3/22/07
On US non-stop from PHL. What a luxury. No connection and no ride to Newark or, even further, JFK. The luxury is certainly offset by dealing with US Air. They will get us there though. Being a veteran of a number of BA flights, I am a bit spoiled, what with the little package found on every coach seat that includes your little sockies, eye mask, toothbrush and toothpaste. Most missed though is my private screen on the chair in front of me, with my choice of films. Instead I am tempted to crane my neck and see the mottled picture of a film in which I have no interest. Luckily I have my trusty laptop on which to blog. My daughter, who is eight, has this malingering cold with a hacking cough that is ugly enough for us to have considering canceling over it. It keeps her up through the night. Is it mothering or codependence that worries me enough to keep me staring at her rather than sleeping? I am not sure. Suffice it to say that it is a long flight but we all survive surprisingly well.
We have become quite the 21st century traveling family: A couple of MP3 players that we filled with the most current stuff stolen from Limewire. We left the portable DVD player at home to save some weight but that requires that I share my laptop with my daughter. How many times can I watch that scene in Goonies with the repro David statue? If you haven’t seen the movie it’s worth a look, if just for that scene (once is truly funny). I loaded Skype on this laptop and picked up a headset. I bought $10 worth of time and loaded the phone numbers of my favorite people in the speed dial (including a work contact). All three hotels have wi-fi in their lobbies and I emailed them to request rooms with wi-fi. Theoretically I should be able to call the US for 2 cents a minute. I will let you know. In addition, the wi-fi should give us access to things like Pandora.com, which has a number personalized radio stations for us to listen to in the room as we do our daily ablutions. Who knows, by the time we get back to Amsterdam, our last stop, I may be so good at the wi-fi thing that we will duck into a coffee shop to check an email or two. Like our old friend Bill Clinton, we won’t inhale. In the realm of IT we complete the picture with the DVD camcorder that we bought about six months ago. What a wonderful contraption, compact and producing crisply recorded mini DVD’s that can be dropped directly into the player when we get home.
3/23
We arrive in Amsterdam and pick up our luggage uneventfully, which is never our expectation and we are always grateful when it goes like that. It is a pleasure going through immigration as a family (two women and a child) in this incredibly modern city, without any risk of being questioned. Finding the train station is easy, as is the ride to the center. We stop at a bagel joint to pick up lunch to go. The price isn’t too bad; everything is fresh and delicious though the bagels are in no way authentic. There are clearly no Jews making them in Amsterdam these days. The lovely staff volunteers a few tourist pointers like, pay attention and don’t get robbed, which is very kind of them. We find the right platform for the next Brussels train and wait in the terribly damp cold for about 40 minutes watching the people and the pigeons and the ferryboats on the water outside the train barn.
There is something incredibly romantic about this leg of our trip. The weather is gray and moody, early spring is evident everywhere with green grasses and plenty of yellow blooms. The train rolls along quietly at a steady pace peeking into the lives of people so different than us yet not different at all. These lowlands have been inhabited for centuries and there is an easy peace between productive agriculture and the vibrant post modern architecture of the small cities we transit through, The Haag, Rotterdam, Mechelen. During the ride we pass from the Dutch speakers of The Netherlands to Flemish and onto the Belgian French, their edges blurred, most speaking at least two of these as well as extremely capable English. I have the impression of a Parisian sort of elegance from these people mixed with a surprising warmth and grace unexpected in such a densely populated place.
Upon arrival in Brussels we make a couple of false starts trying to get our bearings in finding our way to the hotel but, in spite of a light cold drizzle and serious wind, we pleasantly find our spot just off of the Grand Place or “The place to be” in this the capital of the European Union (EU). I am surprised by how few people of color I see in this city, though there are some, mostly North Africans from French speaking countries like Morocco. We hear lots of European languages though, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish as well as all of the local languages. We check in and head for our very stylistically current room. Europeans, with their long cultural history, seem never to have any fear of doing something new in terms of architecture and design, even with their moderate hotels. Unlike us Americans whose history has such shallow roots that we try to deceive ourselves and anyone else, that they are much deeper, often going to the extreme of references to the perfect order of Ancient Greece.
Though there is wi-fi in the room, it doesn’t seem to be read by my computer. Sad. I try again, in the lobby where the signal is definitely up, and get nothing at all. So much for my new high tech life! I don’t obsess and we move on into the gray wind to wander the streets. In spite of its international importance, Brussels feels very manageably sized to me, as well as shockingly friendly. I had heard rumors that it was scruffy and dirty. I cannot imagine to what other city that comparison was made. It certainly is an improvement in that realm over any American city to which I have been, as well as London, Paris and Rome.
We wander a restaurant street where each place has its wares displayed: fresh shellfish and incredibly appealing looking veggies as well as a jaunty taxidermied rabbit. (Wonder if it tasted like chicken?) Hawkers of varying motivation and talent stand out front to try to coax us in. We pry ourselves away from them all to find a basement restaurant that was recommended to us by a pretty and stylish young woman at the hotel’s front desk. To find it we must venture past the glass covered streets of the Galleries Royales St. Hubert, the first mall in the history of the world, 1847, which smells just as sweet as any place I have ever been as a result of its plethora of Belgian chocolateers, and into the Grand Place itself. How outrageous this square is, chocked full incredibly ornate gothic confection like buildings, all trimmed with a hefty dose of gold leaf and all seemingly with a patina of the smog of the last 100 or so years.
We dine beneath one of these architectural confections in a barrel vaulted room. Dinner in Brussels is as the Belgian’s bill it: the quantities of Germany and the qualities of France. Mussels in Brussels are divine, as is a wonderful cream based seafood stew called waterzooi. Best of all, my daughter gets to sample the country’s chief exported food idea: French (?) fries, which are Belgian in origin.
3/24
Today chilly gray meets us as we venture into the Belgian world. We cross the street to a spot that bills itself as a “tea room” with a front window full of waffles, crepes and croissants and a menu in Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish. Our Asian waiter moves gracefully from language to language as he negotiates the tables in his station. It is like watching ballet. Europe is a difficult place for an American coffee drinker. When I walk into a breakfast restaurant at home I like the cup to be on the table and the server to arrive with pot in hand and return frequently. Here they give me a nice strong but very small cup of coffee that leaves me with only the word “more” on my tongue. I call it a lesson in letting go. There are always lots of them when I travel.
From breakfast we grab a taxi and head for the starting place of our self-tour of upper town. This area is all business, full of the staid elegance of the neo-classical style, a result of the wealth acquired in the 19th century when King Leopold ravaged the Belgian Congo and a few other colonies that, though independent these days, remain crippled by the experience. A striking architectural exception to this is the art nouveau building that houses the musical instrument museum. This pristine example of the style was built as a department store in direct response to the then old fashioned staid look of the psuedo-Greek stuff in its neighborhood. It is full of soft curves and naturalistic wrought iron. We ride the elevator up the glass enclosed Queen Anne style turret and take in the vista across the rooftops of Brussels, then walk down the steps and look up to see the lovely floral joinings between the wrought iron columns and the ceilings.
Back out on the street we find a misty fog and light drizzle that envelopes everything. It begins to pool and drip from our raincoats, but we are pretty hard-core in this stuff. There is no better lesson in powerlessness when traveling than weather. We make our way to what may be the highest point in all of Benelux on top of which sits the scaffolding ensconced Palace of Justice. Under these conditions this pile is way too much - and might well be even without the scaffolding. We take a look at the wide-open view across Brussels found here, much of it socked in. To our left in the distance is the area known as Waterloo, yes that Waterloo. It’s inspiring as a tourist to stand in the rain and see a place where one of human history’s most dominant figures was taught about defeat.
From here we funnel down a cobble-stoned street into the much less formal lower city. We come to a neighborhood full of galleries and local restaurants. As we stop to get our bearings we see another nouveau gem, a place called The Parrot. Its façade covered with lovely bentwood, done in a floral style and with a salad and pita sandwich menu and a no-smoking policy (thank God we are seeing more of this over here than ever before). It is chocked full of tables filled with Bruxelloise families of all stripes. We are lucky enough to find a seat and partake of a lovely and reasonably priced light lunch. The staff as well as the patrons are of that unselfconscious, warm and elegant stock that we have happily discovered on this trip.
We wander down to the low point of this fair city where is found the thing that truly makes Brussels world famous. As we come around the corner we begin to see the crowd congregated around it. “It,” in this case, is a fountain that contains a very small statue of a young naked cherub-like boy peeing. His name is Manneken-Pis and the number of languages in which jokes about this poor boy are told can only be imagined if you don’t visit yourself. Our favorite jokester is a Scotsman holding a rubber ducky on high in order for his wife to snap a photo showing the boy relieving himself upon the bath toy. When we stare at him and chuckle he says, “don’t ask.” We continue on through the chocolaty streets of Brussels, pick up our luggage and head for the train station and our short ride to Bruges.
These trains are almost impossibly quiet and comfortable and we take our ride as a reprieve, not just from the weather but also from the stress of map watching and figuring what comes next. We pass small towns whose streets are lined with those impossibly steep pitched roofs covered in the crenulated tile that is the vernacular style of Benelux. We pass primeval irrigation canals whose history is so long that nature has encroached upon their edges so much so that it is as if they were laid out by God in the first seven days. We pass single story ancient sway backed barns surrounded by impossibly green fields dotted with grayish sheep that seem to reflect the moody sky. Just when we are starting to get into traveling reverie, the quick hour passes and we arrive at our destination.
In Brugge we catch a taxi to our hotel this time and check in. Our room overlooks the rooftops and faux-gables of this fairytale-like town. We see the backyard angle of the famous Belgian step gable as well as bell gables. I set my laptop on the windowsill and fire it up. Voila! There is a signal! I check my email and find no problems at all and a few notes from friends. I respond from my hi-tech roost and try not to make them too jealous. Then I try out the Skype phone on a comrade from home. I hear a crisp ring then a crystal clear, “hello”. We hold a lovely conversation and, as I sign off, I could not feel more 21st century. Oddly that is the last moment I had wi-fi access here, in spite of wandering the hallways, restaurants and lobbies of this property.
While I am playing with the computer my partner goes down to the lobby to ask for advice upon where to eat dinner. She asks for a place that offers a light meal for not too much money. I am not sure what went wrong. It could be that the staff here gives the same answer to the “where shall we go for dinner?” question no matter what other qualifications are added or it could be that I sent a non-travel agent to do a travel agent’s job but we end up in what is clearly a tourist trap. The good news first: there is a lovely fire burning in each room and the staff to diner ration is quite amazing, I would say 1 to 4 maybe. The bad news? We spend about $100 for the three of us on what is billed as traditional Flemish fare; tough stew beef, greasy French-fries and essentially un-spiced chicken stew, all presented in a singularly unappealing way. The staff was young and a bit bumbling in spite of the quantity of them. My daughter, always full of joie d’vivre, loved the experience, probably because of her wonderful dessert: a scoop of vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles, a lollipop to go stuck in it and with a waffle cone, yes, waffle as in Belgian waffle, jutting from its side. The cone became the key to her jet-lagged giddiness by acting first as a hat, then a nose, then a body part which she does not possess. This being her fifth trip to Europe, I have learned not to fight too much over her public behavior when she gets in this jet lagged state. You can bet though, some of the staff and fellow patrons will not forget her anytime soon.
3/25
What an idyllic little city Brugge is! We wake to a nearly cloudless sky and temperatures climbing to the 50’s, thank God. One day is perfect to see it all by foot. We follow a tour in our guidebook that carries us to a starting point at Market Square, a vast cobble-stoned area surrounded on two sides by private enterprise, restaurants and cafes, shops and banks. On the other two sides are public buildings one of which is a gothic town hall with an incredibly high bell tower that you can pay good euros to torture yourself into climbing; three hundred and some steps, some worn stone, some wood, twisting this way and that and all packed with tourists from the world over. I love this stuff. We make it pantingly to the top to see in the distance that sprawl, the thing that we Americans thought we had a corner upon, has arrived in Benelux. We also see what this area is famous for: windmills, no, not that kind, modern wind farm windmills that are efficient producers of energy, and lots of them. The people of Benelux have a true vested interest in the global warming issue since much of their land is claimed from the sea which is held back with dykes and dams and lochs. Every centimeter of rising sea level creates monumental problems for
them.
We climb back down those scary steps, hanging onto the railings with the exhilaration of beating death and crawl out into the ancient streets of what has become the consummate European tourist town. Brugge’s maze-like lanes are a medieval jumble, a dramatic contrast to the careful planning of Philadelphia or any city designed by the Enlightenment mind. Luckily we have a good map and a fine navigator in my partner and we find our way. This city boasts a Michelangelo, one of the few outside of Italy. It is in the Church of Our Lady and is displayed as part of a baroque wall of decorations and other sculptures. It stands out as a diamond would in a coalmine. We wander past the lace and tapestry shops designed to trap people like us. Slowly we find ourselves seduced. When I arrived here, I associated this type of weaving with the childhood memory of my father’s mother who had a dark house full of French provincial furniture and a blue boy lamp. By our last day here I must have one! Luckily they are not too expensive so that when we get home and wonder where the heck to hang it, we won’t feel too bad about stuffing it in a closet until we find the perfect spot. (It could take years.)
My daughter has been counting people’s dogs since we arrived. Apparently the Belgians have taken a cue from the French and seem to bring them everywhere. They clearly don’t enforce the poop scoop laws here, which is the only smudge we find in this handsome city. She has counted to around forty canines when I finally step in one of their gifts. My partner suggests that I wipe it off in the grass but Brugge has not seen grass in millennia. I scrape and scour my shoe across the cobblestones but to no avail. Finally we come upon a chunk of moss that must have fallen out of a rain gutter. I plant the offending foot directly upon it and the little piece of green disappears like magic. After some inquiry and much hysterics we find it stuck to the bottom of my shoe with the offending substance as an adhesive. I will move on to the next subject now but let me say finally that later that night, while writing this blog in the lobby bar I was accosted by an evil scent and could not imagine what it was until I removed my shoes in the room later on.
We finish our tour with a peaceful boat ride upon the canal. We slide between the ancient homes, past pansy filled window boxes and an occasional swan. It is difficult to explain the level of calm produced by the experience of gliding along with a passel of fellow tourists, even for my eight year old. Was it the water, the captain with the melodic Flemish accent in French then English or just the rest for our weary feet? We never work out the answer but we are grateful for it.
We are left with a short window before dinner during which we sit in a café on Burg Square, an elegant area and the birthplace of Brugge. For fifteen euros my daughter drinks a hot chocolate, my partner drinks a table wine and I have a pot of tea. Apparently the adage “location, location, location” does not just apply in real estate. My child continues her counting of dogs while pulling out my laptop and working on her own travel blog, to the amusement of the wait staff.
It may be true about doing as the Romans do but when in Brugge we eat fondue for dinner. We wander through the chilly night air into the warm environs of this restaurant. My daughter, not big on all things new, requires a pep talk to enter but has a blast. It is here that we discover the truth about the English language in Benelux. It began to be taught in earnest in the fifties, therefore almost everyone speaks it fluently. The wait-staff in this restaurant though are sixty pluses, and we count ourselves as lucky that the menu is as simple as it is. As we head back to our hotel for the night in the only jackets we brought with us, we get down wind of a greasy fondue scent that has now attached to us. Uh-oh, could be a stinky time in Amsterdam and yet another lesson in the letting go of travel.
3/26
I don’t seem to need nearly the sleep I used to. I wake early this morning and go for a walk on the path through the park that is next to the moat here in Brugge. It is another crisp blue-sky day. The grass is littered with early spring bulb flowers. There are sea gulls, doves and occasionally an individual of the globally successful cormorant hanging around. I pass lots of locals folks, some on foot, most on bikes and I think, “I could live here.” Maybe I will when I grow up.
We pack and head for the train station, ride for a half hour and jump off in Ghent, find a big locker in which to stash our stuff and grab a cab to the cathedral here. The ride takes us through those wide avenues I associate with cities like Madrid and Nice, full of tall modern apartment buildings, but is clearly missing the elegance of those places. We get a real working class feel from the town that is not disavowed by the cathedral itself, which is not particularly impressive in anyway, except that it is decorated in a manner that I have never seen in all of the ancient holy buildings in which I have been. It has cloth hangings in vertical rows strung between the columns. They are white and are splashed and dashed with abstract colors that clearly reflect the stained glass. Pretty cool. More proof of how unselfconscious and modern these Belgians are. There is a “no photos” sign in picto-form that makes its meaning clear in any language so I film as quickly as possible. Yes, I am a tacky American tourist. Hopefully God will forgive me.
Oddly there is an intact medieval castle right down the street and we head there to check it out. We are more than a little spoiled in the castle arena, having hung out one cold and rainy week in the north of Wales a couple of years ago. I don’t want to say, you seen one castle, you seen ‘em all but…. Just across the street from this edifice is a pizza joint. Probably a stinky tourist trap type place we figure, but we are pleasantly surprised by great salads and an elephant shaped pizza for my daughter complete with a green olive eye, her favorite! Is Ghent worth the stop? Yes, for me it is for a kind of silly reason. In all of my European trips, with the exception of the first one in my college years, I have never used the trains. I cannot imagine why, since it has been so bloody much fun this time! This stop, in this grimy Belgian city, gave us the chance to pop off, use the lockers and jump back on. I feel so grown up, globally friendly and worldly about the whole thing. It’s a joy that is as difficult to elucidate and is as ethereal as explaining why one would ride a carousel.
So we take the train to Brussels and make the easy connection to Amsterdam. This city is all youth, chaos and frenetic energy right from jump. The rail station is under construction so we walk out into chain link and scaffolding plus the omnipresent trolley wires graphing the sky above. We are immediately surrounded with hundreds of bicycles ridden by folks that know exactly how it’s done here, something that we learn immediately. Number one: bikes have the right of way over both cars and pedestrians. Every street has a wide bike lane that runs next to the car lane and God help you if you step into it at the wrong time. This is a hard and potentially painful lesson for us Americans who live and die by the almighty noisy four-wheeled automobile.
The directions to our hotel say to walk toward Dam Square. As we are discussing where this might be, an Amsterdamer overhears us and, with an indulging look, points us the right way. We find over and over that the kind Dutch seem to treat us as childlike and think we are faintly amusing. Since it is dinnertime, as I check in, my partner asks the concierge for a dinner suggestion. She is informed that there is no such thing as Dutch food and that the closest thing to it is Indonesian cuisine courtesy of the pillaging of the Dutch East Indies Company. Apparently the best restaurant of this genre is on the other side of the center of Amsterdam and, in spite of it being dark in a new city for us, as well as the fact that we have never had this type of food and we have a daughter that has made it to the age of eight subsisting on almost exclusively pizza, off we go with my partner navigating. It is much easier for me when traveling to detach from poor weather and lost luggage than from relatively small decisions made by my family. This is clearly a reflection of my control issues and is another opportunity for me to let go and trust the universe, Dutch-style.
As we wander the dark streets we discover that the brothels are not confined to the Red Light District. We pass a number of windows lit with both red and black lights, with scantily clothed woman of varying sizes and colors sitting in them. I think we saw both Barbie and Macy Gray. Finally the child’s concerns about Amsterdam are assuaged. In an effort to prepare her, we attempted to explain the sale of sex in eight-year-old terms. The net result was the simple declaration, “But I don’t want to see naked people!” We wander past a number of “smart shops”, an incredible misnomer, being full of all natural items like psilocybin mushrooms, home sex aids and marijuana seeds. The youth and youthful of the world litter the pavement along our way, flowing out of the famed Amsterdam coffee shops with names like Sky Hi, Kashmir Lounge and Smoky Boat. Finally we turn onto a neon restaurant lined street full of establishments of varying ethnicities and climb the steps for our Indonesian experience. We are treated by these Asian Dutch in that same kindly and amused way. They walk us through the menu, which is complete with chicken nuggets for the child. They suggest a fix price mixture, which turns out to be great stuff. All in all this adventure is a neat experience and my lesson for the day is complete.
3/27
The next day we put the rails to work for us again by making our way to Kuekenhof, the world’s largest bulb garden and one of the planet’s great tourist traps. We wander the sweet smelling paths here with thousands of day tripping Netherlandish seniors and folks speaking the languages you would expect plus Spanish, Italian, Russian and Japanese. We take my partner’s picture wearing two giant sized wooden shoes then my daughter’s in a shoe that is big enough for her to declare, “I could live in this thing!” After a while ode de Hyacinth and kitschy lawn art sporting multi-hundred euro price tags begin to overwhelm. However, the garden is surrounded on two sides by acres of blooming bulb flowers in yellow, orange, red and purple. The effect upon me is literally breath taking and makes the ride so worthwhile.
When we arrive back in town we walk the streets of the Jordan section, a wonderful upscale neighborhood where the windows are unabashedly wide open to the street. We meander along the elegant canals back into the center. My daughter is shockingly independent and fascinated, a testament to all of her travel experience. She stays a half a block ahead of us and we are required to slow her down and coax her from the railings hanging over the waterways repeatedly. We make a stop at the Homomonument, a pink marble triangle jutting into a canal, built in the name of all men and women who have suffered oppression as a result of their sexual orientation; pretty cool and consummately Amsterdam.
3/28
I have been dragging my daughter into museums since she was born. I don’t remember where we were but I do recall being on the threshold of one with her hand in mine and her trying to pull me away from the door, saying, “no, not a museum!” This is a two museum day. I present it as an unavoidable fact like a trip to the dentist and she acquiesces. I have learned that the best way to do this is to find out what the must sees are for me and breeze through the rest. I will never forget picking her up at the age of four and literally running through the Uffizi in Florence repeating the mantra, “I must see the Botticelli’s, you will not stop me from seeing the Botticelli’s.”
So we wander across the canals on yet another shockingly sunny day in this traditionally cloud covered city to the Rijksmuseum. Under construction like many of the public buildings in this renewing city, we can still get access to the good stuff. In one single room we find a number of paintings by those amazing 17th century Dutch Masters including a couple of wonderful Rembrandts and, in one corner, four, yes four, of a total of about 27 Vermeers in existence.
I fell in love with a piece by this artist when I lived in Boston. It was in the enchanting Gardner Museum. A tiny thing, like all of his works, it was painted with the astounding precision of those Netherlandish artists and a magical stillness that quiets the soul. That work, called The Concert, was stolen in an incredibly intriguing and successful heist a few years after I moved away and has not yet been recovered.
All four of these Vermeers in the Rijksmuseum are wonderful gems but one, The Kitchen Maid, is magic to me like The Concert was. With its distinct chunks of color, it is a harbinger of the near abstraction of Matisse and his sharply contrasting color planes, reducing the image to its simplest forms, while, at the very same time, exploring with amazing realism, the most minute detail in the scene that it represents. I feel it allows me to make contact with my very center and pulls my heart out to the light of day. No one could be more surprised about this feeling than me. I stare at it for a long time, then wander the gallery and come back to it. I might be staring at it still but for the insistence that I move on from my very patient eight year old.
Based on my past museum with kid experience, we save the Van Gogh for last. His bright colors and modern forms will hold my daughter’s attention much longer than those old Dutchmen. As it turns out, not only do they have a recorded guide specifically for children but they also have a scavenger hunt complete with a prize for successful completion. Right up her alley. We are all thrilled!
This artist is one that I know best. His sad story has been in my awareness since I was a child. My mother used to keep dried apricots to snack on and we called them Van Gough ears. Sick and sad I know, but if you can’t laugh about someone else’s tragedy, what can you laugh about? In addition I have studied this Post Impressionist in classes and seen more than one traveling exhibit of many of his works prior to coming here. But this time, being reminded of his experience of alienation touches me deeply. I look at a piece called Wheat Field with Crows painted in his final year, just before he shot himself. I think of how trapped and hopeless the guy felt. I see that fiery opalescent sky and the golden field painted with heavy brush strokes. I see the black crows in wide V’s reflecting the brush marks of the field but estranged from it. I feel Van Gough’s inspiration and isolation, as well as how those two factors were intimately connected then I start to cry. I have to stop thinking about it to avoid coming completely undone in the gallery. I gather my wits as I walk down the steps and we take my daughter’s completed guide and collect her prize. She chooses a postcard reprint of a self portrait. This kid has a real fascination for people, reflected in her choice that has been duly satisfied here in Benelux.
The very first day when our flight originally arrived in Amsterdam, I promised my daughter we would rent bikes and ride. In her special way she has never let me forget that pact we made. This being the afternoon of the last day I must summon all of my courage and make good. We head to the Central Station and rent from the collection of serious potheads at Mac Bike. They have a Dutch-style tandem with a lower child seat in front complete with immovable handlebars but functioning pedals, and a higher adult seat behind with the real steerable handle bars. The good news is the kid, who thought she would be safely bringing up the rear, is out in front and gets to experience all of the terror of riding the wild and wooly bike lanes in this fine city. She almost chickens out but now I am gunning for the ride and off we go. It’s actually easier than I would have expected, mostly because there are so many bikes that there is always someone before us tracing the correct lane for us. We ride parallel to the front of the train station and through a shopping street of a working class neighborhood then on through a park. We only nearly crash once, nearly run off a curb once, nearly ride down some steps once and, to top it all off, as we return to Mac Bike, ride where only the trolleys are supposed to go and slip into the trolley tracks once. All the while the child is making alternately nervous, motivating and snide comments. It’s a grand and empowering experience for us both.
It’s late. We all eat dinner at an Italian place right across from the hotel. We need to pack but we just can’t bring ourselves to leave the street. We go looking for ice cream and end up in a lovely square called Rembrandt Splein where we find single small scoops of Hagen Daas for what amounts to almost three dollars apiece. We sit café style outside savoring every taste and watching the crowd parade by. We ride the tram most of the way back, we are old pros by now, and, as we walk the final blocks, we pass one of Amsterdam’s professional woman in a red lit window, and my ever gregarious daughter exchanges waves with her. Our experience is now complete.
I have had an amazing thing happen in this city, something I have always aspired to when in Europe. I have been asked directions and therefore been mistaken for a local four times! What does this mean? I would like to say that it is because I am incredibly stylish in a worldly way, but I suspect the truth is not so exciting. First of all I lost a bunch of weight since my last visit so I don’t have that obvious pudgy American look. The main thing is though that Amsterdam is so casual and unassuming that nearly everyone blends.
This city is not a romantic place like many in Europe. It feels instead culturally cutting edge, hot in the sense of both style and sex. It is magically modern in terms of legislation and culture. It is, in fact, the global hub of the western young adult universe. The rumors of dirty streets littered with trash and drug addicts proved to be completely unfounded as far as we could see. The automobile traffic is relatively light allowing even the air to be clean. We found Amsterdam to be in no way pretentious, which gives it an undercurrent of relaxed charm. The city’s newest promotion is an attractive one. It is a logo which says: “I amsterdam” with the “I am” in red and the balance in white. After our days here, I would agree, we all are.
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:49 pm Dear Julie, I really enjoyed reading about your interesting trip. Thank you for taking the time to tell all about your adventure in such a delighful way. Sandee
April 6th, 2007 at 11:51 am Thanks so much for sharing your trip! I wish I had the patience to document our trips like you do–what a beautiful photo-journal to look back on! Glad to see you’re heading out to our neck of the woods next.