At the beginning of December I bit the bullet and finally left my beloved Spain for a place with a much trickier language (at least for me): Amsterdam. Amsterdam is the capital of The Netherlands, a country which some people erroneously call “Holland”; however, Holland is not the name of a country, it is a province in The Netherlands (in which Amsterdam is located).
The Amsterdam airport. The rain cover is on my backpack in preparation for the first rain I’d seen all trip!
Luckily most signs are in both English and Dutch, but the names were still very hard for me to know how to pronounce (for example, metro stations such as Snevlietweg, Ouderkerkerlaan, Wilbautstraat….)
There’s an easy-to-navigate train from the airport to the city center. Behind David is the train station, “Amsterdam Centraal.”
David and I spent 5 days in Amsterdam. Here I’ll tell you about some of my favorite things:
We took a 3-hour walking tour that marched us all over the city. Our guide, Kor, had has laughing until our sides hurt since he peppered all his facts with wisecracks. This is a nice way to learn A LOT of information.
Here Kor is standing in front of the Dutch East India company explaining that the business, founded in 1602, put some of its fortune, accumulated in the spice trade, toward helping America win the Revolutionary War.
If you pay attention, you’ll see many of the buildings in Amsterdam appear to be crooked or leaning forward slightly (Can you spot this?) This is because Amsterdam was built on swampy land, which has caused some buildings’ foundations to sink and tilt. Do you see the hooks on the front of the homes? You have another chance to spot them below.
The hooks are used with a rope and pulley system to lift furniture through the windows into your home. They’re necessary because most of the old homes in the city of Amsterdam have narrow, steep staircases (and no elevators!)
One of the most famous houses in Amsterdam (it gets over 1 million visitors a year) is the Anne Frank house, where 13-year-old Anne spent two years in hiding during World War II. If you’re a teenager (or older!), you should read the very sincere diary she wrote during this time, “The Diary of a Young Girl.” It has become so famous that it’s been translated into over 60 languages.
The house where Anne Frank and her family were in hiding (it’s now a museum) is to the right of the house with the red shutters. I came here as a 13-year-old girl with my dad, but this time around, I learned something new: Before she went into hiding, Anne was attending a Montessori School!
A similarity between Amsterdam and San Francisco is that people love to ride bicycles. There are more than one million bikes in Amsterdam- in fact, there’s even more bicycles than there are people living in the city of Amsterdam! It is the most bicycle friendly capital in the world and also the most bicycle friendly city with over 1 million people. Needless to say, if you’re a pedestrian please look all ways before crossing the street/bike path/sidewalk!
Amsterdam also has a lot of canals- 165 to be exact!- and has thus earned itself the nickname, “Venice of the North” (Do you know what country Venice is in?) So many canals means lots of bridges. I heard different numbers, but it seems there are at least 1,500 bridges in Amsterdam.
They were having a special holiday light show on some of the canals while we were there and here you can see some of the works of art (light) that we photographed during our Canal Cruise:
A funny coincidence during our cruise: we just so happened to get on one with a bunch of tour guides including Kor who had been our guide 2 days before! (it was an event the Free Walking Tour company organized for guides). Kor was born and raised in Amsterdam, but we also learned that the tour guides came from all over Europe and even the US- people who loved Amsterdam so much when they visited, they found a job that allowed them to stay for years!
During our short trip we also enjoyed visiting:
The Van Gogh Museum
The Rijksmuseum
Here’s the Rijksmuseum up close with the seasonal winter skating rink and iconic “I amsterdam”statue.
In the photo above we’re in the middle of a long run that we took from our hotel through Vondelpark. A couple more scenes from the run, including a super fun-looking slide. I wish I had some students with me to try it out and report back!
We loved the food in Amsterdam (Spain didn’t have quite as much variety- Thai food we especially missed you)… and also the junk food!
I kept telling David I had a big surprise for him for dinner because:
Besides being the greatest, another reason I had this insider info about the best food in town was because 18 years ago when I was in Amsterdam with my dad, brother, and best friend Margia, I had the most delicious meal of my life. I still remembered this meal and what the type of food was called: It’s a combination of Indonesian and Dutch food called, “Rijstafel.” I’ve never seen Rijstafel again since that memorable dinner, and so I was sure David wouldn’t have heard of it. Although I couldn’t remember the exact restaurant I’d eaten at when I was 13, I looked up some reviews and found out there was a great Rijstafel place right near our hotel. I made my first dinner reservation of our trip. Why was this meal so memorable? Decide for yourselves:
26-course Rijstafel meal of deliciousness at Blauw
Fortunately, I did not get as full as when I was 13 (when I got so stuffed I could barely walk!) I’d been saving up for this meal all day… and maybe my stomach’s a little bigger now too 🙂
Although I’d been to Amsterdam once before, I was so happy to return almost 2 decades later. Some things had changed because I saw them with a new, adult perception, some things had changed because time had passed, and some experiences were different simply because I went to different places and learned new things. For example, all these ways to entertain yourself in an elevator, haha:
Our time in Amsterdam went by too quickly, but David and I had found a $20 ticket to somewhere we’d always wanted to visit, so it was time to move on. It was a place where both of us had ancestry but neither of us (nor anyone in our immediate families) had ever been. Read on to find out where to next!
Bike parking at the metro stop where we caught the train to the airport.
At the Amsterdam airport you check-in your bags yourself with this high-tech machine that weighs your luggage and prints a tag for it.
handshakehighfivehug 
Makes me nostalgic for Amsterdam. Rijstafel is one of those memorable food experiences that we seem to remember long after the last morsel. I recall a fantastic and famous waffle restaurant near the Anne Frank house as well. I wonder if it’s still there.
LikeLike