A-A-A-Amsterdam

jill
Sep 29, 2017
8 min read

Updated: Dec 13, 2020

DAY ONE: Finally here! Went to the airbnb first since the plane landed so early, and had trouble opening the door...but once inside, it is pretty nice! I wound up having the whole place to myself which is GREAT. It was very foggy, but still a beautiful view. Click photos to see them better and to read comments!

I went back out and headed to Prinsengracht street where the Anne Frank house is. Got there a bit early (my ticket was for 1:00), so I went up a couple more blocks to a famous pancake place--the Pancake Bakery. I kept hearing about Dutch pancakes and how amazing they are--they are huge, so you only need one. They come in both savory and sweet flavors. I went with a bacon and apple pancake.

What a disappointment! Boring and hardly any flavor. Gummy on the edges. Don't let anyone sell you on the pancake thing. Maybe the sweet ones are better...I don't know. I wound up pouring syrup all over this thing to give it some flavor, and still only ate about a quarter of it. And weirdly, when the bill came, instead of mints, they give you COFFEE flavored candies. Bleh.

Walked back down to the Anne Frank house and got in the "e-ticket holder's line" which is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than the folks who line up first thing in the morning just to try and get one of the limited admissions that open up after 3. Once inside, I'm sort of overwhelmed by the history of it. This is where she was. This is where her family was. This is where she wrote in her diary. Dang. The let down is that because it is SO very crowded, you feel guilted into moving quickly through the house. You aren't allowed to take any photos, which is supposed to make things move even more quickly. When you first enter, you travel through a few rooms of background, then...you walk through the door hidden behind the bookcase and go up those stairs.

I touched the window that Anne looked out of in her room. There are still photos on the wall that she put up of famous Hollywood types--now covered by plexiglass so idiots won't touch them. You see Mr and Mrs Frank's room (later, Margot also slept there), Anne and Margot's room (later the dentist moved in with Anne), then past Peter's space under the stairs that lead up to the van Pels living space. There is no furniture in the rooms...just the walls and some of the wallpaper (and plumbing fixtures) since it was all destroyed by the Nazis. Here are a couple of postcards I got that show what Anne's room would have looked like furnished and a 3D model of the entire building--the upper two floors on the right are where they were staying. For some reason, they show up normally on my end, but rotated for you. Sorry!

And then...payoff. The diary. Her handwriting. It's right there. Wow.

Here's a look at the outside and area around the building. Click for more info.

After that I took a hop-on, hop-off bus tour (which, btw, are horrible in terms of getting any kind of historical info, etc, about what you are seeing. They just sort of zip around from stop to stop and you listen to recorded music and "fun facts." The good thing about them is that you can get around the city and see the top sights easily since the ticket is good for 24 hours, and they give you a bit of geographical orientation to the city) and got off at Museumplein, which is the area where all the big museums are congregated.

You get off in front of the Rijksmuseum (pronounced RIKES-museum), which is beautiful. I wasn't planning on visiting, because I get bored easily looking at old paintings unless they are from someone I love. I'm not a big Rembrandt fan, so I walked though the center of the building (which is basically a large tunnel) to the other side where the more interesting museums (to me, anyway) are.

Around back is also the famous "I am Amsterdam sign" and some REAL AMERICAN HOT DOGS, lol (see the sign). They were pretty good :-)

As I was walking toward the VanGogh museum (I had tickets for 5pm), I stumbled across the MOCO museum--they were having a Banksy/Dali exhibit...and I had an extra 45 minutes to kill...so I went in. AWESOME. So happy I found it! It was one of my favorite exhibits of the trip. Small, but packed with good stuff. Click though for a slideshow...if you hover over the photo you see my comments. And here's a video I found on youtube by a guy who was there a couple of months before I was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL506iDMg7U

Got to the VanGogh museum which is beautiful from the outside...and well-organized. But...I'm not really a VanGogh fan. Everyone told me to go, and I'm glad I did, but I got through the whole thing in about 20 minutes. Impressions? Boy, did that man love his own face. The original selfie king? I think so. And it is interesting...when he paints other people's faces, they are poorly done. And his face...doesn't really look like him. He made himself look better, and the paintings are far superior to the paintings he did of other people. Oh, and some sunflowers :-)

It threatened to rain all day, but held off...and not too cold. By the time I got back to my airbnb for the evening, the skies opened and rain poured down. Perfect, watching it from those giant windows in my room.

Oh, yeah. Something else I did today. Around the corner from the Anne Frank house is a coffee shop called "Paradox." In Amsterdam, coffee shops don't serve coffee. They serve weed. And this place is famous for its potent space cakes, considered the best in the city (considering each one contains a gram of weed, they had better be). It was very tiny and hidden down a small alley. Picked up a space cake for later. If you've not partaken before, you eat about a quarter of it...half if you are more experienced. It took about 90 minutes to kick in, and then it was extremely smooth and pleasant. Not a deep high...just extremely pleasant relaxation. I noticed at one point I could no longer understand what people were saying on television (yes it was English), which made me laugh. Then I fell asleep.

Initial impressions of Amsterdam:

transit system here is AWESOME (once you find the right bus/tram to board)
pedestrians and bicyclists (who are EVERYWHERE) are RUDE, but the Dutch themselves are delightful--anytime I needed help, people were more than kind.
more parked bikes than people riding them!
traffic insanity! cars, trams, buses, and bikes sharing the road...how do they do it???
EVERYONE speaks English. Someone on my Facebook feed mentioned being disappointed that everyone in Amsterdam speaks English since they have their own language (Dutch). But I see it differently. There are a lot of people in this country who scream "speak English" to people who are struggling. In Europe, they learn MANY languages, but especially English, since tourism is a huge business. You set yourself up to be more marketable in the business world if you know more than one language (a lot of the Dutch also speak German and/or French). It shows them to be a more open-minded people, not as nationalistic as we are here. They are proud to speak many languages, and I find them to be an example to follow. Wish I knew more languages.

DAY TWO: Got up early and went to the Amsterdam Central train station because I had been told by the company I purchased my train ticket from Vienna to Budapest from that I could pick up the ticket here. They lied. But the woman at the ticket desk was so nice. She gave me a wifi password so I could find the email that told me I was supposed to pick it up there, but I wasn't getting a signal. She told me I may have to go outside to get a signal...and that she would wait for me until I got back. WHAT???? And guess what? When I went back in, she WAS waiting for me. She said that I would have to pick it up at the Brussels train station since it was a Belgian train company. She even printed out all the info I would need to help me.

I also found a Dutch version of Kinko's so I could print out my new train ticket to Brussels...and since I can't use my phone/texts in Europe (roaming is INSANELY expensive), only wifi, I had trouble getting into my email since I was using their computer (yahoo makes you verify before it lets you open it...and it verifies through email or text...neither of which was working) and it was driving me crazy! The guy at the desk gave me a discount for the internet time I used and only charged me for the copy of the ticket I printed because he had seen me getting frustrated and felt bad for me. The Dutch are wonderful people...unless they are riding a bike or walking toward you on the sidewalk (but that is a European thing in general. People will continue to walk side by side toward you , rather than one person moving behind the other to give you room).

After finishing all my administrative tasks, I headed back out for more sightseeing. Started at the Stedelijk (pronounced STAY duh lick) museum, which is their modern art museum. Pretty good...one cool installation featured a blue tape line running all the way through it at exactly the same height . Also saw some Mondrian and Lichtenstein pieces. My feet were already hurting so I considered skipping the ARTIS zoo...but I had already purchased the ticket, so I went (using that hop-on, hop-off bus ticket again to get there--bonus!). Glad I did. Very nice zoo--fairly modern, even though it is one of the first zoos in the world. A lioness looked straight at me...a giraffe stared into my soul...and a kid and his mom rolled a coin along the window of the sea lions and the sea lions would follow it--so fun to watch!

After the zoo, it was finally time for the Red Light District. I started slowly, visiting the Oude Kerk (Old Church), a church built in 1213 (making it Amsterdam's oldest building). There are over 10,000 folks buried underneath, and an odd sculpture of a hand caressing a breast oustide the front door (it was apparently set in the cobblestones one night by an anonymous artist). Rembrandt often came here, and his kids were christened here.

It was while I was walking to the church that I noticed a small alley off to the left. It was only large enough for two thin people to stand side by side. And then, I saw the signs saying "no fucking photos." I had found them. I walked down the alley, and BOOM, mostly on my right, were women in large windows. I found that I was too embarassed to look them in the eye (not sure why), so I hurried through to the end...then back again to where I started. I will say one thing....they are way hotter than I expected. Oh, and if they are in a blue light rather than a red light, it is a trans prostitute. Hope that group of frat dudes I saw entering the building knew that...

More stuff:

Today, I smelled a lot more weed in the street. It is illegal to smoke in the street, and I did not see anyone doing it...it just wafts out of all the coffee shops into the street. FUN FACT: It is illegal to smoke tobacco cigarettes in a smoke shop!
I think one more day would have been perfect to see all of Amsterdam (at least what I wanted to see). But I got to see everything I REALLY wanted to in the two days I had.
Amsterdam is beautiful in the rain...but I wish I had seen it in the sun :-)
Amsterdam is pretty spread out, but it is flat. Public transit (or renting a bike) is still the way to go: buses, trams, metro. Easy to understand and everything is in Dutch and English
the name Amsterdam is literal...the city was built as a dam for the Amstel river
there are more canals in Amsterdam than in Venice
learn to say "thank you" in your country's language of choice (here, it's "dank u wel" pronounced DAHNK-you-vell)
no, I did not visit the Heineken brewery (but apparently every other Amercian tourist did because I saw a lot of bags). I drink GOOD beer.