With our approximately one-and-a-half free days before our return flight from Hannover, we decided to dive-bomb tourist Amsterdam.  We were “close” (in the sense that, say, Detroit is “close” to Chicago), so we decided to go for it.  We had heard a lot about how lovely the city is, and we wanted to be able to chalk up one more country while we were abroad.  And what the hey, it’s just more time on the train.  ;-)  Here’s part 3 of our Continental Whirlwind Tour:

This was a big leap for us.  Mostly, we’re pre-planners.  Not at the fine-grained, “from noon to 1:30 we’ll be at the Cathedral, then we’ll have lunch at the Café de la Vache Morte until 2:09, then…” sense. But we both are really uncomfortable until we know where we’re sleeping that night.  Once we have some sort of housing set up for each night of our trip, we’re all adventure, but we’re on edge until then.  So heading for Amsterdam on the spur of the moment with no hotel, hostel, or even camping spot was a bit nerve-wracking for us. This was compounded when we arrived to discover that the tourist information desk (who can normally point you to some place to stay, in most European cities that we’ve been in) was already closed for the day.  Woo.  Cast adrift in a big city where we don’t speak the language.  Tourist nightmare.

Fortunately, the Amsterdam train station really is in the heart of the tourist district (or, perhaps, vice versa), and there are about a dozen hotels in line of sight as you step out of the train station. The first one we stepped into had a vacancy that night.  Score!

We went out for a late dinner, discovering that, for reasons still mysterious to us, Argentine Steakhouses were the thing.  We discovered at least six of them in a ten minute walk of our hotel. ¿Por qué hay muchos resutrantes Argentinos en Amsterdam?  No lo sé. But they made yummy steak.  Mmmm….

The train station is also, incidentally, in the heart of the (in)famous Red Light District.  Wandering around to and from dinner was amusing.

The next morning, we were kicked out of our hotel because they had no vacancies for that night.  Bleh.  Fortunately, the tourist hotel-finding service was open at that time of day and they set us up.  (From watching the chick who was running the desk, I think that a big part of her skill set is sizing up people as they walk in the door to calibrate their finances and desperation so that she can put them into the most expensive place they’re willing to accept.  She was pretty good, but we still managed to walk away with a reservation at a better hotel for cheaper in a nicer part of town.  Score again!)

On the street where we lived (very briefly, anyway). The Nova, on the right, is our home-for-a-day.

The contorted hallway into our hotel room: upstairs, around the back, and down to a small landing to get in.

We basically had one day in Amsterdam, so we tried to make the most of it.  We started with the floating flower market, home of a bewildering bevy of botany:

Part of the flower market. The flower stalls are on the left, built on houseboats floating on the canal, but spilling out onto the street.

Susan delighting in a blinding bunch of blossoms.

More flower market, with the Krijtberg Church in the skyline behind.

(It’s a “floating” market because the flower stalls are all on houseboats sitting on a canal.  But these are house “boats” in the same way that many mobile homes in the US are theoretically relocatable — the house boats are permanently anchored and tethered to the dock, and the stalls are effectively fixed structures that spill from their boats across the moorings and onto the street.)

As we left the market, we ran across the Krijtberg Church:

Facade of the Krijtberg Church, down the street from the Flower Market.

One thing that caught my eye about this church is that the stone walls were painted.  This is a big contrast from many of the churches we’ve seen, where the stone is left raw.  The unpainted stone is majestic and imposing in its own way, but the painted stonework is actually closer to the way many would have been decorated in the medieval era.

A painted ceiling vault in the Krijtberg.

From there, we found our way to the Anne Frank House — the warehouse building in which Anne and seven other people spent four long years as refugees, hiding from the Nazi occupiers.  By request of Otto Frank (Anne’s father and the only survivor of the war), the house is left largely unfurnished.  The very emptiness of the rooms is sobering now, loaded as they are with a weight of history and experience.

On the way back toward the center of the city, we found the Nieuwe Kerk (”New Church”) — which means that it dates to only the fifteenth century.  Today, it has been converted to essentially a museum, as far as I can tell.  It felt odd to wander around one of these vast cathedral-style buildings that is now devoid of chairs, paintings, decorations, and most of the accouterments of an active, living church.  But there are still fascinating and beautiful bits left to see, and they are renovating parts of it.

Modern stained glass window in the Nieuwe Kerk.

New Church Chandalier

A large part of our Amsterdam experience was just getting a feel of the city as we wandered around.  Like Venice or Stockholm, Amsterdam is a city of water, built around a network of canals so that the city almost blends into the ocean.  While we were there, it was misty and rainy the entire time, adding to the feel of a city at one with the sky and the sea.

Life in the "Venice of the North", where water and city blend.

In the Seventeenth Century, Amsterdam was a thriving city of international trade and commerce, and was possibly the wealthiest city in the world in its day.  You can still see the heritage reflected in the architecture today.

Seventeenth century merchant houses. The slant out over the street is not decaying architecture -- it's deliberate, to allow heavy crates to be lifted up to the warehouse upper floors by way of block-and-tackle suspended from the hook above the topmost window.

A more modern building, "in the style of".

Amsterdam is also a vibrantly pedestrian and bicycling city.  Like many European cities, it is much denser and yet much smaller than similar US cities.  That makes it more feasible to get places on foot or bike, and the latter was incredibly popular.  We were awed by the multistory bicycle parking garage outside the train station.

Bicycle parking garage outside the main train station in Amsterdam.

For the evening, we found a small, traditional Dutch restaurant near our hotel.  It had all the character — irregular rooms in a (probably) Seventeenth Century building, low ceilings, dark wood.  And amazingly good food.  I had a stellar split pea with ham soup (not exclusively local, I have to admit, but highly yummy) and a sampler platter of different smoked fish.  Mmmm.  Susan beat me on soups, choosing an eel and mustard cream soup.  Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but was fabulous.  For a main, she had salmon with Gouda sauce. It was also excellent, and the fish was top-notch, but the sauce was not as exciting as it sounded on paper.  Altogether, however, we were double-plus pleased with the dining experience.

(For the record, we verified that the cheese is pronounced “how-dah” in English transliteration.  Only the “h” sound happens somewhere behind the uvula, and neither of us can precisely reproduce it.)

Finally, gratefully back to our hotel, and the next morning we headed out regretfully, feeling that there was much more to explore in Amsterdam.  Well, someday we’ll hope to return.

Little news from there.  Long train ride back to Hannover, lunch at the train station there, plane back to Stansted airport, train back to London, bus back to our neighborhood, feet back to our house, where our lonely kitties were anxiously waiting to welcome us home.