June 10-13 (sorry it’s a long post!)
Friday morning I checked out of my hotel in Den Haag and headed to the train station to hop a train to Amsterdam. Chantale is joining me tonight from her home in Denmark and I can’t wait to swap stories and do some more exploring of the beautiful city of Amsterdam with her We’re staying downtown a stone’s throw from the Central Station so it will be easy to get around even for two women that are as directionally challenged as we appear to be!
It’s a beautiful sunny day so after dropping my stuff off at the hotel, I wander around soaking it all in.
I’m getting a Covid test later this afternoon for my cruise on Monday and I’m positive I’m negative but who knows? After the test it’s back to the Renaissance to enjoy happy hours in the Club Lounge with snacks and free wine for a few hours. Luckily my results arrive and I am indeed negative so the cruise is a go! Chantale’s plane is delayed but soon enough she arrives and we head off for a night cap and chat until the wee hours.
Saturday morning after a big breakfast we head to the Dam Square for a Free Food Tour where we meet our guide Ilya. Ilya is a foodie originally from California but he’s lived here for over twenty years and knows his way around. He works in the restaurant bizz and is quite knowledgeable about food but also the history of the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular.
After a ten minute synopsis of the Netherlands’ illustrious past, it’s time to eat out our way through Amsterdam and sample its traditional sweets, tasty appetizers and, of course, cheese off we go to Spuistraat to start our culinary journey. The plan is to start with dessert and eat our meal backwards.
Our first treat is a pepernoten, a small anise flavoured cookie only sold at Xmas. I’ve found a recipe online that looks good for all you bakers out there. https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-pepernoten-recipe-1128532
While munching our pepernoten, Ilya filled us in on Dutch Christmas traditions. For most children in The Netherlands, the most important day in December is the 5th when Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas)and his servants the Zwarte Pieten (Black Peters) come to town. Local church bells ring in celebration as Sinterklaas, dressed in his red robes, leads a procession through the town, riding a white horse. Since the little black folks are clearly slaves there is a lot of controversy these days and many towns have modified the tradition to make it more pc.
Continuing on Spuistraat, Ilya points out a building that was purchased by squatters. At one point this whole area was a squatters’ paradise as in the 1970s squatting was legal due to the extreme housing shortage. For the squatter to move in the building needed to be vacant for at least a year and then they would move in with a bed, table and a chair. If they remained in their spot for 24 hours without detection, they were in like Flynn. This all changed in 2018 and squatting is no longer permitted but the folks that lived in that one building scrapped together enough money to buy their building.
We reach the next stop on our culinary journey where we are going to try stroopwafels. At this bakery, they are made fresh and served warm. Sticky sweet goodness though maybe a bit sweet for me!
The shop with “the best cookies in town” is also nearby but the lineup is crazy so we head off to the next stop, a cheese shop near the flower market. Here we watch a video featuring none other than Henri Willig and sample his tasty cheese again! There’s also a chance for Chantale to ham it up for a cute photo!!
Another perennial favourite street food in the Netherlands is French fries. Ilya buys a pack for us to share and they are hot and crunchy fresh out of the fryer and very tasty. This stand offers a number of different options for sauces but we opt to try them in their natural glory. Next time I’d try the curry ketchup which I sampled at the hotel last night with the hors d’ouevres.
One of the culinary stars in the Netherlands is herring! Yuck, not my favourite fish but it was very fresh and not horrible when served with crunchy onions and a bread and butter pickle. Not sure I’d want a whole order to myself though …
Our next stop is the temple of Dutch culture; a typical brown bar. Most folks drink beer or Genever (gin). Late in the night after a bout of drinking, the bar snack of choice are bitterballen. Bitterballen are fried beef ragout croquettes made by making a very thick stew, refrigerating the stew until it firms, and then rolling the thick mixture into balls which then get breaded and fried. Okay but not better than egg rolls or pizza as a greasy snack.
Ilya introduced the gin drinkers to the traditional way to savor genever, the kopstootje, a.k.a. “little headbutt.” You fill a tiny tulip-shaped glass to the brim with genever then take a hands-free slurp without knocking the glass over and have a bite of a bitterbal.
A quick group shot and Ilya is off to lead another tour and Chantale and I are headed to the Jordaan neighbourhood for a wander and to check out the Saturday farmer’s market.
What was intended to be a ten minute walk took considerably longer because neither of us has a good sense of direction. Since it was a beautiful day in a lovely neighbourhood we didn’t care.
When we arrived at the market, the star was cheese (of course) but there were also colourful flowers, beautiful wild mushrooms, a wide range of fish including freshly shucked oysters, baked goodies and colourful linens on sale. There was also a part of the market where there were antiques and other things no one needs that we avoided!!
Exiting the market we found a great little gelato shop and treated ourselves to a delicious treat before heading off on our canal cruise. It was too nice to sit inside so we opted for a seat at the back outside.
It was glorious in the sun but made it difficult to hear the descriptions provided by our captain. In addition to just seeing the beautiful city from a different perspective, we passed a number of points of interest.
Our captain pointed out the most off kilter building in the city which is now a restaurant. I think having a bit too much to drink or smoke might make it tricky to eat inside!
I love the idea of living on a houseboat but the total lack of privacy would be aggravating I’m sure as the canals were teeming with boats large and small. You could rent a motorboat by the hour and we spied a number of these piloted by “captains” with a range of experience.
At one point we entered the big water with the big boats. On one shore there was a boardwalk beach where locals sunbathe and swim. Not sure I’d want to brave the water but we were assured that the water was clean enough to drink! I don’t think I’d risk that!
We also saw a replica of one of the boats that would have been used by the VOC back in the day to sail around the world collecting goods including spices for sale in Europe.
On the top of one of the buildings there were swings for the crazies to swing out over the side many many stories up. Also not for me!
After the cruise we made our way back to the hotel for a couple of drinks in the lounge and a bit of relaxation by a somewhat more direct route – only somewhat!
After a bit of respite, we headed to the red light district to Vetten Ramen, a recommendation from Ilya. The gyoza were crunchy and tasty and the ramen soup was colourful and unctuous. We likely should have ordered a side of spicy sauce to top it off but it was good enough “plain”.
Sated we headed out for the requisite evening stroll through the red light district. The police were out in full force directing the pedestrians and all the streets in the area were set up for one way foot traffic. It was a bit sad to see the scantily clad women advertising their wares in the windows. Not sure how much business they would get with the throngs of gawking tourists milling about. Maybe business was better later in the evening when the crowds thinned out a bit. No pics out of respect for the sex workers.
Back to the hotel for an early night as we’d had a full day and we’re heading to the Van Gogh Museum for our 9:00 am spot tomorrow.
Saturday morning we had a more sensible breakfast and grabbed an Uber to the museum so we wouldn’t get lost on the way and miss our time slot. The museum was fully booked for the day so there were lots of people taking the opportunity to learn more about Vincent’s life and admire his beautiful artwork. The permanent exhibition boasts a number of his well and lesser known pieces as well as works from his contemporaries including Monet, Rodin and Gaugin. The audio guide provided insights into Van Gogh’s paintings from letters he’d written to his friends and family. There was also a temporary exhibition that brought together the paintings of olive trees he painted while in the asylum and shortly after he was released. The museum is a must do if you ever go to Amsterdam. I took pics of some of the paintings and have inserted them below though they really don’t do the original’s justice.
Back to the hotel by tram (it’s free this morning because their system isn’t working (a harbinger of things to come as it turns out!) to get our stuff together as we are checking out today and have a walking tour booked for 1 pm.
The Classical Free Tour leaves from the Dam Square and we are greeted by our guide Daphne. Her family has lived for generations in Amsterdam so she’s the real deal. When Covid hit she augmented her tour guide salary as a primary teacher’s assistant and is now studying to be a teacher. She also directs theatre in her ”spare time” and is a real fire cracker. She warned the group about the cyclopaths (apparently the Dutch become maniacs when they climb aboard their bicycles!).
She’s a great story teller and regales us with some stories of the city.
Apparently when the original plan for city hall was developed it was going to be bigger than the new church which stands nearby. Of course, when they spoke to the church folks they said it could be bigger than the church or people would think that the state was more important than the church and God. To appease the church, they promised to build a huge tower to make sure it didn’t. Of course, the town hall ran over budget and in the end they didn’t have the money so couldn’t fund the promised giant church tower. A hundred years later, the church only has a small tower and Daphne insists that inside church is a priest is crying.
We head off toward the Old Church and here there us a plaque in the of a hand holding breast which appeared one night. The government removed it but citizens wanted it back so it’s still there. The local wisdom is that if you touch the nipple it assures seven years of good sex so not the nipple has been worn down by everyone hoping that’s true.
Also close to the church is a cafe that serves the best apple pie in town. Since Chantale and I didn’t get the cookie, we are determined to come back and check that out!
As I learned last week, the Church is close to red light district so the sailors could confess before going back to sea because it is and was a dangerous profession. The red light district was set up to make sure that sailors didn’t accost proudest women on the street. Initially, the sailors would look at the bird cage in front of pubs. If a bird was in the cage then there was a lady inside offering her services. The sign that there was a woman available eventually changed to a red lantern. The pub owners didn’t want their customers to leave the pub with the ladies so they decided to allow them to use the room in back for a fee. They also allowed them to sit in their windows to do self advertising.
Today, prostitutes are considered self employed business owners and the different streets have different types of women to make sure there is something for everyone. Big mama alley has larger older women and there are individual streets that feature exotic, younger and alternative (dominatrix), etc. If you can speak Dutch, you can figure out what type of women are going to be available on each street by the name of the street.
We headed to the Waag where Daphne also told us an interesting story about the collection of body parts stored in alcohol displayed here by the physician’s guild. After visiting, Tsar Nicholas liked the display of human bits so much he bought the whole thing to take home with him to Russia. On the journey home, the ship carrying the collection ran out of rum so sailors threw out the body parts and drank the alcohol – yikes!
Dutch were very good record keepers so they had maps which the Nazis requested so they knew where they all were. The Nazis assured the Dutch that they wouldn’t use the map for nefarious purposes but we know how that went – 90% of the Jews were sent to concentration camps and eliminated. This meant that the Jewish quarter was a ghost town and during the final winter of the war the neighbourhood was destroyed when there were no more trees to burn. Buildings, furniture and everything that could burn was used for firewood. The devastation was so complete it looked like the area had been destroyed by booms. The Dutch have honoured the original occupants of the sector by placing little plaque where their former houses stood with info on the original occupants of each house; name, birthday, day they were sent to camp, which camp and when they died.
Next stop on the tour was the coffeeshop area. According to Daphne, the first weed was brought to Amsterdam by Canadian soldiers when they liberated Holland at the end of WWII. Our contribution!
Another fun fact from Daphne – 15000 bikes per year are fished out of the canals every year. This means that the canals have three three layers: mud, bicycles and water. If you jump in you’re likely to caught in a bike.
We were soon back at Dam Square and the tour was over. Chantale and I managed to find the café with the magnificent apple pie (de koffie schenkerij) and sampled the ample slice of pie in their courtyard. Yummy indeed.
Fortified, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head off to our hotel at the Schiphol airport for the night. I’m catching a shuttle to the cruise ship from the airport so wanted to be closeby on Monday morning. When we arrived at the train station, there were absolutely no trains to Schiphol; very weird as they usually run every ten minutes or so. After struggling with the app we hit the info booth and we’re advised there was a strike on that line and we needed to connect through a different station. We boarded the train with the hordes of folks heading to the their evening flights only to arrive at our destination to a broken down train blocking trains coming and going from that station. Next off to a metro and another connection point for the train to Schiphol. Thankfully third time was the charm and we ended up at the airport a bit worse for the wear but in one piece.
At the hotel, we had been upgraded to a club room so we headed to the lounge for snacks and wine. The lounge served free wine until 11 pm but it was mediocre so after I liberated my larger suitcase from storage and picked up my e-reader that I’d left behind at my first hotel, we settled in with a nice bottle of wine I’d brought with me, watched a movie and crashed.
Monday morning, there was time for breakfast before Chantale headed back to Amsterdam to do some exploring and I went to meet the shuttle to my cruise. Had a great time with a great friend and now my adventure continues with a cruise to Stockholm. The first day is a sea day so I’ll have time to catch my breath and rest my feet before the next adventure in Germany.
More later this week – adventures await…
Judy’s Rambles 