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The NTG Travel Diaries!!! #2
DAY 2: AMSTERDAM
"It's exactly like Nashville, what with all the canals, and... Dutch architecture."
***************
Waking up in a foreign country is interesting, especially if it's your first morning, you forget that you're actually there, you've been asleep for about 10 hours after being awake for about 36, and you're awoken by a combination of pigeons right outside your window and the shrill cell-phone ring of one of your hostel-mates. It went off around 8:30am, and it took me a second to get my bearings and realize that previous day had not been some bizarre figment of my imagination.
After the phone was silenced, the six of us (myself, Fischer, and the four Australian travelers who occupied the other four beds in our room at the Pig) all just laid there silently in the slowly brightening room, listening to the pigeons coo insistently, the way only pigeons can. After a minute, the one Aussie burst out "Is it having a fucking orgasm?" We all laughed, and were all officially awake at that point.
I got cleaned up, and Fischer and I grabbed a perfunctory breakfast in the basement cafe. [NOTE: File this under "Lessons Europe Has Taught Me": Nutella is delicious!] After some basic research online and in Fischer's ubiquitous travel Bible, Let's Go Europe!:
...we embarked on our activity for the day: BIKES.
One of our roommates, Gemma from Australia, was free for the day, and when she saw the opportunity to explore the city with two strapping young Yanks, how could she resist? [Actually, the friend she was traveling with was being quite boring and sleeping most of the time, so Gemma was looking for an excuse to bail anyway.] The three of us made our way to the nearest bike shop. It's remarkably easy to find a cheap bike rental in Amsterdam; we found a deal for 10 Euros a day, and it was a true 24 hours so we didn't have to return them until the next morning. This guy was asleep at the bike shop, snoring away contentedly...
I guess they don't really need a guard dog at a place like that. A few short minutes of paperwork, and we were set for the day!
Mine seemed like a pretty standard Amsterdam bike: a Gazelle, sturdy and strong, with a hand-break, pedal-break, and little "chingy" bell on the left handlebar.
I half-took these pictures as a means to remember what my bike looked like in case I forgot throughout the day and couldn't find where I parked it. There's a lot bikes around. Thankfully, I didn't need them for that purpose.
So, I've already remarked on the prevalence of bikes, but I have to say at least a couple words about convenience. Amsterdam being as condensed and crowded as it is, the choice to get from point A to B is basically 15 minutes on a bike, an hour on a bus/tram, or two hours in a car. Consequently, bikes are the way to go, and after only a day I'm convinced they're the best possible way to experience the city. I suppose the best means of understanding chaos is to become a part of the chaos yourself.
Beginning near the shop, we started riding around some of the side streets, getting used to how the bikes handled and discovering the free open urinals Amsterdam has so kindly provided its residents and visitors:
Yep. Just a hole in the ground surrounded by a spiral of thin green metal. You can't get more convenient than that...
Speaking of convenience, this is another handy little thing we discovered... Just about every residential building has a large hook protruding from an abutment on the roof.
The use for this? Given that their staircases are so narrow, moving furniture up and down them is nearly impossible, so every building is fitted with a hook on a long winch of cable. Movers attach the furniture to the hook with ropes, and pull it up the front of the building, and others pull it through the large open windows. Those Dutch... They're a clever bunch...
A big draw to Amsterdam for flower enthusiasts is the Dutch tulips. This whole block was taken up by various flower shops and booths, many of them displaying gorgeous arrays of tulips:
Many places also had bags of tulips bulbs for planting, including ghostly black tulips, which I had never seen before. But they do exist, so much so that a post-WWII plan by the Dutch government to oust any remaining Germans from Amsterdam was called "Operation Black Tulip." The official name for the flower is "Queen of Night" (although for some reason I wound up not snapping any, so you'll have to take my word that they're real).
I also really liked this array of cacti, which I like to call "Wile E. Coyote's Nightmare":
And they also had some seeds for other plants for sale there too...
The bikes allowed us to cover a lot of ground, so we wound up seeing a number of various sights around the whole city. After the flower shops, we made our way to a zoo, but didn't feel like paying the 16 Euro entry fee. After that, we found a cool botanical garden, but again opted to not go in. Fischer's travel guide directed us to this brewery...
...which was closed. And it's too bad, too... I was looking forward to trying a Paasij.
Fairly close to the brewery, we happened upon this monstrous monolithic structure...
It is known only as NEMO, and its purpose for existence was unclear to us. No doubt it is some kind of museum, but again we opted to not go in. Instead, we trudged up the dakplein (or roof, to Dutch people) for some spectacularly gray views of the city.
[* - NOTE: I have no Idea who Wim T. Schippers is, but he's got a cool dakplein.]
In tandem with the views, the highlight of the roof was the panoramic display seen here...
The board shows a wide view of the entire field of vision just beyond it, pointing out every building, structure, or general object of interest, with information on the designer, when it was constructed, and some other basic facts. It made me wish something like this existed at a lot of vista points around the world... But then again I'm a nerd for this kind of stuff. The display also inspired me to bust out Pentax's video capabilities. Here I am filming Fischer, who's filming me, and a bit of our philosophical diatribe... Pay attention for a brief cameo by Gemma and a group of Dutch school children...
VIDEO: "It's a lot like Nashville, wouldn't you say?"
All that dakplein climbing made us hungry, so we made our way to Centraal Station (again, not a typo) and had some Frites. It was here that I learned the aforementioned lesson about "minus" meaning "plus." While I sat and pondered this mathematical quandary, a bird landed right on the back of my bike and just waited for me to snap him.
Interestingly enough, the birds here actually sing in a different language than American birds. I know I sound crazy, but it's true. And don't even get me started on German birds... They sing in techno samples.
Next, we wandered around the Amsterdam Sex Museum, where I surprisingly took no pictures. Can you believe that? I mean, it was just what you'd expect the Amsterdam Sex Museum to be like... very sanitized, not seedy in the least and yet unabashed in showing what they're showing, and crammed with tourists. Pictures just seemed like an afterthought there... It was a lot like Amsterdam on the whole, being trapped in some living cartoon.
As the afternoon wound down, we sat and wrote postcards over a cup of tea in a coffeeshop, and then Gemma had to get back to the hostel to prepare for her flight to London that night. The three of us rode back and said our goodbyes, and then Fischer and I set back out to make use of the remaining daylight for bike-riding. We didn't have a path or goal in mind at first, we just rode around aimlessly, enjoying the air and the act of riding bikes. Truthfully, it made me feel like a kid again. This was the single best and most fun street we rode down:
[* - NOTE: Did you spot Fischer's favorite sign?]
Once we swung our bikes to a halt at the end, Fischer asked "Wanna ride up and back again?" Hell yes!
The light had all but drained from the sky, so we hitched the bikes to a bridge, grabbed some falafel for dinner, and then made our way into the famed Red Light District. Honestly, we got there a little early, and there weren't many people around yet, so it didn't live up to my expectations. Thankfully, we took some time to relax and watch soccer in a bar, have a few beers and talk about the day and life in general. By around 11, the streets were livelier, and the neighborhood seemed more like it deserved the reputation it garnered.
It really is like some bizarre extension of Disney Land. The District is very clean and well-kept, and of course packed with tourists. There are dozens of theaters offering live sex shows, each with a barker outside touting his show as the hottest and best value for your money. Lining every street are tiny apartment-fronts with large glass doors, each adorned with a red neon light. Behind each window is a woman dressed in lingerie or a bathing suit, and they simply stand there. If you make eye contact, they might wave, or tap the glass, or beckon you to come to their door. It is completely effortless to have sex there if you agree to the price, and yet the whole time I walked through the streets, "It's A Small World After All" could have been playing in the background. In short, it was just plain strange. And out of respect for the ladies of the night, I took no pictures (most windows have a small "No Foto" decal on them anyway).
But if you really must see what it looks like, do a Google Image search for "Amsterdam Red Light District."
HERE, I even did it for you.
***************
NEXT POST: We depart Amsterdam for Bonn, Germany: The land of castles, Huey Lewis, and my new favorite German beer!
*****N*T*G*****
Never hesitate to comment!
"It's exactly like Nashville, what with all the canals, and... Dutch architecture."
***************
Waking up in a foreign country is interesting, especially if it's your first morning, you forget that you're actually there, you've been asleep for about 10 hours after being awake for about 36, and you're awoken by a combination of pigeons right outside your window and the shrill cell-phone ring of one of your hostel-mates. It went off around 8:30am, and it took me a second to get my bearings and realize that previous day had not been some bizarre figment of my imagination.
After the phone was silenced, the six of us (myself, Fischer, and the four Australian travelers who occupied the other four beds in our room at the Pig) all just laid there silently in the slowly brightening room, listening to the pigeons coo insistently, the way only pigeons can. After a minute, the one Aussie burst out "Is it having a fucking orgasm?" We all laughed, and were all officially awake at that point.
I got cleaned up, and Fischer and I grabbed a perfunctory breakfast in the basement cafe. [NOTE: File this under "Lessons Europe Has Taught Me": Nutella is delicious!] After some basic research online and in Fischer's ubiquitous travel Bible, Let's Go Europe!:
...we embarked on our activity for the day: BIKES.
One of our roommates, Gemma from Australia, was free for the day, and when she saw the opportunity to explore the city with two strapping young Yanks, how could she resist? [Actually, the friend she was traveling with was being quite boring and sleeping most of the time, so Gemma was looking for an excuse to bail anyway.] The three of us made our way to the nearest bike shop. It's remarkably easy to find a cheap bike rental in Amsterdam; we found a deal for 10 Euros a day, and it was a true 24 hours so we didn't have to return them until the next morning. This guy was asleep at the bike shop, snoring away contentedly...
I guess they don't really need a guard dog at a place like that. A few short minutes of paperwork, and we were set for the day!
Mine seemed like a pretty standard Amsterdam bike: a Gazelle, sturdy and strong, with a hand-break, pedal-break, and little "chingy" bell on the left handlebar.
I half-took these pictures as a means to remember what my bike looked like in case I forgot throughout the day and couldn't find where I parked it. There's a lot bikes around. Thankfully, I didn't need them for that purpose.
So, I've already remarked on the prevalence of bikes, but I have to say at least a couple words about convenience. Amsterdam being as condensed and crowded as it is, the choice to get from point A to B is basically 15 minutes on a bike, an hour on a bus/tram, or two hours in a car. Consequently, bikes are the way to go, and after only a day I'm convinced they're the best possible way to experience the city. I suppose the best means of understanding chaos is to become a part of the chaos yourself.
Beginning near the shop, we started riding around some of the side streets, getting used to how the bikes handled and discovering the free open urinals Amsterdam has so kindly provided its residents and visitors:
Yep. Just a hole in the ground surrounded by a spiral of thin green metal. You can't get more convenient than that...
Speaking of convenience, this is another handy little thing we discovered... Just about every residential building has a large hook protruding from an abutment on the roof.
The use for this? Given that their staircases are so narrow, moving furniture up and down them is nearly impossible, so every building is fitted with a hook on a long winch of cable. Movers attach the furniture to the hook with ropes, and pull it up the front of the building, and others pull it through the large open windows. Those Dutch... They're a clever bunch...
A big draw to Amsterdam for flower enthusiasts is the Dutch tulips. This whole block was taken up by various flower shops and booths, many of them displaying gorgeous arrays of tulips:
Many places also had bags of tulips bulbs for planting, including ghostly black tulips, which I had never seen before. But they do exist, so much so that a post-WWII plan by the Dutch government to oust any remaining Germans from Amsterdam was called "Operation Black Tulip." The official name for the flower is "Queen of Night" (although for some reason I wound up not snapping any, so you'll have to take my word that they're real).
I also really liked this array of cacti, which I like to call "Wile E. Coyote's Nightmare":
And they also had some seeds for other plants for sale there too...
The bikes allowed us to cover a lot of ground, so we wound up seeing a number of various sights around the whole city. After the flower shops, we made our way to a zoo, but didn't feel like paying the 16 Euro entry fee. After that, we found a cool botanical garden, but again opted to not go in. Fischer's travel guide directed us to this brewery...
...which was closed. And it's too bad, too... I was looking forward to trying a Paasij.
Fairly close to the brewery, we happened upon this monstrous monolithic structure...
It is known only as NEMO, and its purpose for existence was unclear to us. No doubt it is some kind of museum, but again we opted to not go in. Instead, we trudged up the dakplein (or roof, to Dutch people) for some spectacularly gray views of the city.
[* - NOTE: I have no Idea who Wim T. Schippers is, but he's got a cool dakplein.]
In tandem with the views, the highlight of the roof was the panoramic display seen here...
The board shows a wide view of the entire field of vision just beyond it, pointing out every building, structure, or general object of interest, with information on the designer, when it was constructed, and some other basic facts. It made me wish something like this existed at a lot of vista points around the world... But then again I'm a nerd for this kind of stuff. The display also inspired me to bust out Pentax's video capabilities. Here I am filming Fischer, who's filming me, and a bit of our philosophical diatribe... Pay attention for a brief cameo by Gemma and a group of Dutch school children...
VIDEO: "It's a lot like Nashville, wouldn't you say?"
All that dakplein climbing made us hungry, so we made our way to Centraal Station (again, not a typo) and had some Frites. It was here that I learned the aforementioned lesson about "minus" meaning "plus." While I sat and pondered this mathematical quandary, a bird landed right on the back of my bike and just waited for me to snap him.
Interestingly enough, the birds here actually sing in a different language than American birds. I know I sound crazy, but it's true. And don't even get me started on German birds... They sing in techno samples.
Next, we wandered around the Amsterdam Sex Museum, where I surprisingly took no pictures. Can you believe that? I mean, it was just what you'd expect the Amsterdam Sex Museum to be like... very sanitized, not seedy in the least and yet unabashed in showing what they're showing, and crammed with tourists. Pictures just seemed like an afterthought there... It was a lot like Amsterdam on the whole, being trapped in some living cartoon.
As the afternoon wound down, we sat and wrote postcards over a cup of tea in a coffeeshop, and then Gemma had to get back to the hostel to prepare for her flight to London that night. The three of us rode back and said our goodbyes, and then Fischer and I set back out to make use of the remaining daylight for bike-riding. We didn't have a path or goal in mind at first, we just rode around aimlessly, enjoying the air and the act of riding bikes. Truthfully, it made me feel like a kid again. This was the single best and most fun street we rode down:
[* - NOTE: Did you spot Fischer's favorite sign?]
Once we swung our bikes to a halt at the end, Fischer asked "Wanna ride up and back again?" Hell yes!
The light had all but drained from the sky, so we hitched the bikes to a bridge, grabbed some falafel for dinner, and then made our way into the famed Red Light District. Honestly, we got there a little early, and there weren't many people around yet, so it didn't live up to my expectations. Thankfully, we took some time to relax and watch soccer in a bar, have a few beers and talk about the day and life in general. By around 11, the streets were livelier, and the neighborhood seemed more like it deserved the reputation it garnered.
It really is like some bizarre extension of Disney Land. The District is very clean and well-kept, and of course packed with tourists. There are dozens of theaters offering live sex shows, each with a barker outside touting his show as the hottest and best value for your money. Lining every street are tiny apartment-fronts with large glass doors, each adorned with a red neon light. Behind each window is a woman dressed in lingerie or a bathing suit, and they simply stand there. If you make eye contact, they might wave, or tap the glass, or beckon you to come to their door. It is completely effortless to have sex there if you agree to the price, and yet the whole time I walked through the streets, "It's A Small World After All" could have been playing in the background. In short, it was just plain strange. And out of respect for the ladies of the night, I took no pictures (most windows have a small "No Foto" decal on them anyway).
But if you really must see what it looks like, do a Google Image search for "Amsterdam Red Light District."
HERE, I even did it for you.
***************
NEXT POST: We depart Amsterdam for Bonn, Germany: The land of castles, Huey Lewis, and my new favorite German beer!
*****N*T*G*****
Never hesitate to comment!
posted by JMP at 2:10 PM
1 Comments:
Great tales and great pix! Hugs from Jocasta
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