Our hotel in Amsterdam was weird and unexpected. I definitely should have read more reviews and info on their website. Some artist came in and decided to build rooms in what used to be a building lobby, or something similar, in varying themes. We arrived after midnight and after pushing the receptionist’s electronic alert button and searching around the open spaces between the “rooms” we finally found our receptionist. He was still new, and we found it alarming that he wasn’t exactly sure where room “six” was and if he might have accidentally given the room to someone else as he unlocked the door. Once settled in our room, which barely fit a queen size bed, we crashed hard. One benefit of the strange layout was that we didn’t know what time it was, and woke up at nearly 11 am. With our jet lag and needing sleeping pills to get a full night’s sleep, it was a welcome rest. Check out “Hotel Not Hotel”.
We grabbed a brunch at a coffee shop down the street, getting our first view of Amsterdam in the daylight. Our hotel was situated right on one of the canals and wasn’t far from a lot of the sites in Amsterdam. We didn’t have much planned in Amsterdam, but somehow we beat any of our previous steps-per-day, since we ended up not taking any public transportation.
We walked down to Vondelpark, a large park in the midst of the city. It was beautiful and calm – we even got to pet a dog, which made us miss Kona a bit.
I promosed Phil that the Rijksmuseum was the only museum that I wanted to see in Amsterdam. While I could have spent the whole day going to various museums, like the Van Gogh Museum, we spent a long time looking through all the exhibits in the Rijksmusem. I got to see my Rembrandt paintings (coincidentally, Phillip’s grandmother’s last name was Van Reijn, similar to Rembrandt Van Rijn, and there might possibly be a connection, but the genealogist in me says to wait to prove it). I was also surprised that, even though there’s a separate Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum has several Van Gogh pieces as well.
After Paris, the lines at the Rijksmusem was practically non-existant, and there was far less elbowing inside the museum as well, even in front of the most famous pieces.
Once done with the museum, we booked it over to the Bloemenmarkt, a flower market on one of the canels of Amsterdam, where you can buy fresh flowers and bulbs. However, one note to make is that out of all the lovely bulbs and the promise of a beautiful and colorful garden, you have to be able to get your bulbs past US Customs, so you have to look at specially certified bulbs. This limited our selection to one kiosk that we could find, but we did find it!
By that time, we were starving, but cutting it close to make the long trek down to the Heineken brewery, where we had bought tickets to tour their facility. Someone had recommended, though, that a place to get traditional Dutch food was quite close to the Heikeken entrance, so we ran down to pick up some Hollandse Nieuwe, which I do NOT recommend buying and eating, ever. DO NOT DO IT.
Hollandse Nieuwe is raw herring, with raw onions, and pickles. Phillip says he doesn’t recommend it but he’s not as adamant against it as I am. But it smelled horrible. He managed to eat at least half of it before throwing the rest away. I had to walk away as he ate it, and didn’t want to kiss him after. Phillip says he was glad for the experience and felt “quite Dutch.”
The “Heineken Experience” was definitely interesting, however, if they didn’t serve beer during the tour I wouldn’t say that it was worth the ticket price. We bought tickets for 4:45 pm, however, we learned that the tickets were just to “help” queue people in line. We didn’t get in until around 5:20 or so, and throughout the tour, we were elbowed and shoved. At times, we tried to lag behind packs of people, or get ahead, to just try to have some space and time to look at the exhibits, or at least grab one of the beers being offered. After seeing the grain silos, horse stables, and brewing kettles, the rest of the tour felt like being inside a marketing ad. At the end, though, we did get two beers each, which felt quite refreshing after walking around all day.
We had booked tickets earlier in the day for a boat ride through the canals, and since the tour took longer than we thought, we stopped for a quick Pannenkoeken (a Dutch form of crepes).
At our boat tour stop, we learned that the boat we would embark on was missing, so we had to walk up to another stop, adding to our steps for the day. The Amsterdam cobblestone is not forgiving, so I definitely recommend having shoes with sturdy soles and arch support. Once we finally made it though, the canal tour was well worth it, and we learned quite a bit of history about the city.
Amsterdam is presumably named after the Amstel River, and the dam that was built on it. As the Dutch started gaining fame for their trading internationally with the far east, many merchants wanted to live in Amsterdam, and began building on the swampy land. Apparently, the builders would drive wooden piers down until they hit something solid, however, shady contractors have been around for hundreds of years, and some would just get “close enough” or use smaller piers. Therefore, many of the older houses can be identified for their lean:
After our hour long tour, we were freezing, hungry, and feet sore, so we grabbed some Bitterballen and Snert (strange Dutch meatballs and pea soup), before crashing back at the hotel.