Palaces, Egyptian Geese, and Giant Bathtubs

74

February 5th, 2018 – This morning we went down our three flights of very, very steep stairs to see what was on offer for breakfast. Stairs here are more like ladders.

Alongside the most amazing automatic espresso/cappuccino/latte/hot water machine were poffertjes! One of my absolute long time favourite Dutch treats. I have a pan and have made them over the years, but never as often as I’d like to eat them. Along with poffertjes I have had always had a love for aebleskiver, stroopwaffels, and another little silver dollar sized pancake for which I have a pan, but cannot recall the name. I love the pastries, the breads, and many of he sweets that originate from this country.

Also on the breakfast menu were some creamy scrambled eggs, thick salty bacon, small delicious sausages (some of the best I’ve ever had), and mushrooms all set out in fabulous enamelled cast iron pots. There were several fresh baked crusty breads, apple pastries, yogurt (not in plastic foil covered cups!), sliced pineapple, halved kiwi fruits, chunks of watermelon, sliced meats and cheeses, fruit juices, rusks, and of course, sprinkles, and a bowl brimming with oranges, apples and bananas.

Kirk had meetings with his employers and with manufacturer’s today so I walked to their hotel with him and then said goodbye, setting out to explore this magnificent city filled with history, wonderful architecture, and museums galore.

There are 92 museums in Amsterdam, the choice is endless and it was hard to know where to start.

Before arriving I’d done some research and found some discount cards that were available to tourists. One is called the I Amsterdam Card and is part of the official tourism organization. It provides access to about 50 of the museums in the city, a canal boat ride, a transit pass, and some discounts here and there. It is available for one (€59), two (€74), three (€87), or four days (€98). You can even order it in advance and have it mailed to you, though I don’t know why you would bother since you can buy them at so many places. There are tourist shops all over the place that will sell them, and there is a shop in the Schiphol airport where you can pick one up.

The other option was to buy things separately. The Netherlands has what is called the Museumkaart (€55 + a €5 processing fee) that provides access to all 400 museums in the country. While intended for local residents (it’s good for 31 days, and a year if registered as a resident of the Netherlands), given my five day visit it seemed like a good option. While the I Amsterdam card provided a few extra museums, it was only good for four days and each museum could only be visited once. It also didn’t extend past the borders of the city.

A transit pass for four days was worth €22.50 (€7.50 per day with a discount for each additional day purchased at the front end) and a canal boat trip was worth between €12 – €20 depending on the company.

With all of that information under my belt, I decided to buy the Museumkaart and a separate transit pass when I felt the need. I would end up paying roughly the same, or slightly less, and received more for it.

So with that information in hand, before we left the airport on arrival, we went looking for a place to buy the Museumkaart. We stopped at an info booth and the woman pointed around the corner to the I Amsterdam shop, where I was reasonably sure I’d be turned away since it isn’t their product. I was right, but the woman did tell me that I could purchase it at any museum. She also smiled and made some comment that I can’t quite remember, but was along the lines of it being the lesser known card from a tourist perspective, but a very good deal. After we’d dropped off our luggage at the hotel and gone for our walk yesterday, we’d stopped in at the Stedelijk Museum where I bought my card and filled all my personal information on the back and had it temporarily registered for a month.

Today, after saying goodbye to Kirk and armed with several maps and tourist brochures picked up at the front desk of the hotel, I headed off towards Dam Square and the Oude Kerk where my little brochure told me I should find someone with a yellow umbrella to take interested people on a free tour of parts of the town. Freedam Tours was the best thing I could have done to start my solo week in the city; though they advertise as free, they make their income on the tips that those who take the tour may be inclined to offer. My guide, Nick, was funny, engaging, knowledgable, and an absolute delight to walk the city with for three hours! I can’t imagine anyone NOT giving them a generous amount of money for that pleasure. When Nick found out I was visiting the museums for the week he took my map and a pen and circled ones he thought I should see, and added ones that weren’t on my map. He’d worked until recently at the Rijksmuseum until their business with the tour company became so busy that he left the museum to work full time on the tours.

We walked the Red Light District and learned the history of the relationship and involvement of the church in prostitution. We walked Chinatown and learned about the drug trade and how Amsterdam went from junkie central to hard drugs taking a nosedive through the soft acceptance and regulation of marijuana, even though it is technically still illegal outside of the coffee shops. We walked and talked art, history, and how Amsterdam was formed. We talked about the Dutch East India trading company and how it was housed in the beautiful circa 1600 building that now houses a branch of the University (below).

The Oostindisch Huis (East India House) was the former headquarters of the once-powerful Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company), which was founded in 1602. It was the first multinational company and the first that handed out shares. For decades this concern dominated the global spice trade, transporing spices using large ships. The VOC sent many expeditions to the Orient to bring back silks, spices, herbs and other riches that fuelled Amsterdam’s Golden Age.

The East India House dates from the Dutch Golden Age. It was built in 1606 by Hendrick de Keyser and it was used as the city armoury. It was acquired by the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 1965 and now houses the department of Sociology.

The 17th century is considered Amsterdam’s Golden Age, when it became one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to the Baltic Sea, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Brazil, forming the basis of a worldwide trading network.

Amsterdam’s merchants had the largest share in both the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and the WIC (Dutch West India Company). These companies acquired overseas possessions that later became Dutch colonies. Amsterdam was Europe’s most important point for the shipment of goods and was the leading financial centre of the world. In 1602, the Amsterdam office of the VOC became the world’s first stock exchange by trading in its own shares.

We talked about canals, bicycles, wooden shoes, and stroopwaffles. We talked about economies throughout the ages, beer, windmills, how the Netherlands went from a Republic to a Monarchy (the opposite of the norm) and cheese. We talked about war through the ages, the Nazis and the Holocaust and the devastation to the Jewish population. We talked about Anne Frank, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. It seemed like there was little that he didn’t educate us on. And when we were all freezing from the cold and bitter wind, we tucked into a cafe for a hot coffee and a pastry, before heading off to learn about the illegalization of the catholic church, the Begijnhof, hidden churches, and how the Municipal Hall became the Royal Palace. The palace square is home to a large pigeon population and, as with any such pigeon park, it’s a place where people flock to feed and photograph the feathered residents.

Nick explained the capstones of the canal homes to us and that they depicted the profession of the tradespeople who lived and worked within – for example, the spectacles denoting that a doctor resided within the walls.

We visited the Begijnhof, an enclosed courtyard dating from the early 14th century, its entry through an arched passage from the street (below). The Begijnhof was originally built as a sactuary for the Begijntjes, a Catholic sisterhood who lived like nuns, although they took no monastic vows. The beautiful houses overlook its well-kept green garden and include the Amsterdam’s oldest surviving house Het Houten Huis dating from around 1420. The Southern fringe of the square is dominated by the Engelse Kerk (English Church) which dates from the 15 century and possesses its original medieval tower. The houses in Begijnhof are still occupied by single women today.

I asked Nick about the structural integrity of the canal homes and noted having seen many that tilted. He taught me that there are two types of tilt – intentional and unintentional. Unintentional tilt is caused by rotting pilings. The buildings in Amsterdam are built on pilings sunk deep into the saturated ground below. So long as the water table remains steady the pilings can last pretty much forever, but if the water table drops and the wood becomes exposed, rot can begin and the pilings can decay, damaging the structural integrity of the building above. When buying a home it is important to have a good inspection done since the repairs can cost into over €100,000 to replace the ancient wooden pilings with concrete and re-level the building.

Intentional tilt is completely different. Kirk and I had noted the beams extending out of the roofline of most buildings, and the large iron hooks at the end of them. I’d made an educated guess that these were historically used to transfer goods into the upper levels and were probably still used today to move furniture and appliances since the buildings are all stairclimbers, and presumably (guessing fro our hotel) with very steep stairs that would make moving large items to upper floors virtually impossible. Turns out I was right, and that, one step further, some buildings were constructed with a forward tilt to them to make the pulling of large items to upper floors easier and less potentially destructive should there be swing; it reduced the risk of items smashing into windows and brick.

After three hours of walking and collecting our tips, he bid us farewell and a great visit and I walked back off into the city a lot more aware of it’s long and storied history. If you ever find yourself heading to Amsterdam….do take the opportunity to take a tour with this group, you won’t regret it, and remember that three hours is a long time, so be generous.

I wandered back down the canals admiring the architecture of canal homes, hotels, museums. Everything is rich with history.

And sometimes, something just seemed oddly out of place…like a Canadian Department store housed in an old building in the Netherlands, that was just odd.  Somewhere along the way I stopped in at one of the many shops advertising tours and tickets and asked where I might purchase a transit pass for four days, turns out I could do it right there. The passes become active the first time you tap into a tram or bus, and are effective until 4am the day after  (or however many days the ticket is good for) the morning after the last day they are good until. Nice that they don’t strand you in the middle of the night anywhere, very considerate and thoughtful.

I walked all the way to Amsterdam Central, one of the main stations where buses, trams, the metro, and the trains all arrived and departed with a dizzying organized confusion. In this area people from all over the region take transit to and from work, and park their bicycles in mindboggling numbers. I walked behind a fellow looking for his bicycle and, when he found it, I stopped and asked how he could ever find it among the thousands that were parked. I have trouble finding my truck at Costco sometimes, I think if I parked a bicycle here I’d never see it again! He laughed and said he’d only had trouble this morning since he’d parked it quickly and ran to take his train. My mind was blown.

There are literally thousands of bicycles parked here…. there is a ground level parking area that is three or four rows deep, and two or three more ground level ones in visual range. But what was more impressive was the multi-level bicycle parking lot. It was a showstopper.

I wandered back through the city towards “home” admiring buildings and canals along the way. I admire the residents for their parking abilities and can’t imagine trying to not go into the canal on a dark evening. I looked up the stats online and found that the city workers fish out about 35 cars per year. Amsterdam has a special division of the Fire Department to respond to vehicles that park in the 100 kilometres of Amsterdam canals. Amsterdam has 4 full time divers who are 24 hour standby, the only city in the country to have this capability. Bicycles on the other hand, end up in the canals a lot; 12 000 to 15 000 bicycles are pulled out of Amsterdam canals every year. Many of these bikes fall into the canals during common periods of gusty winds; others are thrown in after being stolen or by inebriated partiers.

My last stop of the day was the Stedlijk Museum (which looks like a giant bathtub) where I used my Museumkaart to enter. The woman behind the counter scanned my card, turned it over to check the name matched the system, and then smiled and handed it back to me and said something in Dutch. I looked at her, confusion on my face, and she launched into something else, also in Dutch. When I said “English?” it was her turn to look at me in confusion and she said “But I thought you were Dutch” and then she pointed to the name on my card and said “Your name is Dutch”. It’s true, a part of my heritage is Dutch and that is reflected in my last name, but I do not speak a stitch of Dutch.

I spent an hour and a half in the museum exploring modern and contemporary art before making my way back towards our hotel. I checked my iWatch and it told me that I had walked 24km today. No wonder my feet hurt!

The one negative of the day was the discovery that there was a lack of eating establishments close to our hotel. The place we are staying is on the edge of a quiet residential area, and that’s lovely, but there are few small and cosy restaurants nearby. That posed a problem, until I found a wonderful little takeaway place that had fresh made cannelloni and other tasty pastas behind a glass cabinet. The woman chose two delicious looking cannelloni into a container for me and reheated it. I also chose a slice of a fabulous looking lemon cake. Neither was a disappointment when I got them back to the room and savoured them along with a glass of wine.

And then I pretty much went comatose from exhaustion.

Good day!

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