A Summary of our Few Days in Amsterdam

June 16:

This is the first day I’ve attempted to blog and we are already on the second day of the cruise.  My Nikon 1 V1 camera, which failed me on our Seabourn cruise last October, and which afterwards spent several months in the shop being repaired, has failed me again.  I am beyond furious and will never buy another Nikon.  Be warned.

However, being of an optimistic nature, I am making the best of it, and between Maile’s and my Iphone, we hope to produce at least a few decent pictures.  In the interim I will try not to dazzle you too much with my deathless prose.

We arrived in Amsterdam early morning June 12, pretty exhausted, and as expected, our hotel room was not ready, so we soldiered on and took a short canal cruise to get a feel for the city.  The endless canals, bordered on both sides by typical Dutch row houses and punctuated by arched tunnels and quaint bridges seemed a complicated maze to our glazed and tired eyes, but so beautiful.  We stopped at a sweet café right around the corner from the hotel on the way back to rejuvenate with coffee and tea. 

Our hotel, the Hotel Ambassade, recommended by a Dutch friend, proved the perfect choice, within walking distance of all the sights on our list and situated right on the Gentlemen’s Canal, Herengracht.  At first I was a tad dismayed because there was a lot of activity right outside our room which faced onto the street and canal—all sorts of boat traffic as well as pedestrians and cars whizzing by in both directions; and a cacophony of dissonant sounds.  But happily, the din quieted down and we were able to sleep undisturbed.

Unbelievable numbers of bicycles!  We learned later that there are about 780,000 people in the city of Amsterdam and more than a million bikes!  And surely they are all on the street at once! Practically everyone is barreling by on a bike, and let the unwary pedestrian beware because they slow down for no one.  Remarkably, we didn’t see a single accident although the close calls were myriad.  I was even politely admonished by one middle aged woman on a bike who informed me that I needed to watch where I was going.  Since the sidewalk, the bike path and the street are often indistinguishable one from the other, this is easier said than done! 

The normal traffic was enhanced by the fact that the World Cup was underway and the Netherlands was playing Spain!  Revelers were everywhere, dressed in orange, excitement at a feverish pitch and during the actual game it seemed that the whole city actually erupted into a palpable roar when “our” team scored.  As you know, the Netherlands beat Spain 5-1 ensuring that the partying would go on unabated until the wee hours.   

The best part about Amsterdam is walking around and enjoying the energy of the city.  It is a very manageable town—we never had to take a single taxi in our three days before boarding our river cruise yesterday afternoon.  of course it helped that our hotel is marvelously located in the City Center. We went to the Van Gogh Museum, Vondel Park, and the Anne Frank House, all within easy walks of the hotel.   We walked through Dam Square, the main square of the city, perused an authentic flea market, and sampled delicious Dutch cheese on the street.

Vondel Park, which I guess is comparable to Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London, provides premier people watching and activity galore. Lots of locals as well as tourists go there to relax, spoon, walk their dogs, wheel their baby carriages, or simply sit on park benches and read.  We bought hot dogs from a rolling cart and sat on a stone wall to eat them.  One of the three giant I AM STERDAM signs is there and the brave ones like Holland climb to the top of the various letters to have their pictures taken. 

The Anne Frank House—thankfully I had purchased advance tickets—was sad and austere, but beautifully presented and effectively sobering.  The thought of the beautiful young Anne holed up in an Amsterdam rowhouse for more than two years with her family only to be exposed and to die anyway of typhus in a German concentration camp just one month before liberation is beyond tragic.  Her words reverberate through the walls of the building through the displays, vignettes and artifacts from the actual period.  If you haven’t read Anne’s diary, or if it has been years, I highly recommend it.  I read it for the first time just a few months ago and was astounded by her literary talent.  Had she lived she would have been a prolific and profound writer.  As it is, dead at fifteen, she would have just shaken her head at her fame and wondered what all the fuss was about.