The last time I was in Amsterdam was about 25 years ago when I lived in Germany for work. We'd take the train from Duesseldorf every so often for the sheer novelty of its sinful spectacle. I don't think we ever left the 3 blocks around the Centraal train station. This time was different.
Either the city itself, or my memories of it, seem a lot more clear. We explored miles of canals and roads that circle the busiest parts of the central area to find quiet cobblestone streets, hip coffee shops and boutiques, trendy second-hand stores, and oh so many bikes.
Bicycles are at the heart of Amsterdam's identity. Every person has one. They commute to work on them. They transport their kids in wagons attached to them. They put their groceries in the baskets on the front of them. The locals seem to have an innate feel for the flow of traffic and a deep respect for the sanctity of the bike lane. After riding a bike for 2 hours around Amsterdam, I can see why. Pedestrians are a real safety threat if they're not paying attention or wander too close to the red lanes. If one bike slams on the brakes, there's likely to be a pileup. While I love the idea of this mode of transportation, I don't know that I could ever feel comfortable navigating the city that way every day.
Away from the crowds (which isn't easy to do, by the way - there are as many tourists each year as there are residents of the city), there is a true sense of authenticity and beauty to this city. The houses are stacked side by side, leaning into each other for support, telling their stories through their unique markings, window styles, and rooflines. They are adorned by animal statues, shutters that identity their industry, and a stork on the house of the midwife. Some doors sit only feet above the waterline, right against the canal. Others are set back with a view of the many houseboats that line the canals, once a low-incoming housing option but now costing about a million Euros for a floating shack on the water.
While we only stayed for a day and a half, we easily could have spent a lot more time here.
Where we stayed
The Delphi Townhouse (in the southern part of the city)
What we ate (and drank)
This trip will be remembered lovingly for the coffee machine at the hotel that made the most perfectly frothed cappuccino. We drank a lot of coffee and talked about it endlessly. We took pictures of the coffee machines. I think Stacey hugged it goodbye when we left.
Really amazing avocado sandwiches at Munch, a little health cafe that could have been totally unmemorable except that it wasn't. Right near the hotel.
The Carter - Modern European - it was good. Steaks and burgers.
...and that was IT. How did we barely eat during 36 hours in Amsterdam? I don't know.
What we did
We arrived really late on Monday night and went straight to the hotel where we all stayed up until 1am adjusting to another time difference.
The next morning we wandered down Beethovenstraat, which has a bunch of cafes and boutiques. I scored a pretty leather jacket. We left Tyler at the hotel for some much-needed alone time and wandered through the Albert Crupys market and into the central area of Amsterdam.
There, we met Tyler (who took an Uber from the hotel) and our bike guide, Ilya, and started off on a 2-hour death-defying bike tour of Amsterdam. I'm pretty sure Ilya told us a lot of things about Amsterdam, but mostly what I remember is white-knuckling the handlebars while we barely avoided getting hit by or hitting other bikers, pedestrians, cars, curbs, poles, dogs, etc.
From there, we hopped on a canal cruise which was a lot more relaxing and full of history and interesting tidbits about the way the city was built and how it has grown.
On our last morning, we wandered through Jordaan, a section of the city that's full of international cuisine and vintage shopping and walked by the Anne Frank House (which seems way more commercialized than the last time I was there 20+ years ago. I think they've added on to the museum since then.) Regardless, we didn't book our tickets 2 months in advance, so we just stared at the front for a little while trying to soak in the stories and history within those walls and all around us.
A couple of stories and sites that stood out
During the war, they hid Jews in cages with the animals at the zoo because nobody would look for them there. We apparently rode by that Zoo, but I never looked up from the bike bath because I would have ridden into the person in front of me.
There are a lot of cranky people in Amsterdam - most of them in a hurry to get somewhere and/or over the age of 65. They find us tourists annoying and I GET IT. We really are. I would be that cranky person on the bike paths if I lived there. They long for the olden times when it was less crowded, but of course, there was also a ton of poverty and drug use then so we tourists aren't all bad.
A bunch of people accidentally drive into the canals every year, often while parallel parking right next to the edge. To prove it, on our last day, we saw a fire truck with a crane attached lifting a truck from a precarious position over the side of a canal wall. It was clearly not their first rodeo. We stood and gawked and took pictures, probably to the chagrin of the driver who stood nearby. A handful of people also drown in the canals each year - usually those who are drunk and peeing over the side of the canal during the winter. Cautionary tale.
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