Our first week in Amsterdam was spent with our friends from
home, Carrie and Eric--a continuation of the fun we had at Glastonbury. The second week we
met our other good friends Michelle and Rich who were there for business: Rich was being
transferred here and they had to find an apartment fast. We'll begin with Week One...
We arrived in Amsterdam first and got to the hotel and
checked in. When Carrie and Eric arrived several hours later, a problem developed: they
only showed reservations for two instead of four: although Carrie booked & confirmed a
room for four, and our current room had 3 beds in it, they refused to let us share for one
night until a quad opened up. And, the front desk guy was a jerk about it, so we spent our
first night in Holland involved in a fight with the guy at the Acro Hotel (Don't every
stay there). But we rented an apartment the next day and all was well.
We spent our days wandering around the city, and our nights
playing 500, an addictive card game. It was the most fun for Dave who kept ending up with
the good cards.
We visited the Vincent Van Gogh museum, and were surprised
he only painted for 10 years, there was such a large body of work. We walked through the
infamous Red Light District, and even after knowing what to expect it was still a bit
surreal (mouth-dropping) to see women in windows, close enough to touch with the knowledge
one could "buy" these ladies standing behind glass only a couple of inches away.
We visited the Anne Frank House and climbed up to where the
bookcase hid the entrance to the Secret Annex, the place her family and another lived
unseen from the Nazis for several years. One of the worst things to note was that they
were discovered so close to the end of the war.
Our longest day started very innocently by attending the
Heineken brewery tour. We were tipped off that the line for each tour is broken into
separate groups and the people in the first group get to drink free in the Heineken pub
for almost an hour. Without needing anymore encourgament, we were the first in line
for our scheduled tour. So after drinking for an hour, we headed straight to boat
tour put on by a comedy club appropriately from Chicago. Here we met a fun
international group of people. But halfway during the tour, it started raining so
the boat trip was cut short but continued in a local pub for the rest of the night (we
won't go into details but it wasn't pretty).
We saw the daily flea market, the Cuypstraat Markt, and the
colorful Bloomenmarkt flower market. The flowers were beautiful and extremely cheap here,
a dozen roses cost around $3. We rented bicycles and rode out to the country with a quest
to see windmills.
Carrie, Eric, and Kelly took a day trip to Brugge, Belgium,
a quaint little walled city. We saw a collection of Salvador Dali works, and a rare
Michaelangelo sculpture of the virgin and child; it was a cute little town to wander
through and a day was certainly enough.
Carrie & Eric really wore us out. We weren't used to
such an intense pace of doing things. But we failed in our quest to get them to quit their
jobs and hang with us for even longer. We had a great time and would have been even
sorrier to see them go if Michelle & Rich hadn't arrived the next day...
Week 2: Exit Carrie & Eric, Enter Michelle & Rich
Kelly met Michelle & Rich at the airport. Their first
comment? You look the same! They hadn't seen Dave yet, though. They had an appointment the
first night, so Kelly went to Rotterdam to visit a friend of hers and ended up helping set
up an exhibit at the Natuurmuseum there www.nmr.nl.
We saw a different side of Amsterdam the second week due to
our exhaustive search for apartments. We rode around with Michelle and various real estate
agents while Rich worked. We saw diverse neighborhoods, numerous types of buildings, and
learned a bit about Dutch architecture in the process. Rich, on the other hand, learned
that doing business in Holland was a little different than in the States! The
housing market there was really tight, so it was rough-going for awhile, but they
eventually found a cute apartment in a pleasant area of the city.
We took a Candlelight cruise (all the wine and cheese for 2
hours), rented bicycles again, this time we pedaled north of the city and actually did
find some windmills. We attended a comedy night put on by a group of US
expatriates--from Chicago of all places.
We really liked Amsterdam, and made sure that the apartment
Michelle & Rich selected had an extra bedroom in case we decide to come back to visit
them in the next couple of years.
The city is truly beautiful, especially once you get past
the Red Light area and the "hash" Coffee Shops it is infamous for; they are such
a small part of the city.
The canals and bridges throughout give Amsterdam a peaceful
feeling for such a large city. Plus, nearly everyone knew some English so it was very easy
to talk to people, and the people were quite friendly and not overly jaded by the
tourists.
We bade Rich and Michelle adieu (they had to get home to
pack up their lives in Chicago) and we headed to Nijmegen in eastern Holland.
