We like to amble on our holidays and Amsterdam is a great city for walking provided you’ve grown eyes all the way around your head so that you can spot kamikaze bike riders coming from all directions. They are seriously feral here – barrelling along streets and lanes at high speed with no apparent regard for any other kind of conveyance whether that be on two feet, four wheels or electrified tracks. Hold it..I’m ranting…I’ll stop now, because it’s a seriously lovely city to visit and I don’t want to suggest otherwise! Back to it..
After a two hour delay (our EasyJet pilot congratulated himself because “it could have been three”!) we arrived close to midnight on Friday night bleary-eyed and tired after an exhaustingly humid day in Venice, only to catch the wrong train into Centraal with the result that we overshot the city by some 20km. Mr C and I were somewhat hysterical by this stage and laughed our way back to town on a return train, very grateful to be received by the gracious Bob & Menno at our apartment, The Place 2 BnB.
It’s wonderfully located in the Western Canal Ring close to many sights. The apartment is beautifully furnished and its design is respectful of the building’s history – we were so lucky to have had the opportunity to stay there.
Day 1
We decided to spend the first morning exploring the Western Canal Ring itself. Bob & Menno recommended the nearby Saturday market, which had a good quality selection of goods and produce.
After that, most of the morning was spent wandering around town, with stops for shopping opportunities in the “nine streets” area, where I picked up a lovely little black dress from a store called King Louie, described as “vintage-inspired” fashion. Here’s the website: https://www.kinglouie.nl/. And here’s my dress..very 1940’s..black crepe.
After a quick burger lunch we visited the “New” Church in the medieval centre, which isn’t actually that new, just newer than the “Old” Church by 100 years or so. The New Church was built in the 1400’s. The building no longer functions as a church, but rather as an exhibition space, with the World Press Photography Exhibition on show at the time of our visit. The exhibition was great, but so was the church itself, with lots of amazing detail particularly in the beautifully carved timber pulpit.
Our next stop was the “Old Church” although we had to negotiate our way through the Medieval Centre and Red Light District to get there. It’s so incongruous – “coffee shops” (read marijuana dens) and fairly explicit brothels line the paths surrounding these old churches almost scoffing at the piety of those who once worshipped there.
Like the New Church, the Old Church is now an exhibition space. When we visited there was a site-specific exhibition by Venetian artist, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, which bathed the interior of the Church in a solid red light. It was just simply fabulous. The strong impression I had was of being encased in a safe space with the fires of Dante’s Inferno – or maybe Sodom and Gomorrah raging outside. It reinforced the irony of what we had noted on our way into the Church! Or maybe hell was inside the Church! Depends on your perspective I suppose..
The next stop on our itinerary was Anne Frank House which we had booked some two months earlier because it’s one of the hottest tickets in town. No photos sadly as no photography allowed! This is all I could find on the Official Website – it shows the secret door into the attic where Anne Frank lived with her family and 4 others during World War 2:
I found it a really touching experience though the boys preferred the holocaust memorial in Berlin for providing a wider ranging selection of people’s experiences of the Holocaust. For me, this was way more personal and I would highly recommend it. But be sure to book early! Not sure that it makes much difference what time of the day you visit. The crowds even at 6pm were huge. And the number of people in the house at any one time is strictly limited.
Once done, we slowly wandered back to the apartment taking in the evening views:
Day 2
Today we decided to focus on the Southern Canal area. We had tossed up an excursion out of Amsterdam (to the Waterland) to catch sight of windmills, quaint villages and small fishing ports, but decided to leave it to our next visit as we still had so much to see of the City.
First stop was Begijnhof, an enclosed residential district on the edge of the medieval centre which was established in the 1300’s and functioned as a kind of monastery for women who chose not to become nuns, known as the Beguines. The last Beguine died only in recent times and the Begijnhof continues to be occupied only by female residents.
After a general wander we stopped to visit the first of two canal houses, the Van Loon Residence. Beautifully furnished throughout and well worth a visit.
The garden in front of the coach-house was gorgeous and we decided to sit for a while taking it all in.
More wandering and then a great lunch at Stacch – highly recommended. Lots of bendy houses and canal views:
Then we headed towards the second of the two houses we were going to visit: Willet-Holthuysen House. Here only some of the rooms were finished, and the emphasis was rather on the paintings and objects collected by the owners. This house was even more spectacular than the first – and again also worthwhile.
With our must-see spots taken care of we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around town.
Day 3 (Half Day)
As we were due to leave at 3 pm we had reserved the morning for a visit to the Rijksmuseum. We decided to be very selective about what we’re going to see and had downloaded the Museum app before leaving home. We’re generally not huge fans of the audio guides but in this case the app worked very well – not so much information as to get tedious and it gave us access to extra audio-visual content that wasn’t provided otherwise.
I finally got to see a painting that decorated the front of my mum’s recipe book. It was the very first painting which caught my attention as a child – Vermeer’s The Milkmaid;
Of course there were a lot of other wonderful works, Rembrandt included:
It was a great morning, but by this stage it was time to leave for the airport.
Amsterdam is a real conundrum – a complex city with stark incongruities. Efficient, polite, considered, creative, organised, amoral, moral, egalitarian and technologically advanced, mellow – all wrapped into one. I think it would take a long time to understand – three days could never do it justice. We’ll be back!
