Once again, my apologies for falling so far behind! I just got back from Venice, and have been too busy to write. I will try to catch up as best I can.
Jan and I took the train to Amsterdam the Friday before last, and we stayed until Sunday. It was the 3rd country Jan has been to. We took the train from Huy in the morning, getting a cup of coffee at the station while we waited. The first two trains were quite short, the first to Liege, and the next to Maastricht. The Liege train station was beautiful, with great white bars forming a curved white ceiling. We had no problems with our trains, and we sat on the top floor of the 2 ½ hour train ride from Maastricht to Amsterdam. We flew by fields of green dotted with black spotted white cows and white sheep. We saw industrial towns and picturesque windmills. Jan slept while I wrote in my journal. When he woke we ate our simple lunch of bread and cheese and chocolate.
Finally we began to pass through the outskirts of Amsterdam. I crammed everything into my bag, and then we stepped onto the Amsterdam Central station. It was packed with people, and huge. There was an absolute frenzy which didn’t abate when we exited the station. People were crowding the crosswalks and the walk ways, and there were great masses of bikes upon bikes upon bikes parked next to the station. It was overcast when we arrived, though that didn’t lessen out excitement at seeing the grandness of the outside of the station, or the canal in front of us. Tourists crammed the streets till I only felt I was really seeing the city when I was standing inside a tram, looking out the window at the passing architecture and thousands of people of all nations. The architecture of the buildings lining the streets was old and beautiful. The great leafy trees and the stone sidewalks charmed me, and I longed to set my heavy backpack down somewhere and begin to wander the streets and the canals. We found our bed and breakfast relatively easily, a pleasant little studio across from Osterpark. There we appeased our aching backs, as our pleasant hostess gave us the quick details of the city and the neighborhood, gave us the keys, and left us alone. We changed, sent off a quick e-mail telling our friends in Belgium we had arrived safely, and set off to catch the tram back downtown.
On the way to the tram, we had to avoid the whizzing bikers who paid no attention to us poor pedestrians. We quickly learned about the bike lanes that took up a good share of the sidewalk and equally as much to avoid them. As we walked, our heads were turned many a time by tall gorgeous women with long blond hair pedaling away. I had never seen so many!
We got off the tram a bit outside the downtown, and plunged in. By that time it had become sunny, andwe explored both wide busy streets and quiet little alleyways. We found a great little cheese shop filled with great wheels of cheese all the way to the ceiling. We had been told (which was also a warning) that the only good food we would find in Amsterdam was their gouda, and thus we knew we had to buy one. We ended up buying a tasty little handmade farmer’s gouda spiced with pepper and mustard seeds, as well as a dutch salami. We left happy with our purchases, and as we were hungry, we decided to explore with the intent of finding lunch.
With that intention in mind, we walked and walked. We saw many sights, so many buildings, streets, canals, pretty bridges, boats, bikes, tourists, café’s full of tourists drinking beer, we saw policemen in their boats, great grand squares, buildings leaning over and crooked from age, cute boutiques and big department stores. We stopped at numerous menu’s placed outside of restaurants, but I always said, the next one will be the right one. There just wasn’t anything that appealed, even as hungry as I was. So we continued to walk. We ended up eating at a place we had looked at 2 hours before, a little pub alongside a canal. We ordered beers and bitterballen until they reopened the kitchen for dinner. The waiter informed us they were traditional dutch, fried on the outside with “cow” in the middle. They arrived on a pretty little platter, and they were indeed fried little round things, but when you bit into them it was more like gravy on the inside. They were quite strange indeed.
For dinner we got hamburgers, which were actually quite interesting as the meat was spiced like sausage. They weren’t bad at all, but it was a bit funny to look for so long and the most appealing thing was a burger.
We left the pub a little tipsy from Westmalle tripels (a Belgium trappist beer). It was still sunny outside, so we walked some more. We explored the Chinatown and the red light district with its red windows and women of all shapes, sizes and colors in skimpy lingerie, primping in the mirrors in their cubicle, or gazing out at the passing crowd. It was very strange.
We had a grand time walking and taking breaks to have a beer at some cute little café and then venturing off to walk some more. We finally made our way back to our little apartment and fell happily and wearily into bed.
