Arrived Amsterdam on a beautiful day, moved into our home exchange houseboat and began to reorient our circadian rhythms by going for a sunny walk all over this beautiful town. The canals are lined with stately gabled houses, dating back as far as the 1600s, a few pictures of which we will post on Flickr (http://tinyurl.com/4kykpj) for any masochists. In the 70s there were protests against tearing down old buildings to make room for new. They were successful and now renovation is the development choice.
On our first walk we stopped at a very busy outdoor cafe on the Amstel. After waiting 30 starving minutes to order, we were told by our sweet waiter that the kitchen was closed at 2:00, and even though it was 1:40 he would not take our food order. The next restaurant was kinder and all good feeling were restored.
We found a canal boat tour to give us a city overview and allow Danice to sit down as her jet lag and sleep deprivation dueled with her excitement that, after months of planning, here we are!!!This green hugeness, viewed from the canal boat is Amsterdam's new Science Museum designed by Lorenzo Piano. Coincidentally, we had 2 days before seen a very different, just completed Science Museum by the same architect in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Saturday, we were invited for a lovely lunch at the apartment of our hostess Wim's significant other, Onno. They have been together many years, but choose to live in separate places - what a concept! They are both artists, both teachers, and seem very happy. We discussed, in addition to salient tourist info, the economic and political situation in America. We suspect they are better informed than the average American.They encouraged us to take their canoe out on such a beautiful day, but alas the day was too beautiful....our canal was so filled with large motor boats, we didn't think we could get our paddler out into the flow without being run down. There are also party boats with live music going by til late into the night, but the houseboat windows are double paned and we've been sleeping well.
Instead we walked to the Oude Kirk(old church), a 14th c. gothic structure surrounded by the infamous prostitutes in their windows seemingly trying out to be Victoria's Secret models. This area played a pivotal part in a favorite John Irving book, "Until I Find You", about the tattoo artists and prostitutes helping the protagonist find his father, who played the beautiful great organ in the old church.
We walked til dinner time and found this very pleasant, pretty good Italian restaurant you see on the left for a slightly chilly dinner al fresco. We then went back to the beautiful Art Deco/Amsterdam School Tuschinski theater built 1921, for the common folks. We went there to see (I still cant believe this myself) The Dark Knight, a truly silly film (PWF: Danice out grew comic books 50 years ago) about Batman and ego and evil power and doing good, etc. Heath Ledger stole the show.
Sunday was the last sunny day promised before a week of rain, so we set out again for a self-guided walking tour of canal house architecture. The book says they were built of lightweight brick or sandstone with large windows to minimize weight, but many of them have settled a foot or so more to one side and really depend on their neighbors for support of a structural nature. Amsterdam being mostly land reclaimed from the sea, is built on sand; so the wood pilings they drove into the sand are all the support provided. Good they don't have earthquakes here.We had seen almost no grass in Amsterdam til we discovered Begijnhoff right in the midst of the old city, a communityin 1346 of religious women who looked after the sick and educated the poor but didn't care for nunnery life. (Their celibacy position was not mentioned.) It is now 93 lovely apartments for women only surrounding a quiet peaceful grassy garden area.
