, because the queen was abdicating the throne and turning it over to her son Willem-Alexander on that day, so the crowd was expected to be more like one million people.

We're always up for a party, so we were looking forward to it.

We hadn't gone 20 feet from our hotel before someone handed me and Linette each an orange hat (which symbolizes the royal "House of Orange").

Everyone was wearing them.

"Do you like my party hat?"

Another thing that happens on Queen's Day is that they do a nation-wide yard sale out on the sidewalks.

Here someone was selling their Dutch version of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Someone even decorated their dog.

We saw someone zip-lining across the canal, so Linette gave it a try.

Throughout the day, boats packed full of party-goers flooded the canal, often with music thumping.

 These people were literally "party animals".

Towards the afternoon, we decided to take a break from the bustle and explore the Rijksmuseum (pronounced "RIKES-museum". They "yuh" their J's in Dutch). Due to the party going on throughout the city, the museum was amazingly empty and quiet. There were a lot of cool artifacts in there.

I liked some of the intricate wood carvings.

This one is tiny (about the size of a golf ball).

And there were some original Rembrandts there, since he was Dutch. [By the way people from The Netherlands are "Dutch", not to be confused with "Deutsche" (which is "German" in German), or "Danish" which means from Denmark. And "Holland" is the western region of The Netherlands.]

Back outside, we bought some great waffles that were like Belgian waffles, but with crispy granulated sugar on the bottom and powdered sugar on top. Very nice.

Right near the Rijksmuseum was the stage where we had heard people rehearsing the day before. Now it was open to the public and was filled with a massive crowd. I took the picture below from about the middle of the crowd, so there are many people behind us as in front of us. It seemed to be the epicenter of the party.

Most of the people were walking around with a cup of beer in their hands, so I assume they were all getting more sauced as the day went on.

A small but famous performer sang while we were there. Meanwhile, the video screens showed the transfer of the through to King Willem.

Here's a 40-second video clip showing the party atmosphere as they sang "Somebody to Love".

Later we went to Vondelpark, which is like their "Central Park" (I jokingly called it "Centraal Park"). It was pretty, and a bit removed from the throng of partiers.

We sat and rested on a bench for a moment, and then I wandered off to take a picture.

When I came back, there was a drunk German guy leaning over Linette's shoulder, saying, "Do you like to party?" So I shooed him away. (Note that I'm a terrible husband and paused to take a picture before rescuing Linette).

Then I went to buy some mini-pancakes (poffertjes), and when I came back, the guy was there again, so I shooed him away again.

"Wow, Linette," I commented. "In your forties, and you've still got it!"

Then, because I can't leave well enough alone, I added, "...'course, he was drunk..." (Oh, dear.)

(This was a lot like the time that our family was eating dinner at home, and Linette complained about getting wrinkles or something. I looked at her and said, "Linette, you look as young as the day we met."

The kids said, "Awwwww!"

Then I added, "...'course, it was dark." And the kids slapped their foreheads. I'm the worst.)

The canals got more crowded throughout the afternoon.

And garbage piled up and was dropped everywhere. (I think they decided to just not worry about it until the next morning and deal with it all at once. To their credit, it was all cleaned up the next day.)

Towards evening, we went and took a look at the sailing ships that gathered in the harbor for the celebration.

The next morning, we hopped back on the hop-on/hop-off canal boat (our 24 hours didn't count during Queen's Day, so as long as we got on by 11 am, we could stay on as long as we wanted). We had a very nice conversation with an Italian lady Katrina who had been raising her son James in England.

So that was our Queen's Day experience.

The next day, we boarded a train to visit Keukenhoff Gardens.

Choo! Choo!

I thought it was great that the ice cream stand there was called the "Happiness Station." I couldn't agree more.

Keukenhoff Gardens is world-famous for its display of tulips and other flowers in the spring. They plant 7 million flower bulbs there every year. It is only open to the general public for 8 weeks a year, from mid-March to mid-May, so we were lucky to be there at the right time.

These flowers look like a purple path through the woods.

If the shoe fits...(then you're probably huge!)

There were stone steps just barely above the level of the water.

So Linette gave them a try.

Some of the grounds were just trees and grass, of course, but since all the pictures focus on the flowers, you may get the sense that it's solid flowers throughout the garden.

It was cool to see all the different ways they decorated.

Some of the flowers are so intricate!

They had a big windmill there that was cool to climb on.

One of my favorite parts was seeing how all the wooden beams fit together inside.

Across the water were huge farms full of tulips, which stretched on for miles.

They had a big hedge maze, too, which reminded me of the one in "Go, Dog, Go!"

One dog going in...

...one fox coming out!

Here is a depiction of the Tower Bridge in London, made of different colors of flowers.

Speaking of which, when we were done at the garden, we picked up our luggage from the front booth, and caught a bus for the coast to catch our ferry to England. I wasn't sure where to wait at first, so I asked a lady, and she said, "You go down de hall, true dose doors...and der's de bus." I thought that was so adorable.

In the next episode, we spend 3 days in London, which isn't nearly enough, and visit my friend Dan.