Big
city hopscotching has been the pace of our journey for the past few weeks, which
lead to many days when we awakened and had to ask each other where we were. I
was thrilled to finally wake up in Amsterdam, for my third visit and Joe’s
inaugural, because I was anxious to show him why I so love the Netherlands. It
was a delight, and an oddity, to finally be somewhere at the height of its
season (and the price of our Easter week hotel room proved we’d found Holland’s
peak) since we’ve spent so much time in so many locations where the attractions
are closed and the place is deserted. The tulips were in bloom and Amsterdam
was teeming.
You first realize that this city will be different as you gaze
over the hundreds – no, thousands – of bicycles parked and packed like sardines
in row after row beside the Amsterdam Centraal
train station. Our hotel was right next to the always-bustling transportation
hub and overlooked what is the largest bike parking lot I’ve ever seen. The
multistoried facility was filled with the city’s carriage-of-choice, all of them
rattletraps with rusted rims, duct-taped seats, patched tires and corroded bodies. They
were transportation tools at their most basic, did the job for their
owners and what they looked like didn’t much matter. The extent to which Amsterdam is bike-centric
becomes readily apparent as you stand on a street corner waiting for the pedestrian
light to give you the go-ahead. To one side are cars in the vehicle lane
awaiting their green light and on the other, in the ever-present bike lane, are
riders waiting for their very own cycling light to turn green as well. Yes,
there are three directional lights at each intersection and walking around town
can become quite dicey at times, even if you’re paying close attention. While
the automobile is certainly present in Amsterdam, it appears to be much less
important than the almighty bicycle and the trolley. As a pedestrian, you’re
much more likely to get hit by a bike than a car or a tram, and on several
occasions we came awfully close.
Amsterdam is a beautiful city and for several reasons is unique among European metropolises. Its more than one hundred kilometers of canals (it
boasts even more than Venice) that radiate from the harbor in a concentric pattern
of semi-circles crossed by perpendicular spokes carve the central city into a patchwork quilt of increasingly
large canal-bordered
islands and provide its distinctive charm. The
urge to treat ourselves to a special meal hadn’t tempted us since we’d left
Italy, but the allure of a romantic dinner cruise on a canal boat caught our
fancy. We hesitated just a bit, thinking it might be too touristy, but we went
ahead and lost ourselves in a lovely two-hour, candlelit meander through
Amsterdam while enjoying a delightful dinner with fine wine a-flowing.
The
city is filled with fabulous art and architecture and we managed to fit in
visits to two of my favorite galleries in the world: the stately, old world Rijksmuseum and the contemporary, sunny Van Gogh Museum. We enjoyed the works of
the Dutch Old Masters and marveled at Rembrandt’s massive Night Watch. The
exhaustive Van Gogh collection always makes me both happy and blue because the
paintings are so lovely and the colors so bright (like my favorite, Bedroom in Arles), but the gifted artist
suffered such a short, tormented life. While I don’t find the Dutch monumental buildings
particularly appealing -- the churches, palaces and municipal structures -- I absolutely
love the narrow townhome residences and small shops that line the canals with their
peeked, crenulated rooflines and interesting, white, multi-mullioned window
frames. They appear to be filled with warm, cozy garrets and interesting office
spaces in which I could imagine myself wanting to spend lots of time. My cheery
imaginings quickly
vanished however, with our visit to the Anne Frank House in one of the homes
along the Prinsengracht. It was my second pilgrimage to the former
warehouse and now museum in whose secret, concealed annex the young author, her family and four
others hid for two years prior to being deported to concentration camps in 1944.
Moving through the cramped living quarters on whose walls Anne’s celebrity
magazine clippings are pasted and the wall chart her parents used to mark the
growth of their two daughters, hit me just as hard as it had 35 years earlier.
There’s no statute of limitations on sadness and heartache.
As
is our custom, we did much wandering around the city, in and out of the winding
streets combing for potential dinner spots. We sought out the
establishments we’d glimpsed on our dinner cruise but those that appeared to be
warm, cozy boîtes in the dark from
our canal cruise were simply plain, local hangouts when we returned in the
early evening sun, so we continued our rambling. We had five dinners in Amsterdam, only one
of which was at a Dutch restaurant where we had a simple but hearty meal of pea
soup, salad and roast chicken. The other four nights we chose Italian fare twice
(we do miss the pastas we’d so come to love), Indian once and of course, we had
to experience an Indonesian rijsttafel (rice table). This elaborate meal,
adapted by the Dutch from the cuisine of their former colony, consists of multiple
small dishes (we had seventeen) served all at once with several varieties of rice.
Our meal included egg rolls, lamb, pork and beef satay with peanut sauce, stewed and pickled vegetables and nuts and
was delicious. While Dutch cuisine is not the reason most visitors come to the
Netherlands, it does include some incredibly fine cheeses, my favorite of which
was a sharp cheddar-like Polder Gold.
Amsterdam
is an experiment in progressive living and thrives on its attitude of live-and-let-live. Prostitution is legal
as is the sale and use of cannabis in so-called “coffee shops.” I’ve always
found it suggestive, given Amsterdam’s reputation (or perhaps its just
convenient for the purveyors of all-things-erotic), that the official flag of the
city is three white X’s on a black and red background. I understand that they’re
actually Saint Andrew’s crosses with a link to tradition, but the evocative
triplets are used ubiquitously to exploit X-rated entertainment. A trip to the
city of laissez-faire would not be
complete without a mosey through the lanes near the train station
where deep cleansing breaths in fragrant clouds of smoke outside hazy coffee
shops have the potential to ease all manner of aches and pains. And then there
is De Wallen, the infamous Red Light
District. Just as I’m always amused when visiting New Orleans by the sight of Midwestern,
suburban parents pushing strollers and older couples clutching their
grandchildren’s hands walking down Bourbon Street parting the waves of wild partying,
so it is in Amsterdam. The incongruity gets me every time. Tourists of every
variety stroll the streets: there are Asian tour groups snapping pictures,
backpackers munching on gyro sandwiches, elegant couples arm-in-arm and elderly
troupes with matching visors off cruise ships. Witness the quarter in the evening and it’s like being in some
strange otherworld on steroids. I feel a bit like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life when he stumbles
into the sleazy, neon world of Pottersville that developed in his absence. You leave
the conventional world of Amsterdam, cross the street and enter the tenderloin knowing
exactly what you’re going to see – prostitutes in windows under dim red lights
-- but to actually see the women on display in person, like mannequins (or
electronics), is definitely surreal and more than a little sad. You want to avoid
looking but just can’t help yourself -– it’s like watching an accident about to
happen and not being able to turn away. So many of the women just looked bored,
were busy texting or chewing gum and others would catch men’s eyes and then tap
on the window. It was unnerving, depressing and downright bizarre.
We
took the train north of Amsterdam to see the flat, marshy countryside in the
Zaanse Schans area on a rainy, windy morning and the raw weather, typical of
the Netherlands in April, chilled us to the bone. The open air conservation park presents life in Holland as it used to be and we welcomed the
temporary shelter from the elements provided by the well-preserved, functioning
windmills and the collection of historical dark green cottages with pretty white
trim and red accents. Our explorations outside Amsterdam also took us to Alkmaar, a picturesque
town known for its cheese. Hundreds of visitors flock to the town for the
weekly reenactment of a typical market day of yore (and lucky for us this day was sunny) with workers
in traditional costumes -- loose white pants and shirts with black sashes and
straw hats with brightly colored bands -- hustling enormous cheese wheels on
shoulder barrows across the square. We met many lovely Dutch people both in
Amsterdam and on our visits to its environs and as I’d noted on my previous
trips, while we saw few with the flaxen hair often attributed to the Dutch, we’d
never, ever seen so many people with beautiful blue eyes – light and dark and
all shades in-between.
Holland
is a compact country with so much to experience beyond the classic highlights
of windmills, wooden shoes, tulips and cheese. We made sure to include all of these in our visit, but we’ll have
barely scratched the surface before it will be time to leave. We have one more
essential stop to make before our departure – the world-renowned Keukenhof Gardens – and then it will be
time to head south for our return to the city of light, our next reunion with
Chris and Caroline and our long-awaited participation in the Paris Marathon.
No comments:
Post a Comment