Amsterdam Weekend Part I (4/22-23/1983)

Friday, April 22, 1983

Clear all day, the clearest I have ever seen the Alps!

Clearly seen Alps!

Found two four-leaf clovers.

Two four-leaf clovers

I feel kind of euphoric and am afraid I am going to fall fast and hard!

Marsha C and I were ready to travel by 20:35, so went ahead of schedule to walk down to the train station for our Holland Tour. We met Ruth D at the appointed time of 21:15; she had arrived with her latest boyfriend, George, who escorted us to the train that left at 21:27 for Basel. Arrived about 22:33 and ran to the next track for the 22:40 train to Amsterdam.

Basel to Amsterdam round-trip train ticket

Train schedule pages 1, 2, 6

Train schedule 3, 4, 5

There we met Jan & Kirby who were in the cuchette compartment next to us. The bouncy little steward showed us how to lock ourselves in, how to manage the ladder, turn off the lights, etc. The fourth member in our compartment turned out to be a Dutch physical therapist who knew the Dutch therapist working at Kinderspital Wildermeth!

A few minutes after departure we arrived in Basel Bad for customs. We made up the bottom two beds (the top two were already done). Ruth and the Dutch girl slept up top, and Marsha and I were “downstairs.”

Saturday, April 23, 1983

I didn’t sleep well because I was too hot. We were up at 7:00 for Dutch customs. We made up the seats to sit and watch the flat Dutch countryside go by, seeing the towns of neat brick rowhouses with lace curtains in the picture windows. The pastures divided by ditches contained cows here, sheep there, and even hogs. There was the occasional windmill. We saw a music band milling around a square in Amsterdam before arriving at the station at 9:36. Jan & Kirby went their own way.

Ruth, Marsha, and I caught tram #4 in front of the train station. I was going to forge my way to the back of the tram to validate our two-day passes, but Marsha sharply told me not to worry about it. After a couple stops we disembarked at the Dam Square, which was half full of carnival rides. The National Monument had fewer loiterers and pigeons around it than usual. We walked around the square until we found Key Tours at #19. We made sure our tickets were in order and checked in for two tours. Next we walked down a long block along Rokin to the Rokin Hotel to check in. The room was not ready yet, but we could leave our bags behind the reception desk.

We continued along Rokin to a canal where we were to get our boat tour from the Kooij company. We joined a long line of senior citizens boarding a boat, but I figured our piece of paper was only a voucher, and went to trade it in for three tickets.

Boat tour ticket

Our boat would leave at 10:30, so we had 25 minutes to wander. We headed east down a narrow alley passing a souvenir shop with a tiny windmill above it. Passed Oudezijds Voorburgwal, a typical canal edged with streets and lined with gabled buildings. Walked down Oudezijds Achterburgwal, turned right on Rusland, and right on Kloveniersburgwal. We ended up at the Munt/Mint tower and walked up the Rokin to the boat landing. Before boarding, we saw the band (we had seen from the train) coming down the street. But they were not marching; they were on bicycles!

Band on bicycles

A girl at the tour boat, who had a camera, was preparing to take a picture in my direction, so I stepped back out of her way. It turned out she was taking my picture, and was taking a photo of everyone who boarded the boat. The boat was enclosed in glass, and it was hot and stuffy. I didn’t take many pictures because of the dirty glass. We headed up the Amstel River and passed a ritzy restaurant where the kitchen in the basement was pointed out. We passed under the Blauwbrug/Blue Bridge, modeled after the bridges over the Seine. We were shown the houseboat of an eccentric American that appeared to be a barge topped with shacks and jungle plants, with a crudely painted sign that said, “Who needs the Pacific?”

Eccentric American's houseboat and lift bridge

The Magere Brug/Skinny Bridge was pointed out further along; it is still lifted by hand cranking. (Actually it looks like the Magere Brug, but is a similar bridge at the mouth of Nieuwe Herengracht.) We turned into Herengracht and were shown the seven bridges in a row down Reguliersgracht. Saw a statue of St George slaying the dragon on the front of a double canal house (it is actually St Michael the Archangel). It was noted that the buildings were once identified by their gables rather than being numbered. There are three types of gables: 1) the stepped, 2) the bell, and 3) the neck. Certain architectural styles were pointed out, as well as the hoisting hooks. Some of the buildings, or at least the upper floors, were warehouses. Now the buildings are mostly offices, as it costs a ridiculous amount of money to rent these places. We turned down Brouwersgracht, and backed down the Singel Gracht/Canal to see the skinniest building at #7 and the cat lady’s houseboat. The outside was like a screened porch and dozens of cats were there, going in and out of swinging trapdoors, or sleeping, or eating. We moved forward to go through a lock, which is used to flush out the canals! We went out in the harbor to see the Shell Research headquarters and the ventilation towers of the tunnel under the harbor. We circled around to the Oosterdok area to see the Schreitoren/Crying Tower where it is said wives wept when sending off their fishing husbands (legend). We followed the Oudezijds Voorburgwal where the buildings were built “right on the water” rather than having a street in front. We passed the Oude Kerk/Old Church and the Raadhuis/City Hall (used since 1808) at #197, which is done in several architectural styles. I wasn’t sure where it began and where it ended. Finally we passed the House on Three Canals and returned to the boat landing where our boarding photos were ready. We were also supposed to tip the guide since she was only a student, but she had problems with English, German, and French, but did really well in Dutch. Because of familiarity with the languages, by the time she got through a couple of the languages, we were able to pick up most of the info. Ruth gave her 5 NL Guilders/$1.80, the first money spent all day (excluding the coffees Marsha and Ruth bought on the train with Swiss francs).

We walked to the hotel and were shown to our room. We had to climb a very steep set of stairs, but fortunately were on the first floor (U.S. second floor) at #14. Our door opened out over the stairs, with the bottom cut to fit over the steps. The room had two single beds and a bed that unfolded from the wall. There was a sink, and the toilet was down the back hall, with a very difficult flusher button. The room had a mirror over the peephole on the door, and I had to stand on tiptoes to look into it.

We walked up to the Dam Square, then up Damrak to a Burger King for lunch. We followed an alley to Nieuwendijk, a shopping street, and I got real French fries with mayonnaise to share with Marsha. Went down Nieuwendijk to the Dam Square, and at the carnival we watched a chubby girlie prance around to music to entice people to go into a trailer. We wandered down Kalverstraat, a pedestrian-only shopping street. Marsha and Ruth stopped in a boutique to look at blouses from India. I went around the corner to look at the courtyard of the Historical Museum, which was formerly an orphanage and it certainly looked institutional, although now it’s full of outdoor cafés. We continued a bit farther, and then I led the others through a door in a wall down an alley into the Begijnhof, former quarters for religious lay women. We found ourselves in a peaceful green courtyard after the hustle and bustle of Kalverstraat.

Begijnhof

Next we passed the Munt and crossed Singel to the Flower Market.

Flower Market

It was filled with a large array of flowers and plants, trees, shrubs, bulbs, yucca stalks, and gardening implements. From the street side it was difficult to see the shops were on houseboats. Opposite the shops were the typical gabled buildings including warehouses.

Warehouse

I went to take a picture of the back of the shops, and realized they weren’t on houseboats, but on concrete landings in the canal.

Back of the Flower Market shops

We crossed back over the Singel and walked down Heiligeweg, seeing and hearing a street pipe organ run by a small diesel motor. We heard a couple others that day.

Pipe organ

Canal tour boats

We stopped at the hotel for Ruth to drop off her blouses, then went to the Amsterdam Diamond Center, a large building on the Dam at Rokin. Ruth had pointed out a smaller diamond shop to visit, but I figured they did not have a diamond cutter. Somehow Ruth then assumed I didn’t like small diamond stores, only big ones! (Actually, a smaller diamond place I had been to with my sisters was better than a large place, because it was more personal.) We were sent downstairs to see a film on diamonds and diamond cutting. There were displays around the room. Back upstairs I went to watch the diamond cutter himself. He had two diamonds in the works, but spent most of his time talking to a companion. Once in a while he would lift up a diamond to check the angles. Marsha and Ruth checked out the displays of jewelry, but did not avail themselves of the clerks to try on anything.

We then went to catch our nice new tour bus for the Bulbfields. Ruth sat with me and Marsha ended up with a French-speaking woman. Our tour guide was a cute little guy with a bloop nose and thinning blonde hair, who was impeccably dressed. The limp wrist variety, as Marsha said. He kept saying, “Thank you very mush.” English was his best language. His German wasn’t very good as he seemed to translate literally from English. His French was as basic as mine. His name was Paul and the bus driver was Ben. We left when the bus was full at 14:15 instead of 14:30, to get a head start because of heavy traffic. We drove west out of Amsterdam where the townhouses were pointed out as having only 3-4 rooms per family and no bathroom. Now they at least have toilets. Ruth saw a naked man in a townhouse window, who was shaving.

We followed the railroad tracks towards Haarlem, which was the very first railroad in the Netherlands. The tracks followed a canal that was the very first means of transport between Amsterdam and Haarlem. We passed the town of Halfweg (Halfway!) with its sugar factory where a castle once stood. We could see the remains of the entrance gate to the castle. We passed through a corner of Haarlem, the city of flowers, as it started to rain. A neighboring town had houses with thatched roofs, then an area of villas.

We arrived about 15:00 in Vogelenzang at Herr Roozens Tulipshow, a nursery where we wandered through greenhouses and out into small gardens to see a wide variety of bulb plants.

Herr Roozens greenhouse

There were many colors of tulips, some low to the ground, others were huge, some with curled petals, and one variety had several blooms on one stem. There were many shades of yellow to white daffodils and the flatter narcissus. The hyacinths were heady in scent.

Hyacinths

Herr Roozens gardens

Multi-head tulips

Beyond we could see the fields of flowers, mostly daffodils here.

Tulip fields

We were given a bulb order form on which we could write the code number of the specific flowers we liked.

Tulip order form

The minimum order was $19, and you had to order in bunches of ten. Marsha ordered 30 Sundance tulip bulbs (orange with yellow edges) for her mother, at $7 per 10. They will be delivered in October. Ruth went to the take-home shop and bought several freesia bulbs and a couple lily bulbs. I went to the enormous souvenir shop, where most of the souvenirs were displayed with a number, and you had to note the number to give to the clerk. In the center of the shop was a map of the Netherlands with dolls in traditional dress standing in the appropriate districts.

A wooden shoemaker was in the back of the store. He had a long curved blade that was fixed at one end with a ring on an eye-bolt. The shoemaker could place a block of wood under the blade and push the blade against the wood. The skill came in holding the wood block in a way to get the proper outside shape. I left to meet Marsha and Ruth coming out of the bulb shop and we boarded the bus to drive through the bulb fields. It was unbelievable how extensive the fields were with unending patches of color. Tulips, narcissus, daffodils, and hyacinths. It was explained that these bulb flowers thrive in the fertile sandy soil behind the dunes protecting the country from the sea between Haarlem and Leiden.  Small bulbs are planted and covered with straw to protect them from the wind and cold. They are allowed to grow and bloom, then the flowers are cut off. Once they are beheaded, the water and nutrients in the leaves go back down to the bulb so that it grows larger. Sometimes smaller bulbs grow off the larger one. At harvest time, the big bulbs are sold commercially, and the smaller ones are kept for further bulb development.

We stayed on the bus and drove around and around the fields. Sometimes several rows of color alternated with rows of beheaded green plants. Some areas had piles of composting flower heads. We even saw a man examining his flowers, looking for sick ones that could ruin an entire field overnight.

It began raining harder as we approached a large grove of trees and suddenly we saw a giant parking lot crowded with people. We had arrived at 16:00 at Keukenhof, the former kitchen garden of a countess who lived in a nearby castle. The tour guide went to get tickets and told us we had to be back to the buses by 17:30.

Keukenhof ticket

We were able to join the faster moving line of those who already had tickets and enter the immaculate and manicured landscape gardens of a flower exhibition, which is only open for eight weeks each year!

Keukenhof grounds

We saw artistically displayed tulips, daffodils, narcissus, and hyacinths, as well as lilies including strange ones that bloomed partway up the stem (like banana trees, said Ruth, they are fritillaria).

Fritillaria

Although it was raining, it wasn’t too bad under the tall trees. There were also flowering fruit trees, lakes and canals, ducks and swans, etc. We went into extensive greenhouses that had trimmed grass plots and stagnant ditches, along with all the bulb flowers, plus rhododendrons and azaleas, dahlias, freesias, gladiolas, etc.

Inside a greenhouse

Striped tulips

Gerbera daisies

We also saw some frilly-edged tulips.

Frilly-edged tulips

Soon it was overkill as we went back outside and wandered over to the windmill to climb up to a balcony to look over more bulb fields.

Bulb fields

Keukenhof windmill

Inside the mill was a display of breads. We wandered around the grounds a bit more, but then it was time to return to the bus. It was difficult to hurry because of the crowds of people and we were a minute late. The bus left at 17:32, taking the highway back to Amsterdam.

The tour guide explained we were driving over polders, or reclaimed land. They would build a dike around a certain area, then pump the water out into a canal next to the polder. The water in the canal would be directed out to the North Sea. Windmills were the source of power to pump the water. We went through a town that had baskets of tulips hanging from the street lamps. We were told they were put there because Queen Beatrix had visited the town the day before! We also passed the Schiphol Airport, the name meaning "ship cemetery," since old ships were found when they drained away the sea to reclaim land for the airport.

We arrived back in Amsterdam at 18:30 and returned to the hotel where we ran into Jan & Kirby in the lobby. As I had figured, they had taken the morning tour to Keukenhof. After the business with the movie theater on March 27th, I have stopped listening to “explanations/excuses” for Jan & Kirby seeming to avoid being with Marsha (and me). So I was surprised that they invited us to go to dinner with them. Jan & Kirby left the hotel, and the three of us went to the room to freshen up before walking up to the Dam, then up Warmoesstraat, which was pretty shady, to #31, the Pacifico Mexican Restaurant. Inside was full of character with adobe walls and wood beams, and it was crowded. Jan & Kirby had reserved a table, but we had to wait until 20:00 to get seated. Drinks: Jan and I had 7-Ups, Kirby had beers and Cokes, and a couple Margheritas. Ruth had beers and Marsha had beers and a Margherita. There were nacho chips and salsa on the table, and we shared appetizers of a guacamole dip, nachos with cheese, and quesadillas (tortillas filled with cheese, folded in half and grilled). I had enchiladas con carne (two soft flour tortillas filled with stringy beef, and cheese and onions) with rice and refried beans (every dish had the latter two items). Ruth had two “California” tacos. Jan had a taco and a cheese enchilada. Marsha and Kirby each had a taco, a cheese enchilada, and chili “Colorado” (bite-size pieces of meat in a hot sauce). We all got stuffed. A guy entered the restaurant to play his guitar and sing in Spanish, afterwards passing his hat. When it came to paying our bill, I put in 30 NLG/$11 and Jan & Kirby paid by EuroCheque.

When we left the restaurant, it was pouring rain, but the others wanted to see the Red Light District. So I led them down Warmoesstraat to Zeedijk, the beginning of the so-called Sailors’ [Entertainment] District! We walked down Zeedijk with black guys standing at every corner and in some doorways. No one offered to sell us drugs or anything. Figuring the others really just wanted to see the Red Light area, I turned down an alley and immediately found red lights. Scantily-clad women were in windows and doorways, patiently sitting on a chair as they waited for customers, with a red light turned on. Most of the women wore black, and some were quite plump. We worked our way across canals and around the Oude Kerk/Old Church, down the back streets and even down to a dead end! We walked along an alley that was narrower than our open umbrellas. We came out on the Dam, and decided to catch tram #16 to go to a Baskin-Robbins Jan & Kirby saw earlier in the day. We got off at Albert Cuyp Straat, but the Baskin-Robbins was closed. We took tram #16 back to Weteringplein and changed to the #7 to the lit-up Leidseplein with the lit-up City Theater. I was headed to a café for coffee, when Ruth suggested we go to the Wienerwald for coffee. I didn’t argue because of the diamond store issue, and let her have her “typical Dutch coffee” in a Viennese version of a Howard Johnsons/Kentucky Fried Chicken! Marsha and Ruth had coffee melange, I had hot chocolate, Jan had apple juice, and Kirby had a banana split. We left at 23:00 to take trams #7 and #16 back to the hotel where we fell into bed. Poor Marsha, her bed had a sideways slant!