Monday, August 6, 1979
We keep running into Americans!
Spent the night on the train with two girls from Michigan who were each behind
in their travel journals. They were also keeping a financial record. Since
Kathy and I already agreed to “share” money, it makes our financing easier. We
just spend until it’s gone. In the morning we were joined by a woman speaking
fluent German, but when she found we didn't understand, she announced she was
American, too, but had married a “European.” We were also joined by a woman
going home to London. Nothing like “local color!”
Arrived in The Hague and called
the L family, still no answer. So we looked up the American Embassy address. It
appeared to be near the McDonald's, so we went there first for lunch. Then we
looked for the address and it was non-existent. We asked a couple policemen
sitting in their car and they gave us directions. But we saw a telephone and I
decided just to call the embassy. I learned the Ls had just been sent to
Yugoslavia on temporary duty for three weeks. Left a “hello” message and
decided to head to Amsterdam. We needed change to retrieve our luggage, so we
bought sodas in the station snack shop, where we seemed to amuse and were
amused by the proprietor. We were a bit punchy and did things like twirling on
the stools and blew bubbles into our Cokes (which Kathy says is a trick to
reduce the carbonation level!).
The train trip to Amsterdam was
relatively short, passing through flat farmland with ditches, an occasional
diked canal, and several windmills. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we started
calling hotels suggested by the "$10" book, but were approached by a girl doing publicity
for a youth hotel. We decided to try it even though it seemed a bit far away.
We were taken to the hotel in a VW bus, and major sights (or at least their
directions) were pointed out, and we found the hotel wasn't too far away from
the centers of action after all, although we took good long walks. Eight girls
shared our room with one very nice shower. We were given bed linen and keys to
a locker. After washing up we went out to explore the town. Our first stop was
a chocolate shop. In our walk we hit the two major theater districts and the
pedestrian shopping district. We saw a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store which was
closed and four different Wimpies chain restaurants. I teased Kathy she could
eat in the 5th one we found. We passed a row of brightly lighted
barges, with rows of bulbs along the edges, along one canal; they turned out to
be green houseboats. On one unassuming back street we heard a familiar “hello,”
it was Ricky, our Filipino companion from Brussels. He, of course, was able to
one-up us on his accommodations, but we didn't tell him we had already been to
Copenhagen.
In Europe and especially in the Netherlands, pictures of nude women
are taken for granted. In the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam, there were
a lot of sex shops, cabarets, etc. Our night walk took us along canals where
the houses were spotlighted to show off the local architecture; it was beautiful.
Amsterdam is full of canals, even more than shown on the map. And it is full of
folks on bicycles, with bicycles chained up everywhere, many abandoned with
flat tires and missing parts. Before returning to the hotel we sat for a while
in a park to listen to a band playing across the canal. We watched people with
their pedigreed dogs, and a well-dressed businessman standing with his nose
against a trunk of a tree, which wasn't wet when he turned around to stare at
us for a while. We continued sitting longer, “debating” whether to go back to
the hotel or wait to be “picked up.” Just then a couple fellows came up and
said something inviting, and we figured it was time to head “home”!
Tuesday, August 7, 1979
Awoke at 9:30 and took advantage
of the breakfast included in the hotel price. We had tea and three slices of
buttered bread, one with a couple slices of mild cheese and another with a
couple slices of salami. Not a very exciting breakfast especially after hearing
breakfasts are great in Amsterdam from our "$10" book. We wandered to the
shopping district where Kathy debated a long while at a jewelry store whether
or not to get her ears pierced. She finally decided to go ahead with it, but it
turned out they did not have the style of earrings she wanted. So instead she
bought herself a nice pair of Roots shoes (made in Canada!). Then we went to
the post office to mail film and the Paris postcards (!).
We found a shop to drop off my camera for repair. Here we saw one of the strangest specimens while people-watching, a girl with a shaved head. She wore a sheer black body stocking, high heels, and carried a purse, and that was it! We sat on the canal edge to eat our lunch of apples and real fine chocolate. An old lady came by to drop bread into the canal for the ducks. Finally we set off to see some sights. First we found Begijnhof, a preserved little square surrounded by old well-kept homes with a couple of churches, all set in the middle of a busy shopping area.
You had to pass through a gate, or through a corridor to reach the quiet square where it seemed little old ladies and their cats lived.
We explored two art museums, first the
large Rijksmuseum/Dutch National Museum where we saw a lot of Rembrandt paintings including
“Nightwatch.”
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| Spires of the Central Post Office |
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| Kathy in the Begijnhof |
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| Tamiko in the passage to the Begijnhof |
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| Rijksmuseum tickets |
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| The Dam Square |
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| Royal Palace in the Dam Square |
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| Amsterdam canal houses |
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| Sint Barbarenstraat bridge |
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| Cinema ticket |
Kathy, of course, had to buy
popcorn. Before the movie started, they showed 10-15 minutes of commercials and
then we had an intermission! We saw Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke.” Movies
were shown in the original language and subtitled in Dutch. The movie was
hilarious, in the language of “hey, man!”
Wednesday, August 8, 1979
Woke up early for showers and the
“exciting” breakfast (this time a half hard boiled egg instead of cheese).
Took a tram to the train station where we checked our bags in a locker. We then
went to a flea market in drizzling rain. The market had a lot of interesting
and a wide variety of items, but was not crowded as per reputation, probably
due to the rain. Kathy did a bit of bargaining to get a loom shuttle for her
mother. We decided to return to the station and take a train back to The Hague,
again! Upon arriving we checked our baggage, then took a tram to the Pizza Hut
(yep!) we had found on an earlier trip. We had boarded the second car of a
two-car tram which did not allow us to get to the driver to pay. So we rode the
short distance gratis without much choice. After a good pizza, the sun came
out, so we took a walk to see the Peace Palace (the world’s justice center),
which is set in beautiful grounds.
It was like a Cinderella’s castle!
Then we
went to the Gemeentemuseum/Municipal [Art] Museum with lily ponds in front.
We saw lots of modern art and
lots of old musical instruments; very interesting. The gift shop had many
Escher souvenirs, so we figured there must be an Escher room, which we found
tucked in the back. Fascinating! We then walked (it seemed like we were in the
middle of the countryside with forest, fields and lakes, instead of in the
middle of the city) over to the miniature city of Madurodam at which we peeked
through the chain-link fence. It was a neat miniature of a “piece of Holland,”
but we didn't think it was worth the entrance fee.
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| Map of Amsterdam |
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