Amsterdam

As part of our wonderful holiday in Holland this year (19-28 Oct 2007) Tim and I had a day trip to Amsterdam. We made the most of the luxury of having my mum at home by leaving the kids for a day so that Tim and I could spend some time together.

Before we left for Holland I decided that I’d really like to go to Amsterdam this year. I have only been once, as far as I can remember, and that was a long time ago. During our ‘year of exile’, I found my Dutch roots again, I needed to complete the experience! Tim’s thinking was Germany. We would experience a different country and not run the risk of going somewhere and finding it was exactly the same as any other place in Holland (I have to admit, every town plan is pretty similar!) also, we would both be unable to speak the language! In the end we tossed a coin! And, best of three, Amsterdam won. I was very excited, desperate to prove that Amsterdam isn’t just sex, drugs and well.. sex and drugs.

We arrived and nearly fainted at the price of parking but tried not to let that bother us. We headed straight for the ‘oosterdoks’ (Pretty obvious but the docks on the east side of Amsterdam!) for a mystery appointment Tim had to keep. I had no idea what we were doing there. It wasn’t really picture-postcard Amsterdam and as we went round in circles to find this mystery location my frustration grew. I was dumped at the art-gallery whilst Tim ran out to ‘do something’. Though I quite enjoyed wandering around the art gallery nosy-ing through art books and enjoying a bit of the Andy Warhol exhibition, Tim had to promise it would be worth it before I stopped being annoyed.

We walked towards the city centre and my mission to prove Amsterdam wasn’t all sex and drugs wasn’t going very well. Whilst innocently looking around and enjoying the famous ‘grachten van Amsterdam’ (Canals), we met some ‘ladies’ proudly presenting their ‘stuff’ in the windows. These windows weren’t even high up, they were right in our face! The more we saw, the more downhearted I became. Though the ‘coffee shops’ were quite amusing (especially the ones with a ‘no hard-drugs’ sign in the window, WHAT!?!) when we found shops with drugs menu card in the window, the ‘novelty’ soon wore off. After passing sex shop after sex shop, we finally arrived in a more pretty-capital-city-kind-of-place; Dam Square.

We got some food and had a really lovely picnic on the National Monument. It was lovely to see some horse and carts clip-clopping past and to be surrounded by far too many pigeons! There were museums and shops all around but we decided to wander around the quieter bits. You start to get fed up with the same row of the same shops on every street and we had to pay to get into most museums. I much preferred getting a bit more of a feel for the city.

I loved walking along the Canals. It was really nice to simply enjoy the houses! I think the reason for that is that generally around Holland, houses are pretty similar. You don’t really get the individualism you have in England for instance. It’s nice to see some character. We enjoyed walking in and out of several small art-galleries, with both modern/post-modern art and traditional paintings. I couldn’t help smiling when we saw tons of bikes, in all colours and sizes, which is something that I can be proud of! We also walked along the flower market, with more different kinds of bulbs than you can imagine!

One thing I really wanted to see was Anne Frank’s house. Though usually I pride myself on my map reading skills, I sent us totally the wrong way, so we missed it! Instead, we stumbled across this lovely small boutique where I found a really lovely dress.

We went back to the car and got changed. I was finally going to find out why Tim was so determined to take me to those ugly looking industrial Eastern Docks! After finally finding a parking space (if you ever go to Amsterdam, don’t take the car!) we walked towards this dodgy side street. I was actually scared. It was dark, covered in scary graffiti and well… very rude photos on the wall. We entered this dark grotty lift and went up to the 8th floor, my heart racing thinking: ‘I dressed up for this, in my red dress, red lipstick and he takes me here…!’. We opened the door and entered…11 (click here)