Our cruise ended in Amsterdam. Avalon provided a canal cruise, which was fun--who wouldn't enjoy zipping around Amsterdam's canals, lined with gabled brick houses, arched bridges, and steeples and towers? We followed that with a walking tour and a soggy walk back to our ship.
Since we planned to stay almost another week in Amsterdam, the cold, wet, and blustery weather gave us an excuse to have a quiet afternoon onboard and make a serious start on our packing.
We disembarked right after breakfast Friday morning. It was a time for last-minute well wishes to people we'd met. Chuck and Kathe headed for the airport, where they would be based for 2 nights. We headed downtown to drop off our bags at our hotel.
To get acquainted, we walked through our new neighborhood and along several of the canals that are a part of this district known as the Jordaan.
We stopped in to see Westerkerk, the large church that is a landmark in this part of town. Gorgeous from the outside, it is very spare on the interior--a trademark of Dutch Reformed churches. No stained glass or artwork. The focus is on the pulpit.
We tried our first pannenkoeken (Dutch pancake), this one with cheese, ham, and apple. It's something between a crepe and a yeasty pancake. Very tasty and great texture.
We returned to Westerkerk for a free Friday afternoon organ concert.
The highlight of our day Saturday was a walk north to the weekly farmers market by Noorderkerk (the North Church). We thought it would be fun to see a city market, and it was a bit more than we expected. For one thing, people come from all over for the organic foods, so it was humming and crowded, bicycles everywhere. Breads, cheeses, butchers, fruits and vegetables. But it's also part flea market (lots of vintage clothing and some antiques) and part Portland Saturday Market (jewelry, pillows, pottery). Made for some very fun wandering and people watching. Being Amsterdam, we even came across a purveyor of marijuana lollipops.
Sunday was the beginning of our visits to some of Amsterdam's art museums. We had read that waiting lines could be a bit daunting on weekends, so we thought we'd visit the Stedelijk, the contemporary art museum, which we thought would be less popular than the more well-known Van Gogh and Rijks Museums. Even so, we bought online tickets for all three museums to minimize the long-line issue.
A view of all three museums in the Museum Quarter, the Stedelijk at the left, Van Gogh the two buildings in the middle, and the Rijks at the right:
We loved the Stedelijk, one of the more interesting art museums we've visited. While there were some unusual and cutting edge pieces, for sure, we also got to feast our eyes on Picasso, Kandinsky, Miro, Mondrian, Matisse, and Chagall--not too bad, and there was an easy flow to the layout.
A "little" Matisse, anyone?
Outside, on the Museumplein (museum square), between the Van Gogh and the Rijks, were dozens of food carts and many, many artisan booths, and thousands of people. It was a scene and provided great people-watching opportunities. We passed up the hemp burger stand called Come Hungry Leave Happy, but we had read that getting fries from stands is a very Dutch thing to do. After watching a young man cutting up potatoes, sacks of potatoes at his feet, and another young man frying them up, we decided to give them a try. They weren't ever going to be any fresher than this. Only in the name of traveler research, of course. And we did scratch any notion of having lunch off our plan.
They were every bit as good as they looked and smelled. A worthwhile treat for sure.
On Monday, our focus was on taking a day trip outside Amsterdam. We took the tram to Centraal Station and bought tickets to Delft. We had a little excitement getting onto the train. I discovered just before our train was due to arrive that the ticket had to be scanned before departing. No scanning machines to be seen, I asked a man nearby where to do it. He pointed downstairs to the main station. I made pretty good tracks getting down there. I had to ask two people where to scan before I found the right place. (Obvious once you know, of course.) Back upstairs in time to jump onto the train. Oops! We like to think we know our way around, but you always have to be in the learning mode when you're traveling about. Then we sat back and watched the suburbs and countryside go by. We went through Haarlem and Den Haag (The Hague). There were lots of commuters headed for Den Haag and Rotterdam (the stop after ours).
The Delft area is the area from which Jerry's Huyser ancestor emigrated. The small town he came from has been subsumed into a largish city about 10km from Delft, so this was our representative visit to "homeland." Delft is a very charming town, with a large central square. The old city hall and the "New" Church (this one filled with a raft of historic stained glass) bookend the square, which is lined with shops and cafes. There are small canals and bridges and even a windmill at the far end of town.
On Tuesday, we had a morning date with Van Gogh (the only museum that lets you pick a specific date and time for your visit) and visited the Rijksmuseum after. That's a lot of art museums at one time, but doable. We covered the Van Gogh in full and hit all the requisite highlights (plus quite a bit more) of the Rijks.
We had another engagement at 5:00pm. We had booked a canal cruise on the very historic wooden canal boat owned by our hotel. (Churchill once cruised the canals of Amsterdam in this boat.) We spent 1-1/2 hours on multiple canals and in the harbor, going past many sights and historic spots. The boat now sports an electric motor, so there are no diesel fumes. She recharges overnight and can go 10 hours on a charge. This seemed a nice almost-end to our Amsterdam visit.
Our focus is now shifting to a little final sightseeing and packing up. We head home tomorrow. Much as we have learned to enjoy our Amsterdam neighborhood and finding just right places for coffee or tapas or (wonderful) pizza, we will be pretty darned happy to be home too.
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