Amsterdam: 10 am to Lunch, in 500 photos

Having grandparents for Norah is not a luxury we usually get to 'cash-in' on. But in Holland, Nana & Pake let Wayne and I head to Amsterdam for nearly a full day (by ourselves!). I fell in love with Amsterdam minutes after arriving. I know there might be a collective blog-reader *gasp* when I say this, but I would allllmost say Amsterdam surpasses Paris. Ok, it may not surpass it but it is certainly on a 'magic-par' with Paris. I am not kidding.

We left our vacation rental at 8 am (which was 1 hour from Amsterdam) and parked the car at a train station not far from the city (skirting the issue of parking in AMS). We then took the train in 3 stops and voila!  

"Wayne on bridge"

Bike casualty

 This massive 3-storey bike parking structure was the first thing we saw coming out of the train station. The previous pictures are from on top of it. All open, all free to use.

This was Wayne a few days before. :)

mmm....

Same hemp shop. We never went into one but I kind of regret not seeing what they're all about.

This is a public, open air, (slightly concealed) urinal. Yuck. You could see the drain (right side) with flied swarming around it. I say 'yuck', but it's a pretty great idea, for men, who would otherwise pee in the canal or in alleyways. The Dutch are far too refined a culture for that to happen. :)

This was during 2014 World Cup time and Holland was not yet Out.

First we stopped for coffee and reviewed our Amsterdam book (this was my Uncle Marko's and he sent it to us in one of our care packages! Little did we know, we'd be using it IN Amsterdam 2 years later.)

 No, this is not a picture of a Dutch Saab, I was trying to spy-zoom on the guy across the way with a tiny infant in the front bicycle seat. She's wearing a little white hat and isn't any older than 6 months. She's slumped over and passed out (no helmet) and he's just riding along as if this is totally safe. We saw this so many times in our afternoon there. The one that made me cringe the most was a dad with a 3-4 month old in a baby carrier, on his chest, riding through Amsterdam traffic. No helmets on either of them. We asked family members in Holland about the whole helmet thing and they said the only people you'll see wearing helmets are "Germans". ha! (And under my breath I go, "Or me.") To my credit though, I did not wear a helmet during our two whole weeks there and I felt OK (except when we were going at pretty good speeds down country hill-roads...). I probably don't need to explain that we brought Norah's bike helmet in our suitcase since we knew there wouldn't be any to rent in Holland. :)  

The door on the left leads into a separate apartment. That sliver of a building in between the red and white facades is an apartment! Gives San Fran apartments a run for their money.

This is a canal-kennel! There are actual animals living on this houseboat. Dogs & Cats. It was called something like "Puss & Boots Kennel" (but in Dutch).

Look how gorgeous that front stoop is!

 

Guys putting in windows. We saw this a lot in the city and later realized they take OUT the entire window frame anytime they need to move items in or out. You won't fit couches/desks/pianos, or probably even large boxes, up those staircases. The only way is with the winches from the roof and removing windows/doors entirely.

The common baby seat you see in Amsterdam.

 

You can see some of the house facades are leaning back ever-so-slightly, and from the front you can see they are leaning on each other as well. Amazing houses! And every window, in every building, is spotless. Seems like a small detail but it makes everything that much more pristine.

Mama & baby in the canal. One of my favorite Amsterdam shots.

Another row of houses so beautiful you just want to punch yourself in the face.

 Wayne does Amsterdam

 

Some of the rows of houses go as farrrr as the eye can see.

I'm sure this dog speaks Dutch.

The brown and black casks in the center are a type of Corn whiskey they drink in Holland. When we met family in Holten (middle of country), Wilma's great aunt had old bottles like this in her cellar.  

Beautiful old typewriter

 A young couple sitting on their deck, on their houseboat in the canal in Amsterdam! Don't you just wanna shoot a blow-dart at them and take over their life? No? Just me?

 Store window reads: NO BOYS ALLOWED

 The sweetest dog in all of time. I wanted to reach up and steal her!! She was part Ewok, part huge fluffy bunny and then, small part: dog. And to make matters better, that is her living room - just open on the canal, 2 blocks from Anne Frank's house.

 And old Subaru, if you can believe it.

And here is a small part of the line to Anne Frank's house & museum. It stretches straight on, then left and then another 1/2 hour from that point. This museum was our main destination for Holland (and the Rijksmuseum) but it was 30C degrees outside (80F) and the line was 2 1/2 to 3 hours long. (almost entirely in the sun). We just could not handle it. And we only had 6 hours total in Amsterdam so we had to make the very hard decision not to see this. It was tough but we couldn't stand that heat and that would have been nearly all of our time in the city. This museum requires arriving at 8 am and being the first ones in (which we couldn't do, with the 1 hour drive from Apeldoorn). Instead, we had lunch, made the very long walk to the Rijksmuseum (Van Gogh is there), then rented bikes for 2 hours, ate again, and made our way back to the train.

This is the actual building that was Anne Frank's House (Huis). 

People taking their photo next to the plaque. I fought my initial desire to get the same photo. I mean really, what would I do once I was standing in front of the plaque? Smile big? And then what would I do with that photo?

Me, very sadly, walking away from the Anne Frank museum. We both agreed though, we just couldn't do it in that timeframe. So, we left that regret and decided to see as much of Amsterdam as we could instead. And that we did. More pictures to come.

Another worker removing a window frame to move items in. Bldg: 1671

 

Two very hip dudes at our café for lunch. Had to snap their photo.

And we're on our way - Wayne snapped this one.