Wednesday, May 8th - Tuesday, May 14th
Wednesday we took the train back to Amsterdam Centraal Station and the Metro to our last apartment. We walked a few blocks to a small convenience store for supper. I had a Turkish pizza. It was rolled up like a skinny burrito in a tortilla, but it was a yummy Mediterranean style of bread stuffed with tasty meat and veggies. It was delicious. We were the only ones in there and we had a nice visit with the owner who had moved here from Turkey many years ago. Then we went back to our apartment and watched three Netflicks movies, a nice break from all the running around.
This lovely iris was along the walkway outside our apartment.
Thursday we were back in Bike City! The city estimates there are up to two million bikes in this city of less than one million people. About 15,000 bikes a year are fished out of the canals. They say that's only .7%, but still. Varying reasons may be gusty winds, thrown in by drunk weekend revelers, just convenience if your bike isn't worth the cost of repairs it needs, cars bump them over the edge because there are no guard rails, thieves who just want to dispose of them when they are done using them, and some claim it's the Amsterdam Mafia giving friendly warnings to people who cross them! The canals used to be an open sewer until about 1860 when they started to see, or rather smell, the error of their ways and encouraged people to stop using them as a trash can. But some have still not totally kicked the habit. There are people paid full-time with benefits to fish out bikes and other debris, with a huge hydraulic claw on a crane sitting on the front of a barge, since the 1960s. There were so many bikes in the canals that they were scraping the bottoms of the boats. They tow an empty barge behind to carry the bikes and stuff. Two guys fish for bikes everyday and say it's the best city job you can get.
Around the year 1250, locals built a dam on the River Amstel, creating Amstel-dam. They drained the marshy delta, channeled the water into canals, sank pilings and built a city. By the 1300s it was an international trade center for German beer, locally caught herring, cloth, bacon, salt and wine. It was built on millions of pilings, founded on unstable mud that sits on stable sand. The pilings were driven 30 feet through the soggy soil into the sand. The Royal Palace two pictures below sits on 13,000 pilings and is still solid after 350 years. Concrete has been used since WWII, driven 60 feet and sometimes 120 feet today. It is a man-made city, built on trees, protected by dikes and laced with canals. From 1865 to 1876 the tech-minded Dutch built a ship canal from IJ Bay to the North Sea. More than 100,000 ships dock per year on the outskirts of Amsterdam, making it Europe's forth busiest seaport.
Thursday we were back in Amsterdam checking out more of the sights. Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky (1855) behind WWII Memorial in Dam Square. A National Remembrance of the Dead ceremony is held every year on May 4th to commemorate the casualties of WWII and subsequent armed conflicts. Dam Square is the real heart of the original town. All roads lead to the Royal Palace. The Nieuwe Kerk stores soil from all of the Netherlands provinces, as well as those in the Dutch East Indies, and has all the province crests.
Koninklijk Paleis (king-like palace) or Royal Palace on Dam Square with a small food truck parked out front. We also did the Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum) this day. The theme is adapt, collaborate or resist and they portray very personal stories of what choices individuals and families had and why they made the choices they made. A very good museum, near the Jewish History Museum and across the street from the Artis Zoo. We had lunch at a pub around the corner. John had a burger on Turkish bread with friets (fries) and a bier. I had pumpkin soup (a favorite of mine) with bread and ice tea. From here we walked to De Wallen (the wall), or the Red Light District, as it's more commonly known. The neighborhood was so named because of the walls that used to be around the original harbor here.
Condonmerie (condom store) in the Red Light District just a couple blocks from Dam Square..
This small statue was put up in 2007 to honor prostitutes and says "Respect sex workers all over the world." There are 300 one-room cabins rented by prostitutes in this neighborhood. This port town catered to sailors and businessmen away from home and has always accommodated the sex trade. That doesn't mean they necessarily approve. They just find it a matter of practicality, the same way they feel about legalized marijuana.
Another one of those handy, dandy street urinals along the canal.
Sculpture of a hand caressing a breast in the cobblestone street. We most likely would not have noticed this, except we were following the walking tour guide in the Amsterdam book by Rick Steves.
More canal scenes. There are 165 canals in the city, about 90 islands and over 1,900 bridges. The houses are 4.5 meters wide and 4 or 5 stories tall, each with its own unique design. They were taxed by the width facing the street. Therefore, their homes and businesses are very long and narrow. Originally the business was on the ground floor with living quarters above and storage at the top. If you look closely, you may be able to see the cargo hooks near the peak on some of the houses. They were built to tilt somewhat toward the canal, so furniture and other large items could be hoisted up to the top floors without banging against the building. They are referred to as dancing houses, due to the way they lean.
About 400 times a year ambulances are called for someone who fell into a canal. On average 18 people a year drown, about 20% due to suicide. A special division of the Fire Department responds to vehicles that fall into a canal. They have four full-time divers on 24-hour standby, the only city in the country with this capability. Many canal tour operators claim that one car a week falls into the canals. Locals joke that the canals are three meters deep, one meter of water, one meter of mud and one meter of bikes.
Another Feels Good Coffee Shop. There are many museums in this neighborhood, including the Erotic Museum, Prostitution Museum, Marijuana Museum, Medieval Torture Museum, etc.
I loved this sign in a pub window we walked by.
The Bulldog was the first coffee shop. Now there is a chain of them. From here, we went home and watched some more Netflix movies and shared some cheese and bread for supper.
Friday, May 10th, we went to Alkmaar to watch the weekly cheese auction. We had lunch at a little pub nearby. I had a brie tosti (toasted sandwich) and ice tea. John had an omelet and two beers!
These guys carry the lots of cheese with a type of harness around their shoulders to the scale in the Weigh House and then bring it out to be auctioned.
I couldn't get close enough to get a good picture due to the big crowd of people surrounding the action, but there were lots of pallets of cheese.
This fellow was giving out samples. He had an instrument that would dig a long plug out similar to a piece of string cheese. Then he would break off pieces and pass them out.
The guy in the center was wearing wooden shoes and he told us they were very comfortable and very practical for walking on the polders (fields) that are sometimes kind of spongy. He was a sales rep for one of the only two companies involved in the auction day anymore. It is more of a tourist attraction than the real deal that it used to be. He said they only auction about 30,000 pounds on auction days now, but it used to be more like 100,000 pounds when lots of small farmers brought their products here.
They were selling $10.00 sample bags and they were selling like crazy.
This cute little sales lady was posing for lots of pictures.
After the lots of cheese are purchased they are carted down the alley behind, where the company trucks are waiting to load up their goods.
I think they weighed about 30 pounds and this guy was tossing them from the cart to the other guy who was catching them and stacking them on a pallet for loading.
Later we were in the museum that was upstairs in the Weigh House. You can see there isn't much cheese left. The auction is just about over, but there is still quite a crowd there watching. The museum was also very interesting. For centuries small dairy farms in North Holland were housed within traditional Dutch farmhouse/barn structures shaped like cheese covers. Each kept an average of 15 cows and milk was turned into cheese right on the farm. Today the typical farmer has 80 cows and each produces approximately 25 liters a day. Nearly every village had a private bull walker that walked with his bull from farm to farm from the start of May until the end of July. He blew his horn to announce his arrival. At farms where a cow was in heat waiting to be bred, a pole with a flag was placed at the side of the road. After WWII artificial insemination took over. Vinegar, beer or linseed oil was used to rub into the wheels of cheese to prevent moisture loss and mold forming. Now it's all kept in climate controlled rooms. On the butter churner there was a staff with a wooden cross on a disc with holes at the end that had to be pushed and pulled up and down 70 to 80 times per minute for 20 to 40 minutes. It took a pair of very strong arms. The farmer's wife made cheese twice a day on the farm until around 1880, when cheese started to be made in a factory. Some 300 farmers transported an average of 120 Edam cheese rounds in each boat or wagon bound for Alkmaar. After 1850, cheese was often transported on a goods wagon or cheese wagon. A cheese cover or layer of grass was laid over the cheese to keep it from drying out. The Netherlands has some 18,000 dairy farms with 1.5 million cows that produce 12 billion liters of milk. About half is used to produce cheese. The Dutch eat an average of 20 kilos (44 lbs.) of cheese per person per year. The majority is exported, starting back in 1600 and is now sold worldwide. Edam was the most produced, but Gouda has now overtaken it. Both are now exported to 123 countries.
An interesting bike parked on the sidewalk with room to carry four children between the front tire and the handlebars.
When we got back to Amsterdam we walked by Rembrandtplein (plaza) with this life-size sculpture of Rembrandt's famous painting, The Night Watchman. Then we stopped to get me a gelato cone and headed home for the evening.
This place must be operating on the theory that if you keep the expectations low, there shouldn't be any complaints.
The Haarlem Train Station is one of Holland's oldest stations (decor from 1908) and sits on the oldest rail line in the country. Saturday we checked out the Haarlem neighborhood street market.
The Grote Kerk (Great Church) in Haarlem towers over the Grote Markt (Market Square). A fire destroyed the old church in 1328 and the Grote Kerk was built over 150 years (1390 to 1540) with red and gray brick topped with a slate-covered wood roof and a stacked stone tower that had to be removed after eight years when the church began sinking under its weight. It was moved to another church and used as a lookout by Napoleon. Since it was classified as part of the town's defense, it became city property and the city must help to maintain it. The Great Church is surrounded by lean-to type additions that have been rented out to shop keepers since medieval times, when religion and commerce were more intertwined, to bring in a little extra cash. Haarlem gave America's Harlem its name back when New York was New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony. The square was bustling with the Saturday market, lots of yummy food, produce, baked goods, clothing and other miscellaneous trinkets to buy. I had a Vietnamese loempie (small egg roll), but resisted buying anything else. It is where ten streets converge and has been the town's centerpiece for 700 years. Until the 1990s, trolleys ran through the square and cars were parked everywhere. Now it is strictly a pedestrian zone, a great place to buy pickled herring, Vlaamse friets (Flemish fries) with mayo, stroopwafels (waffles with syrup in the center) and poffertjes (little sugar donuts cooked fresh). There is a statue here of L.J. Coster whom they credit with inventing modern printing before Gutenberg. Their Town Hall was built from a royal hunting lodge in the mid-1200s. The town drunk used to hang out on the bench in front and expose himself to newlyweds coming down the stairs. Rather than arresting him, the townspeople simply moved the bench (a typical Dutch solution to the problem). Haarlemmers were notorious consumers of beer. It was a popular breakfast drink and the average person drank six pints a day.
Originally known as St. Bavo's Church, it is one of the best known landmarks in the Netherlands, visible from miles around. St. Bavo was a local noble who frequented 7th century red light districts during his youth. After his conversion to Catholicism, he moved out of his castle and into a hollow tree, where he spent his days fasting and praying. In the late 1500s, St. Bavos became a Dutch Reformed Protestant church along with much of the country. From then on the anti-saint Protestants simply called it Grote Kerk.
The 15th century church has Holland's greatest pipe organ. From 1738, it is 100 feet tall.
It's more than 5,000 pipes impressed both Handel and Mozart.
One of the tombs of some stinking rich person.
Notice all the lines in the floor indicating graves of less wealthy patrons. If you had a little money, you at least got some fancy etching on your spot in the floor. They were sometimes buried five deep due to lack of floor space and the church's desire for continued income. The famous artist and hometown boy, Frans Hals, is buried here.
Example of the coffins buried under the floor. Not exactly airtight.
This man and woman were appointed by Prince William of Orange to lead the defense of the city of Haarlem, even leading a regiment of women, during the siege by Spanish troops in Dec. 1572 to July 1573 when they were finally forced to surrender.
Just a cool building we walked by.
Most bikes have saddle bags on the back and a carrying basket of some sort in the front. Some even have a windshield like this one. Notice the child's seat behind the handlebars with the foot piece to strap in their feet.
The front half of a Volkswagen built onto a barbecue grill used for catering, sitting in the front window of a restaurant we walked by.
Old fashioned milk delivery cart.
Walking back to the Haarlem Train Station.
We walked through Klokhuisplein (clock house plaza). This windmill was operational from 1778 to 1932. It is a museum and there is an outdoor sitting area where we just sat and enjoyed the view for a while. On the far left side across the river is a blue boat that is a gas station for all the river traffic.
Looking back as we head to the train station where we caught the bus to Zandvoort en Zee (Sand Fort on Sea?).
Zandvoort Train Station about 150 yards from the Zuiderzee (southern sea, vast inlet to the North Sea) Boardwalk.
This is a very popular seaside resort with lots of high-rise hotels. I know it looks like seagulls, but these are kite surfers or wind surfers. There were hundreds of them here at this seaside resort on the North Sea.
Zooming in a bit.
Almost empty tram going home, very rare indeed.
Statue of Anne Frank in Westermarkt Square near the Anne Frank House Museum which we toured on Sunday. The Frank family hid from the Nazis in a small, hidden section of this home for 25 months until they were finally discovered and sent to concentration camps where they all died, except for the father, who saw to it that Anne's diaries were eventually published. Reservations for the museum must be made about two months in advance. It is very busy and crowded, but also very organized and quiet as everyone contemplates what it must have been like.
This triangular pink stone with flowers that juts into the canal in front of Westerkerk
(Western Church built in 1631) is called Homomonument, a memorial to homosexuals who lost their lives in WWII, and a commemoration of all those persecuted for their sexuality. The pink triangle design is the symbol that the Nazis used to mark homosexuals. Rembrandt is buried somewhere in this church, but no one knows exactly where. The carillon chimes every 15 minutes. A carillon is a set of bells of different sizes and pitches and was invented by Dutch bell makers in the 1400s. During WWII the Westerkerk's carillon played everyday, reminding Anne Frank and her family that there was indeed an outside world.
This was an artist selling her works there in the square.
Another guy selling trinkets of some sort from his three-wheeled truck.
Lover's Canal Cruise, the one we took our first week here. The bridges like this in Amsterdam have an average height of less than 7 feet of headroom, some less than 6 feet, varying with the water level.
Houseboats and other old-fashioned wooden boats. Amsterdam has approximately 50 miles of canals, most lined with an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 houseboats that were once cargo ships that became obsolete by the 1930s. They found a new use as houseboats where dry land is so limited and pricey. Former cargo holds were fashioned into elegant, cozy living rooms and once powerful engines were removed to make room for living space. Moorage spots are prized and grandfathered in and they can plug hoses and cables into outlets along the canals to get water and electricity. Zoning in some ritzy neighborhoods does not allow houseboats. The official speed limit on the canals is about 4 miles per hour. When the sun goes down and the lights come on, people cruise the sparkling canals with an on-board hibachi and a bottle of wine. Even the funkiest scows become floating parties. Junkie boats are sometimes abandoned. The city confiscates them and auctions them off three times a year.
We had brunch at this very modern place called simply Pancakes. They served very thin, plate-sized pancakes with about any flavor or topping you could think of (sweet, savory, spicy) and they were awesome. John had chocolate, strawberry, whipped cream and cocoa on his. I had smoked chicken, zucchini, savory and a mochachino. Mmm, Mmm!
After our yummy brunch of pancakes and our visit to the Anne Frank Museum we walked to Vondelpark. We spotted this little sculpture in a tree in a small park we walked through on our way to the most famous park in Amsterdam. Vondelpark has five restaurants, several playgrounds, lots of hiking and biking trails, a skate rental shop, an open-air theater and a rose garden. It is the biggest (120 acres) and most visited park in the Netherlands with over 10 million visitors annually.
Rollerbladers in Vondelpark. Amsterdammers get their skating fix every Friday night in Vondelpark. They meet here in front of the pavilion below and we did see a huge group of them go by on the street.
Vondelpark is named for 17th century playwright and poet, Joost van den Vondel. It opened in 1865. Several views in the park below.
This bicycle-built-for-two has a child's seat on the back, a carrying crate on the front, a child's glider bike strapped to the handlebars and an older child's bike locked up next to it. The Netherland's 17 million people own 17 million bikes, with many people owning two, a long distance racing bike and an in-city bike, often deliberately kept in poor maintenance, so it's less enticing to the many bike thieves. Local are diligent about putting double locks on their bikes.
Thatched roof cafe in the park.
Lots of street lights have a bike symbol for stop and go besides the walking symbol.
We walked home through Rembrandt Park which was also a lovely, big park, but not so busy and did not have cafes and playgrounds and such like Vondelpark. We walked about 4 or 5 miles through the parks. We stopped at Albert Hein (grocery chain) for a few snacks and watched a few more Netflix movies. You have probably guessed by now, that we don't get Netflix at home in our RV, so we were taking full advantage that we could access it in our apartment here.
Monday, May 13th, we visited Zaanse Schans Open-Air Museum, a recreated 17th century Dutch town with windmills and old-time shops. The main attraction is the very good Zaans Museum that explains Hollands industrial past and present (life, work, wind and water) and includes this old-time Verkade Cookie Factory with samples. Verkade is a very popular cookie brand here, kind of like our Nabisco.
This young man did a very interesting demonstration of how they make wooden shoes.
They also had some very interesting displays of different types of wooden shoes. They were adapted for various purposes including ones with boot-like leather to the knee, frilly, decorative bridal clogs, skis and roller skates and spiky clogs for ice fishing.
Different styles were made in different regions. Who knew?
Changes in fashion, of course.
There were several smaller museums, including a clock museum, a grocery store, a bakery, a cheese farm, a weavers house and the windmills.
There are ten windmills still here along the River Zaans. This was the most important and first modern industrial area in the world in the 17th and 18th centuries. Between 1600 and 1900 over 1,000 factory windmills were active in the Zaan region, lining 11 kilometers of the River Zaans. Sawmills supplied planks for shipping, hemp mills for sails, and grain and hulling mills for shipping, cookie factories, cocoa, oil, paper and paint mills. In 1596 a wind-powered sawmill arrived on a raft, the first industrial sawmill in the region. It could be turned around at its base to face the wind, unlike other windmills where only the top part is turned, There were eventually over 300 of these types cutting wood in the Zaan region. Each of the windmills here are still working mill museums. One is a saw mill. One grinds dyes with gigantic millstones. One crushes oils from seeds and nuts, a drop at a time, up to an incredible 100 quarts a day.
There is also the 45-minute boat cruise that floats visitors through the park and the adjacent town of Zaandijk. Claude Monet spent four months in Zaandijk, producing 25 paintings and 9 sketches. Most windmills shown in paintings are flour mills or polder mills. Polder mills pumped the water out of the area forming a polder (field) that could be used by farmers. 1890 to WWI made way for steam-driven machines and later diesel, gas and electric, which increased the scale of industry in the Zaan region. Great factory buildings were built on the banks of the river and in the 20th century it became the biggest port in the world for cocoa which was processed into powder, cocoa butter and chocolate here.
Great Blue Heron gawking at us as we walked out to the windmills.
Some of the buildings that the smaller museums were in and homes of people who actually live here on the grounds.
We shared a brie sandwich for lunch here at Pannenkoeken Restaurant de Kraai.
Saying goodbye to Zaanse Schans and the Netherlands.
Back in Amsterdam, we ate Italian at Perla Di Roma near our apartment on our last night. John had the fruit of the sea pizza and a beer and I had the mixed pasta bake and a glass of red wine. We shared my leftovers for breakfast before we headed to the airport to catch our flight home.
Goodbyes from all over Europe.
I hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as we are.
Tarra
Lesson in Dutch
Directions: nord, zuid, ost, vest
Days of the Week: Maandag, Dinsdag, Woensdag, Donderdag, Vrijdag, Zaterdag, Zondag
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