Bikes, Drugs, and €1 Billion Fireworks: Welcome to Amsterdam!

Why Amsterdam? No particular reason, but it seemed like a good place to celebrate the start of 2012!  Amsterdam is the main city of the Netherlands (also called Holland and its people are known as the Dutch… so confusing), a small country to the north of Belgium and west of Germany.

We arrived late Friday night and were immediately wowed by the airport, which felt like a posh mall that morphed into the train station at the back. The trip from airport to city was simple and within 15 minutes we were at the downtown train station with instructions to take a tram to our hotel about a mile away. Every country has its own transportation nuances, of which ‘where to buy tickets’ is often the most confusing. I hopped on a tram to ask the conductor, who said I could buy the tickets onboard. I turned to tell Chris to hop on… right as the tram doors closed and we started moving. Uh-oh.  Wait! My husband is right there and he has the money!  Chris ran alongside the tram watching the conductor shake his head 'no'.  I locked eyes with Chris as he mouthed the word “hotel”, which I cleverly interpreted as meaning we were each to get there on our own. It could’ve been a big deal, but I had a map and the hotel address, and Amsterdam at 10PM is as safe and busy as any normal city at 6PM. It would’ve been even less stressful if I had map-reading skills but that’s my own burden to bear. (My lack of navigation skills and inability to keep track of tickets is legendary.) After each making a few wrong turns, Chris and I arrived at the hotel the same moment, from opposite directions! Out of the experience was born a new Travel Rule: always stay on the same side of tram/train/bus doors! (Brett, this was infinitely less harrowing than the split up at the Peru/Bolivia border, don’t worry.) At check in, we were told that the hotel had actually over-booked (uh-oh) and we were being moved to the brands’ 4-star hotel a few minutes away (yay).

Very happy after finding Chris and the hotel!

Pretty little square in Amsterdam

The next morning we beat the crowds and made it to the art museum Rijksmuseum as it opened (cup of Starbucks in hand… ahhhh).  We spent ten minutes alone with Rembrandt’s masterpiece Night Watch.  I agree with a friends’ assessment: as much as The Mona Lisa is surprisingly small, this painting is surprisingly large!  Afterwards we walked the few blocks to the Van Gogh museum to look at the 200+ of his paintings on display. Did we fully appreciate them?  Probably not, but it was good anyway! 

In front of Rembrandt's Night Watch (this SO doesn't do it justice)

From there we just started wandering through the city.  Amsterdam in a nutshell: bridges and bikes (and tulips in the spring but it rained most of the time we were there!).  The whole place is filled with orderly canals, like a tidy Venice, and gable-roofed houses that literally lean in towards the water.  It oozes charm.  You can’t relax too much to take it in, though, because you have to have at least one eye and ear open for the bikers whizzing by.  Everyone here rides a bike everywhere, in work boots or stilettos, while talking on their phone, painting their nails, etc. Bikes are chained to every inch of bridge/tree/permanent structure, too.  Love it!   

Bikes and trams

Pretty little bridge over one of the many canals.

A typical view of the pretty houses, houseboats, and canal.

Since Chris is working most days, I’m usually the one researching where to go/what to do on our trips.  Occasionally when we get somewhere and discuss the day’s (brilliant) plans Chris just looks at me with one eyebrow raised, like whatever I’m suggesting is crazy.  A cheese & wine ‘connoisseur class’ in the famous Raypenear cheese shop for only $18 each?  I was so excited I didn’t even think to ask him about it before signing us up!  He groaned out loud at the idea but after about a pound of cheese and two glasses of wine he was grinning! 

"This is not really what I want to do" LOL

Love cheese.

Learning about the salt/mineral crystals in this 2 yr old cows milk cheese.

The Netherlands' New Years Eve Extravaganza was located in a park about a quarter mile from our hotel.  After a mid-afternoon nap, evening snack, and a bottle of champagne transferred to a Nalgene bottle we were ready!  We got to the park around ten and we worked our way to the stage. The show alternated between a DJ who was great, some sort of terrible 80’s themed host with an orange and purple leisure suit and fake afro, and some Dutch band who sang mostly in English but whose songs you’ve never heard.  Oh, and the whole thing was nationally televised so we’re probably famous by now. LOL.  The atmosphere was mostly fun.  At midnight while we counted down, two mammoth (like 100+ foot) paper mache figures were slid from either side of the stage towards each other and kissed as midnight struck.  The fireworks, which had not stopped going off in the 24 hours prior to this event, were now absolutely constant from every direction.  We were told that Amsterdam had spent one billion Euros on fireworks this year alone.  It was impressive, if not a bit tiring toward the wee hours of the morning.

Massive statues coming together for their midnight kiss. (Hmm...)

These things are scattered throughout the city to cut down on "wild peeing".  Brilliant! 

Happy New Year!

Yeah, it was cold!  In the background you can see the stage and the two massive characters.

After a molasses-slow start the next morning, we visited the Anne Frank House.  I read her famous diary only a few months ago, and it was eerie to enter the space, touch the walls, and see photos of the little Jewish girl and her family who hid from the Nazis for two years in a secret apartment. Also eerie was that this happened so recently that Anne may still be alive (in her 80’s) had she survived the concentration camp. The Holocaust killed 80% of Jews living in Amsterdam; that’s about 64,000 people.  In her father Otto’s words: “To build up a future, you have to know the past.”  We tend to forget so quickly, don’t we?


Amsterdam is well known for two vices: legalized prostitution and might-as-well-be-legal cannabis use. There are hundreds of Coffee Houses that sell 5 grams of weed at a time to anyone over the age of 18, and then let you smoke your stuff inside while you sip on a cappuccino or whatever else you’re in the mood for.  Hard drug use and weapons are absolute no-no’s and almost all the patrons are foreigners. (The Dutch actually smoke percentage-wise less than the rest of Europe and most of the world.)  We took a great tour of the district and industry and learned that a new law had just been passed that may forever change the Netherlands: coffee houses will only be able to sell weed to residents!  Supposedly all of Amsterdam will have to be in compliance by December 2012 so hurry up and visit if that’s your thing.  

One of the couple hundred Coffee Houses.

You can buy Magic Mushrooms, too!

The prostitution thing goes down in the Red Light District, which may be one of the most disturbing but distinctive neighborhoods I’ve seen.  Basically there are windows maybe 4-5 feet wide and 7 feet tall, like tiny store fronts, but instead of mannequins displaying clothes there are women displaying themselves.  These windows are jumbled in between coffee houses and ‘normal life’ stores like drug stores, groceries, dry cleaners, etc.  The Red Light District actually encompasses many square blocks of Amsterdam (different ‘styles’ of women tend to clump together… like Model Row, Tranny Ally, etc).  The apartments above all these stores (including those rented by the lovely ladies) are actually some of the most desirable and expensive real estate in the city.  So yeah, it’s not just 20-yr old ‘stag party’ guys walking through this area.  People work and live there, and families walk through doing errands.  Yikes.  We didn’t see that kind of thing growing up in sweet Davidson, NC!  In case anyone is wondering, the going rate is said to be €50/15 minutes.  Gross, dirty, and hopeless are my first thoughts but at least the women here have ridiculous security, their own union, and they’re self-employed.  I shouldn’t judge so there, that’s the end of that. 

Red Light District

 

Well, we found out what was wrong with Chris’ knee.  His left knee pain went from occasionally annoying him a year ago to waking him up almost every night for the past few months.  As most people have, we assumed it was some sort of overuse injury (um, Ironman training!) so he took a month off and went to the doc.  His knee cleared the initial exam “it feels really sturdy”, and the X Rays and then CT scan were inconclusive.  The MRI nailed it, though.  Chris actually has a small tumor in his tibia.  It’s an osteoid osteoma, a weird little benign cancer that usually spontaneously resolves within 3 years.  The only serious problem is the pain he’ll have to deal with for quite a while unless he opts for surgery.  After some research it seems as though training has nothing to do with the tumor or the pain, so now he’s trying to decide whether to start back up with Ironman training.  There are no known cases of an osteoid osteomas turning malignant, so we feel blessed for that.