The Dam of the Amstel River

10 - 15 June

I arrived in Amsterdam late in the evening after a 9 hour flight Vancouver - London, a 2 hour stopover in the truly massive Heathrow terminal 5, and then a short hop across the English Channel to the Netherlands. It's a country I've wanted to visit for a long time, being half-Dutch by ancestry, and one of my primary destinations on my world trip.

I was pretty out-of-it time wise, with a 9 hour time difference from Vancouver - it felt like I should be having lunch as it was getting dark, but I'd got next to no sleep on the plane so I was tired anyway. I had 5 days to explore Amsterdam, so I headed straight to my hostel and had a quiet night, but couldn't help noticing the very efficient train system and the picturesque canals as I made my way in from the airport...

Look! Canals!

My first day in Amsterdam was mainly walking around, looking at all the impressive sights - the many canals, the massive Westerkerk, the trams, the Centraal train station, Dam Square... It was almost just as I'd imagined. Lovely old architecture, and of course the streets are dominated more by bikes than cars.

Central harbour area with houses right on the canals

Westerkerk (West Church)

Elaborate organ inside Westerkerk

Amsterdam Centraal train station

More canals... And parked bikes

There's something about Dutch people that make them look Dutch too. Certainly I didn't stand out any more - here, blond hair and blue eyes are the norm! I did have a few situations where I had to apologise that despite my very Dutch name, I didn't actually speak any Dutch! (At least not yet...)

I headed for Museumplein the next day, which is home to several of Amsterdam's truly famous and excellent museums. I left the newly-reopened Rijksmuseum for another day, but went to the Van Gogh Museum. They had an excellent set of displays on the life and works of the famed Dutch painter, with lots of really interesting information about his painting habits too. He often reused canvasses, painting on top of older studies or on the back of the canvas, since he was so poor, and x-ray images have evidenced what was originally painted underneath.

Oh, and there were some of his famous paintings too!

One of Van Gogh's famous self-portraits

The famous Sunflowers... Or is it? There are actually two very similar sunflower paintings, which he painted about a year apart. Both were on display at the museum, though one of them was on loan and not allowed to be photographed.

I also went on the so-called Heineken Experience, a pretty overly touristic tour through their original brewery, but it was actually quite interesting. Aside from the usual beer-brewing stuff, they had some good history on the company, a proper tasting, and of course practicing how to pour a beer exactly right so that it gets just to the top of the arms of the red star on the glass.

One of the original Heineken brewing vats from the 1870's

Pouring the perfect Heineken...

The next morning I ran into this guy...

It's Dan Skipper!

Well, actually, we'd organised it a few days before, but by coincidence we both ended up in Amsterdam at the same time on our separate trips. We went on a canal cruise tour together, which got us to see a few other interesting sights and learn a bit of Amsterdam's history too.

Amsterdam's skinniest building

We then went to the recently re-opened and very impressive Rijksmuseum. I'm not normally one for walking through museums a lot, unless they're particularly dedicated to one thing, but the sheer size of the museum and the range of displays here was quite something.

The late afternoon and evening was then devoted to beers and a bit of a catchup, both with Dan and his friend Hamish Silverwood, who now lives in Amsterdam studying towards his PhD. We tried a few Belgian beers, and then Hamish showed us around the famed red light district. This was very, well, interesting, if you can call it that - the fact that prostitution is so blatantly on display over several blocks of the inner city is strange compared to the regulations I'm used to in New Zealand. The large majority of people walking around were, indeed, foreign tourists just curious to see what it was all about.

Having seen a lot of Amsterdam's sights, I had a quiet morning the next day, doing a bit of shopping and diary writing before meeting up with Dan again for lunch. We went for a bit of a wander around the harbour front, spotting a windmill (a real windmill!) and then walking through a Dutch market. It's quite a different thing to a Peruvian market, with a few delicatessen-type places and, of course, some Dutch cheese stalls...

There's a windmill back there!

Dutch cheeses for sale in the market... I love Dutch cheeses!

I left Dan at Hamish's apartment, where he was staying, and went back to my hostel before meeting up with them and a few other friends of Hamish's for dinner, and then of course another round of Belgian beers. It was nice to catch up with a couple more people I knew from back home, rather than just being another tourist in a big city, and once again I have to say it is definitely my preference to spend a bit of time with locals (or at least people living there) than just staying with tourists and doing touristy things all the time.

In a few days, I was due to meet up with my Oma & Opa (my Dutch grandparents) who were also visiting the Netherlands and staying with family in the southn. So with a few days to spare, I booked a couple of nights in the northern town of Groningen, which was my destination on the very efficient train system the next morning (after managing to find a pub to watch the All Blacks beat France!).

Already I was enjoying being in the country, it was living up to my hopes quite well!

Dusk over an Amsterdam canal