Sunday, July 8, 2012

Amsterdam - July 7, 2012

Three days ago we were sitting on a bed in Frankfurt. David was looking at hostel prices, Sarah was reading wikitravel Amsterdam, and suddenly she said "huh, 750,000 people in the city own 800,000 bikes." It's one thing to know that fact, but another to experience it. Everybody owns a bike, and bikes are stacked up against every visible post, tree, and wall 2 or 3 deep throughout the city. Every road has dedicated bike lanes and bike traffic signals. We watched a man in a suit hop off his bike, tie it to a post, grab his briefcase on his way into work.

Wednesday evening we wandered around the city, then drank beer on the edge of a canal, watching groups of people go by in little motorboats. Seems like that's the thing to do after work - get together with friends for dinner, drinks, and speeding around the canal system with music going. We were entertained with our drinks but still felt a bit envious of the Wednesday night karaoke groups on speedboats, dancing and singing with beer.

Thursday we did the museum thing and learned a ton about Van Gogh. Cool. I didn't know he produced serious art for only 6 or 7 years before he shot himself at the age of 37. Amsterdam has an entire museum dedicated to his life. Then we had a late lunch in Vondelpark in the middle of the city, lying next to a pond with a bottle of wine and some fresh fruit. We thought it would be fun to drink in the park since we can't really do that at home, and ended up feeling out of place being the only ones around us without a joint in hand. Ahh, Amsterdam.

Friday was a bike trip day. Renting bikes is obviously easy here, so for 25 euros we got a pair of them and rode east out of the city to a couple smaller towns, Muiden (MAO-den) and Weesp (veesp). Picked up dutch pastries and meat pies along the way for lunch, ate them on a grassy strip overlooking a smaller canal in Muiden, before visiting castles, forts, and windmills. The towns are close - only about 10km away with farmland in between, and they're like miniature versions of the city. Canals everywhere, but the buildings are shorter and closer together. It's funny, Muiden feels almost like a scale model of Amsterdam (with a cool castle in the background).


We've been going to a local coffee place every morning run by a hilarious guy named Pete. He says the only good coffee shop in Seattle is "Pete's coffee bar", so his shop is the Pete's coffee of Amsterdam. He sings to himself in Italian while making cappuccinos, and when I tried to pay after he made the coffee, he insisted I wait until we were finished - "This is a time to relax!" He's been in the local coffee business for as long as I've been alive.

<-- Pete

More to come from Amsterdam...

1 comment:

  1. Oh my, I knew the bikes would be a draw. It really is a city that relys on bikes for transportation. How fun that you got out to some other towns and enjoyed your time leisurely. It is fun to just buy food and munch away whereever you find a little spot.

    So Sarah- did you bellow out your songs from the bridge while you watched the boats go by?

    Prague will be a different experience. You must start to feel like real travellers now.

    Question: did you forget anything or wish you had brought something or have too much of anything... you can tell we are starting to think about packing too.

    Love Mom and Dad P.

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