We then spent the mid morning hours wandering the "9 streets" area of Amsterdam. It's an interesting neighbourhood full of trendy designer shops, cafes and pretty houses. Kind of like Paddington back in Sydney. The streets are pretty but not overly busy yet as its quite cloudy and cold out.
Weird and rather confusing name for a shop?
CLOSED
We head across Westermarkt and past the Westerkerk church to the Anne Frank House. Surprisingly were told we can't get a ticket until 3pm as its pre booked online tickets only at the moment. We wait for 10minutes however and one of the ushers tells us and a couple of other people who've hung around too that we can go in as some prebooked people haven't showed. Lucky for us, as it started to rain quite heavily. Was only thinking that we've been lucky so far with the weather in Amsterdam, as apparently it rains here for 200 days of the year.
Heading into the Anne Frank house and you can't help but feel moved and humbled. Not only by her story, but by the whole war and sad tale of the holocaust. Such a horrible moment in history. Walking through I'm reminded of our visit to the Genocide museum when we were in Rwanda. Places like this are important for visitors to experience and remind us all of such atrocities we do yo each other.
No smoking weed in this park? Shock horror!
After an emotionally taxing hour or so we headed out and over the canals into the Jordaan area of town to find some lunch. We zigzagged and snaked the streets of Jordaan for a bit before stumbling upon a cool cafe for a sandwich and a juice. It's another nice neighbourhood in what in general is a nice city. Jordaan again seems to be like Paddington or Surry Hills back home. Full of 3-4 storey walk up terrace houses. There's a lot more gardens and greenery here than in the inner old town part. A small change occurs at the threshold between the street and the house, rather than the abruptness of the inner city houses.
Ice cream time!
We come across a florist shop that has a plant Simone is in love with. It's very hard to get back in Australia, and sim contemplates trying to bring it back in. I talk her out of it saying I'm not going to jail for sneaking in a plant. We laugh about the irony of getting arrested back in Australia for bringing a plant back from Amsterdam that is not a cannabis plant. Rather comical.
"What are you in for?"
"Cannabis. you?"
"tried to smuggle a Chinese money plant through"
What do you do instead of car windscreen advertising in a city of 800,000 people with 880,000 bikes. Easy!
Bike seat rain covers. Very clever!
It's now 3ish and we head down past the Museumplein and over to Oude Pijp to visit the Albert Cuypmarkt. It's an open air street market with lots of clothes, fresh food and hot food treats. We stroll up the long narrow strip, stopping a few times for me to sample a few treats. One was the Stroopwaffles, the Dutch classic of hot sweet syrup sandwiched between 2 hot thin waffles. Very tasty. The waffle has a spice to its flavour and with the syrup it's like a hot, sticky, gooey gingerbread. Yum.
Getting to the end of the market we head down into De Pijp to explore some more. The suns out now and it's a nice afternoon for a walk. We stroll quite far down Van Woustraat until sim asks where are we going? I reply, there's a building down here that I want to see. Story of the trip!
We wander into Niuewe Pijp to find a couple of the Amsterdam School buildings I saw in the brochure at the Stedeljik Museum. After wandering for a bit we spot some other hopeless souls walking the quiet streets looking up and taking pictures. Figuring they're architects, I think we're close. Sure enough we turn the corner and the extravagant brick detailing of this architecture period reveals itself.
De Dageraad is the name of the social housing complex, designed in the early 20th century. We head into the bottom floor of one of the buildings to visit the small exhibition that's on. When I say small, I mean one room in a lobby foyer. Still, it's quite an interesting further look into the design ideologies behind this architectural movement. The planning of a lot of social housing at this time had a rationalist approach. Similar to other parts of Europe I guess, notably Italy and Russia. The buildings too had this, but with more ornate and detailed facades.
After wandering the area for a bit we start the long walk back to our hotel. We're quite far south of town now so we make our way up through De Pijp and back up to Museumplein. The residential streets around here remind me of the residential villages of New York City. I can now see why NYC was established as New Amsterdam.
We head up through the tunnel under the Rijksmuseum and stop for better photos with the Iam.sterdam letters, before crossing over into the residential area south of old town and walking up the beautiful tree lined canal Reguliersgracht, with its sequence of 7 canal bridges. Again, Amsterdam shows its beauty to us. Notwithstanding, our feet are sore now. We finally get back to the hotel for a well earned drink and a rest. That was epic.
We're not finished yet though. After a freshen up we head out and back in to Dam Square and then into the red light district to find out it's intriguing parts. It's after 8pm now on a Friday night and the streets are bustling with people, as are the pubs. Lots of stagg and bux parties as well as a hens party too. We wander a few narrow alleys getting a peek at the lovely ladies in the red curtained windows. We walk up the main canal with all the pink elephant signs and sim gets perplexed at the 2 minute peepshow. Not understanding why. This was kind of the same for the whole place too. Made slightly more sense back when sailors got off shops after a few years at sea, but these days it's just bizarre and really for money and exploitation I would think.
One of those interesting conundrums for the city too, do you accept it and keep the people coming or do you change it and risk losing the tourist dollars. That being said Amsterdam has so much more to off than weed and boobs.
After an hour or so of looking at condom shops, magic mushroom stores, and seeing the red and blue (male) windows, we head out for dinner at an Italian restaurant back on Nes, called Mappa. Not bad, wouldn't say it's Italian food though, more Dutch people cooking Italian dishes. Nonetheless it's nice.
So after another epic day of walking, in which we cracked a PB of 26km, were both well and truly stuffed. Hiring bikes tomorrow, so should be easier on our feet. Let's hope our bums are ok though.
mat + sim
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