Amsterdam, part 3: Waterland bike trip, Van Gogh and Anne Frank

Bike ferry, heading north out of Amsterdam.

We spent a day of biking to go see some of the countryside outside of Amsterdam.  Pure pleasure!  It started with a ride on the very busy bike ferry.

We think bikes and ferries are a great way to travel!

On our way!

Classic Dutch windmill

In Holland, you can go anywhere on a bike.

Farmland view.

A little bike (or car) ferry.

Nik enjoys the ride.

A break from biking for lunch.

We arrived in the little town of Broek-in-Waterland, which we decided should be our turnaround point.  First we explored the town and its very pretty church.

Sully getting goofy on his bike.

Broek-in-Waterland

Broek-in-Waterland's church that dates back to the 1400s.

Heading back, into the wind, we needed to stop for a chocolate break.

In total we biked about 22 miles on our single-speed heavy bikes!  The ride was all pretty flat, but we were wiped out!

The next day was a rainy one, so we were glad we'd had dry weather for our ride the day before.  We headed to the very popular Van Gogh museum.  With tickets purchased ahead from the tourist office by the train station, we had a 15-minute line to wait in instead of an hour-long line!  The museum was great, covering the (only) 10 years that Van Gogh painted.  Such an interesting and extremely talented person with a tragic end due to mental illness.  Some of the paintings I liked the most were from his year in a mental asylum toward the end of his life.  In his last 70 days of life, he produced 75 paintings!  He died at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.  He was not a success until after he died; this was thanks to the efforts of his sister-in-law, Johanna.

After the museum we went to find a famous bench:



This bench, from a scene in the movie based on the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green:

Gus and Hazel share a moment on the Bench.

Lovely, even in the rain.

For a man who hates cheese, not the best spot to get trapped in giant wooden shoes!

Seen in the flower market.  Not just tulip bulbs for sale here!

A wet but happy crew.

It was time to return our bikes and prepare to leave Amsterdam.  First, Nik and Madeleine got to visit the Anne Frank house.  The boys were not interested, and I had been there years ago, so we returned to the apartment to dry out.  Nik and Madeleine enjoyed it very much, and since the visit, we have finished reading Diary of a Young Girl.  Wow, so moving.  If you haven't read it, you should!

The Anne Frank House

Anne's neighborhood, with the Westerkerk (Western Church) clock tower in the background.  In her diary she mentions the sound of the bells chiming the hour, a source of comfort until the bells were removed by the Nazis.

Sadly, our week in Amsterdam was over.  Nik had to return to Oregon to work, and the kids and I headed on to Prague by train to spend the 3 weeks that Nik is gone, doing school work and some exploring too.

Goodbye, lovely Amsterdam!

Amsterdam, part 2: Tulips at Keukenhof

One of the reasons we wanted to visit Holland in the spring was to see the tulips!  From Amsterdam, there is an easy day trip to Keukenhof garden.  We made it just in time, as the gardens closed two days after we were there.  Getting there was pretty seamless, and we got to see the outskirts of Amsterdam along the way.  We biked to the main train station, took a train to the airport, then took a "tulip" bus to Keukenhof.  There we joined the happy throngs of other tulip admirers and got our fill of these beauties.  While the tulip fields on the outskirts of Keukenhof were done blooming, the garden itself was still in full fantastic bloom.   We soaked it up, with eyes and cameras.

A photographer's dream!

No tulips here; just amaryllis and Erica, in one of the indoor display spaces.

There were a few other things to look at, like a classic Dutch windmill...

... and a petting zoo.

And yet more tulips...

Amsterdam, part 1: The city of bikes and canals

Amsterdam view from canal level.

We were sad to leave Iceland; it had captured our hearts in just a week.  We could not be too sad though, since we were heading to Amsterdam for a week, and more time in Europe beyond that.  We flew through Oslo, Norway, where we had an impressively expensive, but very tasty, airport dinner, then on to Amsterdam.  We enjoyed the views from the airplane of the very flat farmland and lots of (modern) wind mills.  A taxi driver with excellent English (so common here, wow!) and a fondness for 80's John Hughes movies delivered us to our apartment for the week in northern Amsterdam.  He commented that we did well in finding a place in a nice neighborhood, and we agreed that it looked pretty awesome.  We were instantly dazzled by the canals, bridges and cute buildings.

Our 'hood.

Happy in our new home for the week.

Our cute street.  Notice the ubiquitous hoisting beams at the top of houses for moving things in and out.

Hoisting beam in action across the street.  They were moving out a bed frame.

We had fun exploring Amsterdam a bit on foot and via canal boat tour.   Nik and Sully decided to rent bikes for the week, in order to explore even more and experience the city as the natives do.  The rest of us followed suit the next day, so that the whole family was outfitted with one-speed bikes from Yellow Bikes.  We were traveling in style!

Neighborhood floating playground

A canal cruise boat just like the one we enjoyed.

We expected to see many bikes in Amsterdam, but what a scene it is in person!  Bikes are everywhere, filling a 3-floor bike parking garage next to the train station.  All manner of bikes for transporting and carrying all manner of people and things.  If you want to learn the very interesting history of bikes in Amsterdam, read In the City of Bikes, by Pete Jordan.  Highly recommend!  After reading the book, I was intimidated about biking in Amsterdam, but once I tried it, I was hooked!  It is a great feeling to ride with the massive flow of bikes, like a blood cell in the circulation of the city.  There are bike lanes and paths everywhere, including stop lights specific to bikes.  Nik was always our leader and navigator, and I think this had a whole lot to do with our great experience.  He is a natural!

We were impressed!

Bakfeits: Dutch minivan!

Space for 2 kids plus groceries here.  

Party bike!

The boys on their newly rented bikes.

Nik and Sully's sweet rides.

Bikes for the whole family.

Sully on the bike ferry.

Lots to explore in this town.

The whole crew in Vondelpark.

Among the attractions we biked to were the Stedelijk (modern art) Museum, with a special exhibit on Matisse, and the Houseboat Museum (http://www.houseboatmuseum.nl/), which is an actual canal houseboat that you can tour.

Typical canal houseboat, across from the houseboat we toured.

Houseboat kitchen

Houseboat bed with an appropriate Matisse.

We also biked to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant, of which there are many, thanks to Dutch colonialism in Indonesia.  Here we tried the rijsttafel, “rice table,” a delicious selection of Indonesian dishes.  This food is especially dear to Nik's heart, after the three years he and his family spent in Singapore during his formative teenage eating years.

Our Indonesian rijsttafel "rice table" feast.  Sully was feigning disinterest here!  It was delicious.

Bikes and sunshine.