Amsterdam

I love Amsterdam.  It's just so charming and sweet, with an added dose of crazytown.

I've been a handful of times, and it's always a place I'm happy to return to at any opportunity.  It's only a 45 minute flight from Gatwick, plus the three hours of delays that Sleazyjet makes you endure with every single flight I'v ever taken with them.

So we arrived in Amsterdam much, much later than expected, and in a full-on monsoon which barely let up the 5 days I was there.  It was cold and wet and windy every single day.  My camera barely left the indoors as I was terrified of bringing it outside.  Umbrellas proved useless against the deluge, and I very sadly had to abandoned plans that involved me riding my bike through tulip fields while nibbling on a Gouda rind.

Happily, we were staying in a nice place found via AirB&B, which I constantly announce that I've had it with that site and then find someplace lovely, with super nice generous people.

 A centuries-old warehouse converted into lofty light-filled canalside flats, with unique features like a hammock that you can string across the living room.  I found this to be a perfect place to listen to the rain beat without break against the skylights while nibbling on spacecakes for hours on end.  The woman who owned the place was a sweet, eccentric Dutch lady who popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly the moment  our feet hit the doormat, and laughed in her throaty, pack-a-day laugh that she had poisoned all the candy in pretty glass jars in the house.

What to do?  Ironically, I had planned to go to Waterland in the North to bike around, but I could barely keep myself upright on slippery cobblestones, and the lines for all the museums looked like the place where suckers go to stand in the driving rain for three hours.

I did more than my fair share of consuming because of this.  Food, drink, you name it.  Ingested.  I made some really grand discoveries- a tiny, centuries-old distillery called Wynand Focknick in the red light district that had probably the best tasting room I've ever been to.   They serve delicious, fruit-infused liqueurs in large, flared shot glasses.  The chatty bartenders recommend something based on your unhurried conversation with them, and then they fill the little glass past the meniscus point, and force you to "nose" the glass to sip up the extra so you can carry it to your table.  They will shame you if you try to carry it off without sipping the top bit of it first.  It was a jolly place, with locals along with tourist.  I met a fantastic local prankster dressed as a tourist who was hiding from her bride-to-be friend on a sort of scavenger hunt, who showed up and spotted her instantly.  The fun was not ruined.      

I had a lot of mediocre Indonesian food, so I headed back to dependably excellent Tempo Doeloe for more incredibly spicy fare.  I had the best pizza outside of NYC and Naples at YamYam, and discovered a rather awesome Brown Cafe nearby at Cafe 't Smalle- despite it being a Saturday night after 10 pm, it was filled with casual locals, having quiet conversations, and it was old and lovely to boot.

There was one day that was a little sunnier.  I hit the newly-opened Rijksmuseum.  It didn't disappoint.  It's enormous and grand, but what I loved the most was someone put witty alternative commentaries on giant post-it notes all around the galleries.

Renting a bike in Amsterdam is a must, as long as you can keep a clear-enough head to peddle and steer.  The city can be a bit frenetic on bike, as the locals really zoom along.  You see people walking their dogs on their bikes, transporting their kids and dogs on bikes with carts attached, people eating and smoking on bikes, people holding hands on dates on bikes.  They will even hold an umbrella up when it starts to rain.  I am hesitant to scratch my nose while I'm riding.

The cold sun came out and I headed to Vondelpark for a much less stressful ride.

Despite it being cold and windy, I'm glad I went, as it was the last time things were dry while I was there.

I spent the next three days dodging hail and rain and thunderstorms.  I saw a great deal of coffeeshops and bars from the inside, and had a very chill few days.

I love my downtime, but when I travel, I feel the need to go-go-go all the time.  Any moment you aren't on your feet seeing and doing something is a wasted moment when I travel.  Happily, this trip changed all that and I was pleasantly relaxed and chill at them end of the weekend, having really had nothing to do but slow down and indulge.

I've been to Amsterdam enough to have seen quite a bit of it, so I didn't feel the pressure to really get myself too rain-drenched.  All things considered, it's a pretty good place to curl up in your living room hammock and doze off, with only hunger pains to motivate you to get out of the house.

The Dutch are quirky, fun people, and while they get annoyed (like everyone would) at apeish behaviour, I've never had someone be unkind to me here despite the fact I barely speak three words of Dutch- Hallo!  Welkom!  Dank u!  The food is excellent as long as you stay clear of the mess of frites and kebaparies in the red light district.  The prowling gangs of hen and stag parties can be a little much, but they usually don't venture out of one section of the city.  More amusing are the busloads of tourist who come here to gape at the perceived sinfulness of it all.

Maybe I should move here.

De Wallen

One of the oldest parts of the city is now perhaps what most would consider the sleaziest. The neighborhood of De Wallen around the Oulde Krek is now known as Rossebuurt, the Red Light District.

Prostitutes here are tax-payers. While there is still a street trade, the majority of sex is purchased from a window display.

While there are women who work in the windows at all hours, the district gets really crazy at night. Roving bands of bachelors and tourist couples giggling at the site of it all.

Yes, I find it really disturbing and wrong that women are displayed as wares, but in reality, there will always be prostitution no matter the laws and it's much safter for them to be in a store-front.

There's a big concentration of sex shops, bars, peepshows, and slightly sketchy coffee shops in the neighborhood as well. The police here are more like peacekeepers, and they don't carry guns but they wear bright yellow vests. People selling hard drugs set up shop on the bridges openly in the red light district- it's one of the few things that are illegal, but it's tolerated. A Dutch friend of mine said of the police, "You could take a piss on an officer's leg and he'd just fall over."

The locals that I've spoken with are pretty much over all this, as they have seen and done it all as teenagers, and most of them lead pretty sweet and quiet lives.

During the day, the neighborhood is quiet. The day-shift prostitutes are generally sitting in their windows, reading or doing crossword puzzles in their underwear, occasionally getting up to tap on their windows to beacon a passer-by to come in.

One thing I did observe with much chagrin was the high concentration of tourist in sweatpants and trainers. Really, sweatpants? This isn't Walmart. Even growing up in Maine, you would have been shamed if you were wearing sweatpants outside of the gym. Paris might be close by, but clearly, not influential in this regard.

One of the things that I did want to buy but didn't was an antique tile. Some of them were so detailed and beautiful.

There's a great shopping neighborhood called De 9 Straatjes (nine streets) that has a wealth of cutesy boutiques and antique shops. It reminded me of what Soho used to be before all the giant chain retailers took over. One of my beefs with New York is how quickly it filled up with mall stores when it used to be full of unique small businesses that are now lost and gone forever.

St Nicholas, the French rule-era Catholic church. All the other churches in Amsterdam are Calvinist austere, but not St Nicks!

I was almost a little sad to have to return to Paris (woe is me). It's nice that it's just a few hours away on the TGV.

Artsy Amsterdam

One thing I really wanted to do while I was in the Netherlands was to take the trip out to Oostvaardersplassen, a nature reserve on reclaimed land that is an attempt to re-wild Europe with a wild grassland. Apparently, you can't really go until May though, so I scratched that off my list. Happily, Amsterdam is a place I can keep coming back to and I'm sure I will get to it one day.

Never mind, plenty else to see and do. The Rijksmusuem is coming to the end of a 10-year renovation and has a very limited collection on display, and the Van Gogh Museum relocated most of their collection to the Hermitage down the street, but neither disappoints.
The Dutch painters were always my favorites. I love their super realistic still-lifes and their dark palates. It just made everything else cartoonish.

You really feel like you are peering into an open window with some of these, and not standing in front of an canvas.

Oh, Vermeer. The details are just brilliant.

Oh, and I found a super cute yarn shop:

Another great museum was the Nemo:

We only went in because we walked all the way over to it and just might as well. It's a children's science museum, but it was fascinating both inside and out.

Because it's the super-progressive Netherlands, they can have exhibits all about sex!

And I mean, ALL ABOUT IT. Trying to be mature in this place was a herculean tasks, and giggling was mandatory.

This was in the 12+ section. I totally saw a museum worker throw some eight year olds.

It was hilarious that this was in a children's museum. Oh, America. Nothing to see here. Keep your children ignorant as long as possible, it always works out for the best. Right?

And drugs, too!

It wasn't the attitude of, "don't do it", but more of, "this is what will happen when you do take drugs". So there was a virtual woman dancing on a computer screen, and you could feed her more drugs or a cocktail of drugs, and her dancing either got really crazy or really messy before she eventually dropped. So entertaining. It's apparently a bad idea to mix speed with mushrooms and booze, and too much coke gave her a nosebleed.
Since the weather was just peachy, there was also a great maritime museum nearby.
The Dutch have such a long and lustrous history of seafaring, so it's worth checking out. They were the first to trade with the Japanese, giving the people of Japan a very dutch-centric view of European cultures. You can really see the connection in the art as well- especially with Van Gogh. Which reminds me, I have to get to the Japanese/Van Gogh exhibit in Paris as it closes this week!

It was nice to see that Paris wasn't hogging all the clouds for herself.

Most of the canal-side old houses had a lean to them- some alarmingly so.

I was told that if it was leaning forward towards the canal, it was constructed like that on purpose to add a few more square feet to the footprint. The buildings leaning to one side means the pillars they are sitting upon are starting to shift and rot. It seems like an expensive problem here, as some of them were really giving their neighbors something to fret about.

Rembrant's former house is now a museum:

It's a cute house and they did a nice job with restoration, but most of art inside were repros or sketches.

People here seemed genuinely nice and helpful, although they seemed weary of certain types of tourists. Understandably.

We found several cozy places to rest our feet, caffeinate or imbibe.

French wines were standard issue here, but they really dug on Belgian beers. I drink my oh-so-girly cherry lambic when need arose.