Amsterdam

Finding fresh clothing is an issue. Everything smells like kerosene from Sally's place. We should have closed the suitcase.

Today was our one day stopover in Amsterdam. Elizabeth set up a lovely breakfast table for us in her garden. After taking care of some booking we needed to do, we took our rented bikes and away we went. The bikes were bright yellow and had two speeds: go and stop. We took the long route to the Anne Frank Museum, along some canals, it was quite nice. Peaceful and quiet. The Anne Frank Museum had a 2 hour long line so we moved on. We found Nieuwe Kerk Church, one of those large old European churches where they have memorials to dead people and crypts under your feet. We love those big old churches, cathedrals really. Then we found our way to the Flower Market, which was a long row of flower stalls selling mostly tulips. Canada Customs requires Canadians to have a special seal on any tulips we bring back. We bought 3 bags for 10 euros (30 bulbs) and stopped there because of weight concerns. Tulips are so cheap here. If we didn't need the seal, we could have bought a bag of 100 tulips for 10 euros!

We left our bikes parked there (there are hundreds of bikes parked everywhere) and walked to the Katten Kabinet. This is a huge collection of all things cat, in an old canal house. It even smelled like cats. Our favourite part was the live cats that were wandering about. Then to the Museum Geelvinck, which was a tour of an 18th century grand canal house that some old guy built for his much younger wife. At first we weren't too impressed but we discovered that we were only in the coach house. The home was lovely. Frankie was so jealous of the large library with all the comfortable chairs and especially the window seats overlooking the canal.

Downtown Amsterdam was extremely busy today, lots of "couples" walking around and lots of pot smokers. We went into a shop that sold big balls of cheese, a hundred different flavours. We also went into a shop that was called the The Magic Mushroom Gallery, which was all about what the name implies. This city is far too progressive for our tastes. In the afternoon it got much busier and it was much harder to navigate the bikes around all the people and other bikes and the scooters and also watch out for cars and trams. A few times we gave up and just walked the bikes. The locals on bikes were amazing to watch. In Amsterdam bikes have the right of way. There are many bike lanes on the main roads. We learned the hard way that some bike lanes are 2 way and some are one way, oops. The bike lanes have special stop lights just for them. Some of the roads beside the canals are just wide enough for a car, but bikes have right of way on them. Pedestrians generally stayed off to the side on very narrow sidewalks, so bikes had the most space. When a car passed, it felt scary because it was so narrow. The city is built in concentric circles around a number of canals. The street names are difficult to recognize and pronounce, and lots of them are not labelled. We had a real job knowing where we were going. It was very hard work and became frustrating in the afternoon when it was so busy. We suspect the Pride weekend did not help.

We eventually found Vondelpark, a huge park, where we could bike a big loop without worrying about cars and trams, just pedestrians and joggers and rollerbladers. After that we decided we had had enough and made our way back to our hotel for a little peace and relaxation. We may not have seen the Anne Frank Museum or Rijksmuseum, which are the 2 most famous tourist places, but we sure did experience the city!

In the evening we decided to take a tram instead of the bikes, down to Central Station to catch our evening dinner canal cruise, which started at 8:00 pm to 10:30 pm. This was our treat to ourselves for our anniversary, which is on Tuesday.