After getting our bikes from a friendly Aussie at the bike store we set off on our two wheeled adventure. We are a little nervous at first, but quickly get the hang of it. The bike lane system works a treat here. It's crazy that I feel safer riding a bicycle in a foreign country, with a foreign language that rides and drives backwards to what I know, then in my own city.
In what seems like only a few minutes we pass through the colonnade under the Rijksmuseum and area down in Vondelpark. Wow, we really should have got a bike the other days. Having said that,it's €10 a day and the last 15 minutes has been a blur to me. Wouldn't have done a lot of sight seeing as you do have to pay attention to what's going on around you. So many other bikes, trams, cars and pedestrians! They're the real killers! So I'm still a big believer in walking a city first.
We ride through the lush and green Vondelpark. Today being Saturday it's full of weekend activity. There's already people setting up picnics and sports games. We see one large group of various families with their toddlers having sack races. Haven't seen that in years. There's also the regular park goers too, the joggers, the cyclists and the tourists strolling the pathways. We stop for breakfast at a cafe on one of the lakes. It's so nice in the morning sun sitting in the parkland. It's meant to be a warm day today with a high of 21. So high right? Too funny.
I really like this park. It has all the right ingredients for a good public park. Large green spaces, water, trees for shade and wildlife. We watch the birds flying and the fish in the lakes whilst we eat. Not far from the timber deck where we're sitting a bird then plunges into the lake to get some food.
After finishing our yoghurt and toasties we ride around the full extent of the park, something we didn't do the other day when we walked, before riding back out past Museumplein and over to the same markets we visited yesterday in De Pijp, the Albert Cuypmarkt. There's more dutch delicacies to try, such as the Poffertjes, which are little round pancake balls with butter and icing sugar. We also get some cheap €1.50 juice smoothies and I get some chicken with peanut sauce as it looks unreal. Tasted good too. Sim gets a huge container of fresh raspberries which are also super tasty. Such good produce here in Amsterdam.
We do some market shopping and then continue our ride north up through Jordaan.
Again we're amazed at how easy and quick it was to get across town. Sim's in heaven on two wheels. She loves bike riding. I'm enjoying it too. A lot more easier on the feet than our last few days.
We park our bikes and stroll another market in the upper Jordaan area. It's annoying we leave tomorrow as there's so many nice things to eat from these markets. This is where you'll find the Dutch cuisine it seems. The cheese, meets and fish look unreal. We wander back through the streets of Jordaan to where we parked our bikes. The colours of the trees on the canal side overhanging the water are really beautiful.
We head up under the railway line and west of town for a few kilometres. We're in search of one last Amsterdam School building, the Het Schip it's called. It's pretty easy to find as it's quite a unique building in a quiet little residential pocket not far from the train line. We ride around and explore the area. The buildings are interesting yet again, with quirky brick detailing, fussy window details and interesting uses of roof tiles. The round elongated bulb form to the building street corner is really interesting.
We ride up to the harbour and along the eastern docklands. There's a few modern architecture highlights here too. Notably MVRDVs stacked container apartment building on the water. This building fits in well with the ugly working nature of the harbour. It's not a naturally beautiful harbour by any means. It's very much a transport corridor. But many of the buildings along it are interesting. One being the new film and cinema museum on the northern side of the harbour. It's a really nice piece of sculptural architecture.
We ride through central train station and head east up to the old windmill in town. There's a lively brewery underneath it so I grab a paddle of craft beers and get sim a ginger beer. Sitting at the bar I overhear a guy order a Heineken. He sounds Aussies and he's wearing a State of Origin cap too. The barmen turns and yells out to everyone, "one Heineken please!"
Laughing he then turns back to the Aussie bloke at the bar, "we don't have Heineken here I'm sorry. We loathe Heineken."
Was pretty funny. I guess they are a craft beer brewery though. I got a similar response when I first asked for a Coke for sim. A stern no, don't do cola.
After finishing the paddle we get back on the pedals. We continued further east of the town and up into the eastern docklands area. We check out Scheepstimmermanstraat and ride past its famous canal row house strip designed by a multitude of architects in the 1990s. Very interesting mix of aesthetics within a single typology of similar size and scale. The whole area is quite interesting as its obviously gone through an urban renewal phase in the last 20-30years, moving away from working harbour to residential. Very similar to other cities I guess.
It's now nearly 4pm and starting to sprinkle with rain. We ride back towards our hotel, past the zoo and through the leafy streets. There's more open space over this side of town. I'm really enjoying the freedom of riding this city, so easy. Everything is within reach.
We make it back to the bike rental with everything in tact and then head back to our hotel. Just in the nick of time too as the skies open and it starts to pour with rain. Phew, what another big day. Our bums are feeling it though. Saddle soreness. Not good for us casual riders.
We watch a bit of the Tour on tv in the hotel bar before heading for a rest. Sims in a little bit of discomfort in the nether regions, quite a funny thing to happen in the Netherlands I reckon!
We head out for dinner at 7ish, wandering back through the Jewish quarter and down the canals to the flower markets for some final souvenir shopping before heading into Rembrandtplein. Again, we struggle deciding where to eat as were not too sure what to eat. For some reason deciding on dinner here is hard. I guess in Italy you just go to an Italian place, in Spain the go to was tapas and in France if all else failed a bistro. But here the multitude of cuisines makes it confusing. Looking forward to a home cooked meal very much now. A little bit of stability in the diet.
We decide on Thai bizarrely, it's nice but expensive for what it was, and not as good as some cheap Thai back home.
We stroll the evening streets and canals one last time before heading back to pack our bags.
What an adventure it's been. 1 lost iPhone, 2 pairs of exhausted feet, 4 countries, 6 weeks, 14 different cities and a lot of fun times. Been a really enjoyable summer (I'll clarify that as "European summer" for France and Amsterdam) sojourn in Western Europe. Feel very lucky to have been able to wander Western Europe with Simone and I hope we can come back to a few of these places again in the future.
Ciao, Gracias and Merci
mat + sim
No comments:
Post a Comment