Amsterdam

Hallo,

This latest trip was my longest so far, coming just 4 days after getting back from Riga.  It started with a flight to Dusseldorf, Germany, followed by a bus to the Netherlands where we (being Mike and I) spent 2 and a half days in Amsterdam.  The next morning we took a bus to Belgium and spend a day and a half in Belgium and the afternoon of the second day in Brugge, a short train ride away.  The morning after that we took a bus to Paris, where we spent 2 and a half days.  Then we took a train to London and spend 2 days there before flying back to Gothenburg, Sweden and taking a train back to Vaxjo.  All in all, 11 days, including travel, in 5 cities and 4 countries.

There weren't as many pictures as one might imagine me taking, due both to the fact that we primarily just hit the major attractions in each city, and that many of the attractions - like churches and museums - didn't allow photography inside.  But despite this, there are still plenty of pictures to make it worth making 4 or 5 different entries (and I have a feeling that, at most, just one will fit within the free space alloted to this blog and I'll have to once again create a new page and link you guys to it).

For this entry, I'll focus just on Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands.

We didn't get there until after dark on Friday night

The city looked amazing at night, and I like the moon is this shot

Besides a quick stroll Friday night, our sightseeing began Saturday morning.  We took a tram to the southern edge of the city to see the Museum District.  We started with the Rijksmuseum, which included a few famous paintings like Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' and Vermeer's 'The Milkmaid.'

The didn't allow photography inside the museum, so this is one of the only shot I have of the museum.  Still proves I was there!

A cropped billboard of 'The Milkmaid' on the outside of the museum. 

After that we stopped for a bite to eat at a park on between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, our next stop just a couple hundred yards away.

I don't know how those guys were wearing coats, it was so warm and sunny out!

The park included a nice pond next to the Rijksmuseum

And had an nice open field, for how densely populated Amsterdam is, I was surprised by the amount of space dedicated to parks

Again, so photography inside, so all I have is the sign

After that we headed back up through the city, walking back to the Central Station at the north end for a canal tour of the city.  On the way we passed through another park, the Vondelpark, and stopped in the Begijnhof for a quick peek.

With spring just beginning, the park was absolutely beautiful

You can't really tell from any of my shots, but this park was just huge

I don't know what happened to the focus here, but I really like the way this one came out

The Begijnhof's only entrance was kind of hard to find, being just a simple door in the crowded city center 

But once you stepped inside, it was a quiet, grassy neighborhood with churches and statues right in the middle of  the city.
Built as a convent for nuns, it was said that only single ladies over 40 were allowed to live there.
The only two wooden houses still standing in the city were located in this neighborhood

We also passed through the Dam Square, not far from our hostel, with it's War Memorial.
The square is right in the heart of the city, directly down the Damrak from Central Station.

We also stopped for a quick break to enjoy one of the canals, the city was build with canals radiating outwards from the city center, making for a really beautiful city to just walk through and enjoy, as well as a really interesting aerial view.

Aerial view of the Amsterdam (photo cred: Wikipedia)

Besides the canals, the other great architectural phenomenon of the city are the long, narrow buildings, which apparently are a result of an old tax based on the width of the building being built.  I especially like this shot with the canal and the flags too.

So the next thing we did was take a boat tour, on one of the canal boats like the one shown here.

The start of the canal tour, I don't know why, but I like this shot.

One of the cool things to check out was all the different houseboats docked along the edges of the canals.

A nice shot from the canal tour.  Although, the driver of our boat was terrible and we almost hit these guys
before scraping against the side of the canal a few times trying to make a turn.

It was cool to see people just hanging out on houseboats, sitting in windows,
or just hanging out on front steps enjoying the awesome weather.

The canal tour was kind of nice, but being on a big boat make it a little harder to enjoy and to take pictures.
This is one of the few good ones that came out when I finally just got up and stood at the back of the boat.

One of the sights we passed by but didn't go inside, the Anne Frank House.
The inside is pretty anticlimactic and the line was enormous.

One of the many street performers we saw during the trip.  This guy was actually really good.

Amsterdam, being almost impossible to drive in, has over 465,000 bikes.  They were literally all over the city.

That was it for the first day.  The second day was more of a relaxed, wander around until you get lost then try and find your way back kind of day (we were so lost for so long).  Once you see all the big sights, it's one of my favorite ways to see the less touristy, and often more quite and beautiful, parts of a city.  We spend probably an hour just laying in the giant Vondelpark from the first day, just enjoying the weather.  And on the way to the park we passed through some awesome side streets that reminded me of pictures of San Francisco neighborhoods (Mike agreed, although having been there, noted that it was much hillier).

I was also surprised by the amount of green in the city, they made up for the lack of space for grass with plenty of trees.

I just thought this group of building was especially interesting looking in that they almost look like they're leaning outwards.

Considering that these were the full sized streets in the heart of the city, it's no surprise there are so many bikes

A nice shot down one of the canals, they were all so beautiful lined with trees, boats, and interesting buildings.

I wonder how much the house boats cost to keep on the canal like this?
Some of them looked like nicer places to live than some of the apartments.  

I thought this was a kind of cool shot of the tall, narrow architecture of the city

Canals, canals, and more canals.  Still, I never got sick of them.

I assume these houses have a way out on the other side, because it would be cool to be right up on the water like this,
but it would be an awful pain to have to take a boat to get to the sidewalk.

Some of the fancier neighborhoods had amazing looking houses.

And that's it for Amsterdam.

First thing the next morning we got up and took a bus to Brussels.  I have no idea how we managed to make it to our bus on time.  We got to Central Station with plenty of time to spare to find our bus, but when we asked someone at the help desk where the bus stop was, she said it was in another station, a few metro stops away.  She also said there was a metro heading there in 3 minutes, so we booked it to the stop and made it just in time.  When we got to the station, finding the bus stop was no problem, and somehow we got there with almost 15 minutes to spare.  Luckily I made sure to ask the help desk (since I trusted Mike when he told me that our train was just leaving and we needed to hop on it on the way to Amsterdam, I found out a little while later that it wasn't the right train, but seeing how the Netherlands is so tiny, we didn't really loose much time and just got off and switched trains at one of the stops).

I have a feeling that space is running low on this blog, so I'll make a new page and post a link to it to continue on with the Belgium pictures.

Farvel