It was beautiful weather when we arrived in Amsterdam on Saturday. Did we squander it?
Of course we did.
Side note. A word of advice: don’t fly in to Amsterdam on a Saturday morning. Or out of Copenhagen, for that matter. The airports were PACKED. It was like the entire population was attempting to flee some new occupying force. (Too soon?) When we finally elbowed our way through the crippled grannies and sobbing children and made it to our hotel, it took us TWENTY MINUTES of queuing just to reach the desk and try to check in. (Certainly too soon for that).
We went for what should have been a pleasant stroll through the old town. Tour groups jostled for space on a pavement primarily occupied by parked bicycles. Parts of my body now appear in photographs taken by people on four or five other continents. Eventually, we made it to a more pleasant part of town full of expensive jeans and hipster cafes. There, we settled in for lunch, served by a girl in a vintage Star Wars t-shirt.
Eventually, we managed to get into our hotel room. Having woken up before six in order to make our flight, we collapsed into bed…and woke up to the rain.
Let me make something clear. When staying in a large hotel with three restaurants (plus a Starbucks), I see no particular reason to trek through horizontal rain in order to sniff out “local” cuisine. It’s a multicultural, cosmopolitan city: there’s no such thing as authentic anymore. While it’s probably not the best or cheapest food I could be eating, I have no problem staying warm and dry while eating food that’s in front of me.
Can you guess who does?
Sim swore to me that it would be a one-off, that he wasn’t going to spend four days hanging around in the hotel. Of course, I accepted that that was fair enough. Who wants to bunker down in Amsterdam, of all places?
Next morning, of course, the rain was worse. Since it was still the weekend, we wanted to avoid the major tourist draws, which we figured would be packed with weekenders. This ruled out the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house. We landed on the royal palace, which had been relatively empty when we walked past the day before. It still wasn’t too packed, and we spent a couple of educational hours learning about the changes wrought to the Dutch political system by the Napoleonic conquest.
We emerged to find that, while the rain had not abated, the wind had started to get into its swing. The pavement was littered with inside-out umbrellas. We had raincoats, but clutching our hoods onto our heads meant that the rain ran down our sleeves and pooled at our elbows. It pinged into our faces like biting daggers of icy European scorn. Our next stop was the NEMO Science centre, just on the other side of our hotel. Sim made the mistake of suggesting we take the route that led past the hotel. At this point, I dived inside and flatly refused to leave.
After a couple of hours, many tears, much cajoling, and some tea and biscuits, I was eventually persuaded to leave my warm, dry, comforting cocoon and make the trek (maybe 6 minutes) to NEMO. We had hoped it would be like a Dutch Questacon. We should have known that there can only be one. In fairness, I think it would have been quite good it if wasn’t for all the freaking kids. I also have to say that Dutch Questacon has some exhibits that are NOT suitable for small children, including an entire floor dedicated to the miracle of puberty. O, the Dutch.
As you can imagine, after battling our way back to the hotel, we once again ate dinner there. There was nothing wrong with it! Maybe it was a little overpriced, but it had a great view! And cocktails! And cool Dutch waitresses! What’s so wrong with that?
Today it had settled down a little, so we thought we’d get out of the city and see some of the countryside. We bought some all-day bus passes and figured we’d just ride around and hop off wherever we thought looked nice. We walked through Broek, a lovely tiny town of ancient houses centred around a duck-filled lake; Edam (where the cheese comes from), which is criss-crossed by canals, bridges and lock gates; and Purmerend, a mixture of old and new town centred around an old square formerly used for trading cattle. In between, we had beautiful views out of the bus window of fields of cattle and sheep, flat all the way to the horizon, without even fences between the paddocks to break things up (since the canals act as a natural barrier).
It was all lovely and pastoral, until we sat down to have some lunch in Purmerend and Sim reached for his wallet…and found blank space.
Of course, we couldn’t have one nice day in the countryside where nothing went wrong. While I sat with our bags, Sim dashed back to the bus terminal. After some tense waiting and foreign-language phone calls, his wallet was eventually located on the last bus we caught. You know, one of these days, things aren’t going to just mysteriously work out.
We did manage to get out for dinner tonight, to an Indonesian restaurant, which is culturally appropriate given the centuries during which Indonesia was colonised by the Dutch. (Or does that just exacerbate the inappropriateness?) As much as I stand by my decision to eat in the last couple of nights, I have to admit that this was the best meal we’ve had in Amsterdam thus far. Tomorrow, hopefully it will have cleared up enough to enable us to actually see some more of the city.