Amsterdam, July 24, 2016

Sunday, July 24, was our third day in Amsterdam, and the day the Rhine cruise was to begin.  But the cruise would not begin until early afternoon.  So, in order to make the best use of our remaining time, our local host, Rita, arranged for a guided tour of an area outside the city.

The first place our guide took us was the Zaanse Schans (ZAHN-ze skhahns), a re-created 17th-century village in the town of Zaandijk, on the Zaan River, about 12 miles northwest of Amsterdam.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4250244,4.8350399,13z

Zaanse Schans is an open air museum, reminiscent of Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village in the U.S.  There are stores and workshops, and a lot of reconstructed windmills, all staffed by volunteers from the local area, all of whom speak English fluently.

(Click on any image to see a high resolution version.)

Sheep May Safely Graze

A bit of kitsch

This is a workshop where the volunteers talk about wooden shoes, how they were used and how they were made.  They demonstrated making a wooden shoe with modern equipment.  (Quite a bit faster than the 17th century methods!)  And, if you like, you can buy a pair to take home.

The windmills all have names.  This is "Het Jonge Schaap" ("The Young Sheep").  It is a working sawmill, constructed between 2005 and 2007 from drawings of the original, built in 1680 and demolished in 1942. Except for a modern crane, the workers used the same tools and materials that were used to build the original.

We took the tour and saw a demonstration by one of the workers who built the reconstruction.  He showed us the mechanism that converts the rotating motion of the windmill to the up and down motion required by the saws.  This was a Dutch invention and valuable trade secret in the 17th century.

By Quistnix at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3891095

After Zaanse Schans, our guide took us to a working cheese farm in the same area,  the Henrik Wilig farm at Jacobs Hoeve.

This is a serious manufacturing operation that sells cheese around the world, but it also caters to tourists. Their web site says that over a million tourists visit their farms each year.

A pretty girl showed some of the cheese making equipment to us.

This is a storage room, where cheese is aged before being shipped.  The wheels are color coded according to variety.

On the way back to Amsterdam, our guide took us by a beautiful old village.  This is a real village, where people live, not a tourist attraction.  He dropped us off to walk around a bit and take pictures, something he probably was not supposed to do.  After we got back to the van, he seemed to leave in a hurry.

Back at the hotel in Amsterdam, we said goodbye to Rita, our wonderful local host, and boarded a bus to be taken to the ship, the S.S. Antoinette.  The cruise line took care of our luggage.  We just attached tags with our names and room number, and they took care of getting the luggage to our room on the ship.

Our stateroom was small, about like a typical moderate priced hotel room in New York City.

The room did include a "French balcony".  This is a small area with two chairs and a coffee table, and a window that can be opened.  It is essentially taken out of the area that would otherwise be part of the stateroom.  There are sliding glass doors between the French balcony and the room.

 Ours was a mid-price room.  More expensive rooms have a real balcony, and a lot more space.  But they were much more expensive.  Less expensive rooms just have a window, and were not much less expensive than ours.  This seemed like a good price point.

Finally underway.

The Rhine does not go to Amsterdam.  The first 45 miles of the cruise are on the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, which connects the harbors of Amsterdam with the Ruhr industrial area in Germany and is said to be the busiest canal in the world.  http://www.routeyou.com/en-nl/location/view/48678495/amsterdam-rhine-canal


First bridge.  The word on the sign is Amsterdamsebrug  or "Amsterdam Bridge".

View from the top deck, looking from back to front of the boat.  There is only about five feet of headroom in the rooms on the top deck (a restaurant and a bar, not open at this time.)  The tops have been lowered to permit the boat to fit under the bridges on the canal.  Once we are on the Rhine, they will be raised, and we can comfortably walk around in these rooms.

A load of scrap metal, going to Amsterdam.

We saw a lot of barges like this, carrying stuff to and from Amsterdam.

A low bridge.  Felt like I needed to duck.  
The tall guys must have really cringed.

In most places along the canal, there were levees on each side of the canal.  Often the water level in the canal was well above the level of the surrounding countryside.  There were obviously planted trees all along the levees.





I generally think of the Netherlands as a densely populated, highly industrialized country.  But from the canal, you would think that it is essentially an agricultural region, and a rather beautiful one.

The boat was incredibly smooth.  There was essentially no sense of motion.  The scene outside seemed to be just passing by, as if we were watching a movie.  We slept well, and would wake up the next morning in Germany,

Amsterdam, July 23, 2016

Rita, our Uniworld host in Amsterdam, had scheduled a guided tour of the Rijksmuseum for 9:00 AM this morning. (3:00 AM by Tampa time!)  Unfortunately, we overslept and missed the guided tour. Nevertheless, we decided to go there on our own.  The Rijksmuseum (pronounced Rikes Museum) is one of the major attractions of Amsterdam.  Rita had left tickets for us.  We had a map of the city.  It was supposed to be an easy half hour's walk from the hotel.  What could possibly go wrong?

Just that I couldn't make any correlation between what I saw on the map and what I saw in front of me.  We knew the general direction to the Rijksmuseum, so we started out in that direction, essentially ignoring the map.  We got to see some nice Amsterdam scenes.



  

Urban Bees

Amsterdam residents love flowers.  We saw flowers in window boxes and in postage stamp size front yards all along the way.  And lots of bees.








After about half an hour we looked around, expecting to see the Rijksmuseum.  And there, right in front of us, was ... our hotel!


Starting over.  This time we paid more attention to the map.  With some effort, I was able to identify a few major landmarks on the map, giving us some idea of where we were and which way we were heading.  Then, about half way, we ran into to couple from the hotel whom we had met the day before and who had been on the guided tour.  They were returning from the Rijksmuseum and gave us good directions to it.

Amsterdam is a combination city and amusement park.  Everywhere you go, you are crossing canals and watching boats and hearing music, like the bells from a nearby tower in this video: 

(Video may not play on a mobile device.)

Finally we arrive at the Rijksmuseum.  

The actual entrance to the museum is inside the tunnel that you see at the center of the building.

Inside the tunnel there was a small musical group playing classical music.  Sounded very good.

The lobby is an atrium that is open for the entire height of the building.  High above our heads was this structure.  It wasn't clear to me whether this was a work or art or a trap.

We saw a lot of paintings and drawings by famous artists, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Dürer.  I won't reproduce them here.  The museum's web site does a much better job of that that I could do.

We came into the museum from the back and went out the front.  In the front, there was another art exhibition:

Notice "amsterdam" spelled out in large three dimensional letters?

I didn't either.

Further in front there is a large shallow pond.

We stopped by the central train station on the way back to the hotel.  It bears an uncanny resemblance to the Rijksmuseum.

This is just the center of the station.  The station extends for about a quarter of a mile in each direction.

We had heard that there were ATMs there where we could get Euros using an American ATM card.  After about 15 minutes of looking, we finally asked a police officer for help.  His English was not too good, and either he misunderstood us or we misunderstood him.  We ended up at a bagel shop instead of an ATM.  In front of the bagel shop, we met up with a train conductor and asked him for directions to the ATM.  The conductor actually led us to the ATMs, taking about ten minutes and going past the police officer that we asked originally.  The ATM did accept my card and we did get our Euros at the bank exchange rate.

The train station is across a canal from our hotel.  As we walked to the hotel, we saw the guy in this rubber raft half-rappelling, half-jumping into the canal from where the people above are standing.  The red and green object that is floating in the water is a rainbow wig that he was wearing, and lost as he plunged into the water.  (This was the start of gay pride week in Amsterdam.)  After climbing into the raft, with some difficulty, he eventually got it back.  I suspect that alcohol may have been involved.

Back to the hotel.  Beware of bicycles on the red pavement.  Pedestrians should stay on the gray.

Amsterdam, July 22, 2016

Sherry and I left July 21, 2016, for a two week vacation in Europe, including a week long riverboat cruise on the Rhine.  We left Tampa at about 8:00 PM on a nine hour flight to Frankfort.  From Frankfort we flew to Amsterdam, where the Rhine cruise was to begin.  We gave ourselves a couple of days in Amsterdam to recover from the flight, which was a good idea since we arrived at about 4:00 AM by Tampa time, or 10:00 AM local time, essentially missing an entire night's sleep.

The cruise company,  Uniworld,  took care of us in Amsterdam.  They had arranged a hotel reservation for us, and had a driver at the Amsterdam airport to take us to the hotel.  They had a local host, Rita, at the hotel. Several other couples who would be on the cruise were also at the hotel.  Rita gave us some orientation and then took us on a tour of the hotel followed by a walking and canal boat tour of the old city.  Then on the day the cruise started, they provided transportation by bus from the hotel to the boat.  I was incredibly impressed by Uniworld.  Everything they did was first rate.

The first thing you notice coming into Amsterdam is the bicycles.  Bicycles everywhere, parked beside the streets by the hundreds.  

  

  

Bicycles near our hotel

It is very expensive to live in the city (like New York.)  So many people who work in the city commute by train and keep a bicycle in the city for local transportation.

There are a lot of “bike lanes” – strips separated from the streets, reserved for bicycles. Small motorbikes and scooters also use these.  Fortunately, real motorcycles stay in the streets with the cars. The bicycles and scooters don’t stop for anything, and they move fast! 

The dividing line between the sidewalk and the bike lane is pretty subtle.  So it is easy to accidentally step into a bike lane and have a bicycle go whizzing by within inches.  You quickly learn to be vigilant.

Sherry was thrilled to find that our first floor hotel room had a view of a canal.

I knew that Amsterdam had canals, but I didn't understand how extensive they are.  They are everywhere in the old city.  Fortunately there are also lots of bridges.  So when you walk around, the canals don't get in the way.

Rita, our Uniworld host, gave us a guided tour of our hotel, which was surprisingly interesting.  Some history of the building is available here.  In 1916 it was an ornate office building.

Above the lobby

There was originally supposed to be a rooftop bar at the hotel, but the company was not able to get the necessary permit from the city.  So the access to the roof is normally locked and guests are not permitted to go there.  But Rita had connections and was able to get permission to take us up to the roof, where we had great views of the area around the the hotel.

After the rooftop, Rita took us on a walking tour of the old city, followed by a ride on a canal boat.  Here are some of the scenes.

Rita explained the difference between the Dutch and the Germans.  In Germany, if there is a “Keep off the grass” sign, there will be no one on the grass.  In Holland, “We will be sitting beside the sign having a picnic.”