Amsterdam

I spent 13 days in Amsterdam with Sam and Jessica. None of us had ever been. We flew overnight and didn’t sleep. The plan for day one was simple - take a cab from the airport to the apartment we rented then sleep off the jet lag. But as soon as we got there, our exhaustion transformed into delirious, stupid, silly joy. We decided in lieu of sleep that we would walk around until we could not stay awake. And that is essentially what we did every day for 13 days.

First let's talk about biking. Biking in Amsterdam is, at first glance, insane. No one wears helmets, they’re all on their phones, going 80 million miles an hour, with the groceries, dogs, and babies bouncing around in the basket. I would have been fine renting one of those yellow bikes they give to tourists, but Haley and Matt wouldn’t have it. This is Haley and Matt.

Haley and Matt are the best. They’re Americans, they’re our friends, they’re hilarious improvisers who perform with Boom Chicago. They’re passionate Amsterdam enthusiasts and expert tour guides. They didn’t want us to go to some stupid Rent-a-Bike place. They had us rent bikes that made us look (and eventually feel) like natives.



I’m not particularly athletic or coordinated, so I wasn’t thrilled about the whole bike situation to begin with, and then considering how tired and disoriented I felt, I was pretty sure I was going to fall into a canal and die. Matt’s advice was “Just keep up.” So I got on my bike and did my best. It was scary at first, then it became less scary, then it became fun. And then, somehow, it became the most amazing thing ever.

My bike was old, black, and nondescript. The bell didn’t work. The metal plate around the petal kept coming loose. I don’t know, it was a piece of shit. My bike reminded me of my car Lloyd - my junky, adorable, Craigslist-found, 2002 Hyundai Accent- a car that I love and despise in equal measure. That’s not true, I actually love my car a great deal, but not because it’s a great car. I love it because it’s mine, and because I understand it. Lloyd and I have an agreement. But we didn’t always. I had to learn.

Here’s what I learned about biking in Amsterdam.

1. Go fast. Well not too fast, but definitely keep up with traffic. If you don't, you will fall into a canal and die.
2. Do not ride parallel to the Tram tracks. Your wheels will get caught in the grooves and you'll get hit by the Tram and die.
3. If it looks like you’re going to run into someone, stand your ground. When you're indecisive, you will collide and both die.
4. When you slow down, you will wobble. If you wobble, you will fall. If you fall, you will most like fall into a canal because there are lots of canals.
5. People appreciate it when you use turn signals.
6. Even if your bell doesn’t work, saying “Ring, Ring!” will get the idea across.

Someone told me that Amsterdam has more bikes than people. I don’t know if that’s true but it certainly felt that way. Many of the bikes are pimped out and interesting, painted all sorts of crazy colors. Something I noticed right away is that bikes aren’t gender specific. You’ll see men on girl bikes and women on boy bikes and no one judges you or wonders if you’re gay or even notices, really. I saw a business man on a bright green bike with flowers and no one seemed to mind, least of all him. I love that. Also, people are very attached to their bikes. I certainly became attached to mine. In fact, the saddest part of my vacation was the moment it occurred to me that I’d have to bring it back and get on a plane and never see it again. At best, your bike is your own personal work of art. At the very least, your bike is your slightly embarrassing pet. By day three, my bike was my horse. I should have named it.

There are other ways to get around besides biking. They even have cars! Teeny tiny miniature adorable cars! I took a picture of the biggest one I could find.


We hung out with great people - Haley and Matt and Jessica and Jim and the other Jessica and Julie and Ben and Sima and Jason and the other Ben and Stefan and the blonde girl from Germany and Jacques and Noah. I’m sure I’m forgetting people. Sorry people. We also spoke to tons of strangers. One favorite was Peter Porters. We met him at the airport. We noticed him because he was wearing a ridiculous suit. We complimented him on it and asked where he got it and he said he made it in Thailand and we loved him instantly. He recommended things for us to do and see while we were in Amsterdam and warned us not to go to Brussels because “Brussels is booring.”

We went to a concert. We saw a band named Chapel Club play at this venue called Paradiso. This is Haley, Jessica and I at the concert.

I was trying to look serious but it just looks like I dropped my ice cream cone.

The apartment we rented was on Keizersgracht, which in my opinion, is the finest of the grachts. It looks big in these picture, but it wasn't.



I took me a very long time to get a handle on the layout of Amsterdam. In the center of everything is Dam Square. In the middle of Dam Square are, randomly, roller coasters! I rode all of them! That's me on the left.

When I was up in the air, overlooking the city, I was finally able to get a sense of it. There are four main grachts and the street names change depending on which side of the canal you’re on. Why? Nobody knows! It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and stopping to ask for direction usually got us nowhere. We were lost most of the time.

Ben and Sima live on a houseboat. They fired up the grill and fed us the most amazing dinner. No room for a grill because you live on a houseboat? No problem. Grill on the sidewalk! Everyone does! Ben and Sima are Californians who have been living in Amsterdam for 3 years. Their houseboat is gorgeous and comfortable and yes it has running water and electricity and a stove and a TV and everything.
This is their cat Noonish who runs the place.

I asked Sima what she missed most about America and she said Trader Joe’s. Ben and Sima win the prize for coolest life ever.

Around day 5 or so, a bunch of us went to an amusement park called Efteling.

Efteling is about an hour and a half outside Amsterdam (in which direction I do not know.) It's absolutely incredible. It’s like Disneyland on acid. There are super intense scary crazy roller coasters as well as an animated talking tree that smiles and tells stories. There’s a genie who rides on a magic carpet from one palace to another. There’s a peaceful boat ride around a glorious pond with a smug black swan that we named Natalie Portman. The best ride was this one where you go into a scary haunted house, then you’re led into a dark room, then into another dark weird room and then you’re suddenly strapped to a bench. Then loud music blasts and all of a sudden the ride begins and the walls turn in one direction and you turn in another and your brain explodes. There’s another roller coaster where the two sides, Blue and Red, race each other. Red won every time. Stupid red. Efteling is home to many unintentionally racist rides. For the full effect, ride them with a bunch of cynical comedians.

We spent only one evening exploring the Red Light District. Even as I’m writing this, I’m like, really? Is that true? Our friend Noah is a Canadian who has been living in Amsterdam for a while. He gave us the tour of the Red Light District on the one night of the entire trip that it decided to be cold and rainy. The Red Light District was crowded with lots of Euro bros and was exactly as I pictured it, only smaller. Yep, there are women on display in the windows, and no, absolutely no pictures. A couple things surprised me. The first thing was that the women were paying very close attention to their phones. Literally every single one of them. It looked as if all of them just got smart phones and just discovered Angry Birds. The second surprising thing was the wide range of ages, races, and body types. I don’t know why this surprised me but it did. I mean, they’re people, right? I guess I’m naive. I think there’s the expectation that Amsterdam is this crazy, bohemian sex and drug party city, and yeah, it can be that if you want. But the Red Light District is small and contained. It really doesn’t spill over, so if you want to avoid it, you can. When you ask natives what they think about about all of it, they mostly shrug and say it attracts tourists “So, you know, it’s good and bad.” Makes sense.

Anyway, here's a bunch of old people on a boat! Click on it to make it bigger.


The architecture in Amsterdam is stunning. Many of the buildings still have the same facades they had when they were built in the 17th century. Matt and Haley live in an apartment that was built in the 1649. This is a blurry view from their back porch.


Dutch people are crazy about using lifts and pulley systems. Instead of hauling furniture up narrow 400-year-old stairs, they use basic physics.


Dutch people are smart. I guess they have to be if they decided to build a city on land that should technically be under water. Also the staircases are intense. If you’re a staircase in Amsterdam, and you’re not narrow, steep, and twisty, you’re doing it wrong.


We did a canal tour. It was fun and relaxing. They give you your own paddle boat and send you on your way for a few hours. We paddled around, making up songs, losing track of time. We shared a pint of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and didn’t even care.


Dutch people are tall. Haley told me that statistically, they’re the tallest people in the world which is ironic because their ceilings are hilariously low. At a normal height of 5’5, I towered over nobody. Oh and Dutch women are extremely good looking. They all blond and barefoot and cool, sitting around on boats, watching each other roll cigarettes. In Amsterdam, people “chase the sun” as a gorgeous lady in a cafe put it. They sit outside of whatever cafe is the sunniest. And everyone is nice! Even to tourists. We would say Dank u wel (Dahnk oo vel), and alstublieft (alst ooo bleeft) and they would chuckle at how hard we tried. I sheepishly asked a gorgeous model-looking Dutch lady behind the counter at a clothing shop how everyone spoke such perfect English and she said, “MTV.” Marry me, beautiful Dutch lady.





Can we talk about the food? Okay. It’s all amazing and fresh and simple. The Dutch eat this thing called bitterballen. It’s delicious. They’re small and round, with a breaded shell and creamy meat-lava inside. Yum! Our first night in Amsterdam we stumbled into a restaurant called Red which was just down the street from us on Keisersgracht and Neiu Spiegelstraat. I ate the most delicious steak and lobster. The Indonesian food is also incredible. Our fanciest meal out was at a place called Long Pura. We got the tasting menu and split a bottle of wine and ate the most amazing meal. I also got a kick ass risotto from this place called Spelt which I recommend. Oh, and you must try the pancakes.

We went to Pancakes! Amsterdam (the exclamation point is theirs, not mine) and had such an amazing meal that we went back the next day and the next. Don’t shy away from eating the savory pancakes. The first day I had one with caramelized ginger. Then I went back and had one with chicken and Indian spices and chives. Then I had one with ham and swiss. I don’t know why the food is so good. I think it has a lot to do with how happy the cows are and how fresh and clean the tap water is. The dairy products in Amsterdam are enough of a reason for me to go back. We discovered a frozen yogurt shop called “Frozz” that had the thickest, softest, creamiest frozen yogurt I have ever tasted. I have no idea how many times I went to Frozz. Maybe 10? It’s very possible that I ate Frozz every day.

Here I am, shamelessly dancing.


We were told that people in Amsterdam do not tip, but as Americans, it was hard not to. Apparently you can just leave whatever change is in your pockets. A waiter will never put a check on your table without you asking for it. Because they get a salary, waiters do not feel the need to bring you your food with any sort of urgency, so be prepared for meals to take a long time. Also making you a cappucino will take a long time. The barista is not in a rush even if there’s a long line. And putting bananas on your Frozz will take the beautiful lady behind the counter a long time no matter how badly you want it (the Frozz). No one is in a rush. Ever. Except when they’re on their bikes.



Other things. We went to the tulip market which was amazing. I bought lots of postcards and chocolates. Everyone kept telling us that we brought the nice weather with us. You’re welcome everyone. We arrived apparently just as the tulips were blooming. We spent an entire glorious day in Vondelpark. Lindsay gave us a picnic kit to take with us. Picnics are unbeatable. We were joined by friends and sat on blankets, eating cheese and bread and drinking wine and eating more cheese and bread and then ice cream. I brought sunscreen and a book because I’m a 49-year-old mother of three.


We went to the Van Gogh museum which was wonderful. It was crowded but that’s because we foolishly waited to do the museum thing toward the end of our stay. The city was slowly getting more and more crowded as people came to town for Queensday. So yeah, there was a line to get into the Van Gogh museum, but it was well worth it. If you go, do it with the audio tour. You’ll appreciate it so much more. They do a great job of giving you a sense of who Vincent Van Gogh really was. Not just a genius painter, but also as a flawed, troubled, fucked up, love sick guy. He didn’t pick up a paint brush until he was 26. And you can definitely see a distinction between his earlier work and his later work. You see him improve in certain ways and deteriorate in others. I left with a new found appreciation for him and a theory that he was secretly in love with Paul Gauguin, the other less fucked up impressionist guy. My theory is based on zero hours of extensive research.



We went to the Anne Frank House. It was amazing. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Anne Frank because I did a project on her in 3rd grade, then read her diary in 5th grade, then my high school did the play in 10th grade and I designed the set which made me an expert. Turns out, I didn’t know the half of it. It changed the experience of Amsterdam for me. It’s so well preserved and so sobering. There’s a picture of Otto Frank taken in the Annex in 1960. He’s looking down at the floor. It hit me how recent it all was. You see Anne’s actual diary and it’s all very moving and beautiful. There’s also a really cool room devoted to her sister Margot who had a diary which was lost.



The last day of our vacation was Queensday. Oh man. Queensday is the coolest. It’s an annual celebration where the city triples in size and goes nuts. It’s called Queensday because it celebrates the Queens birthday. I’m sad to report that I do not know which queen they’re referring to. Jim explained it to me and I don’t remember. I could look it up but I won’t. It’s not about the Queen, it’s just about having fun and wearing orange.

Why orange? I don’t know! Everybody just wears orange from head to toe. And you dress your dogs and cats and babies and boats up in orange too! Also the city becomes one big flea market where you can find the most ridiculous stuff. Matt and Haley bought a stuffed Winnie the Poo toy and a fishing rod. Then they attached the Winnie the Poo to the end of the fishing rod and walked around with a sign that says “Make a Wish on the Poo! One Euro! Wishes guaranteed to come true!”. Queensday was just so wonderful. This is my beautiful husband.

I paid 50 cents to have my picture taken with a dopey dog.

I paid 10 cents to take a picture of a couple on stilts as they walked through town.

Sam paid one Euro for this massage, and I paid 10 cents to take a picture of it.

These are teenagers putting on a live action slot machine show.

This kid was killing it on the drums.


There were a million boats in the city. And a million people on those boats. And people blew bubbles out of windows and jumped into canals and made boats capsize and gave high fives to strangers. It was some of the most fun I have ever had. I want to go back next year.

The next day we returned our bikes. It wasn’t as sad as I thought. I was ready to go back home. I got on our plane and flew back to JFK and then to LAX and finally caught up on sleep. And now that I’m awake, I’m really glad I went.

For more pictures of all this, go to my flickr set.

Dank u wel.