Last Days in Amsterdam

The final two days of our nine in Amsterdam, it continued to rain so we just " got into" it. No one is checking out old farts, so we gave up thinking about how we looked and just walked around looking mussed but happy. We checked out the Greenpeace headquarters, a beautiful art deco building. Interestingly there is no indications that it's related to Greenpeace



And took a picture of another art deco building, the Tuchinski movie theater, where you may remember we saw the Batman movie; the inside is really great.



The Theatre museum in a grand old canal house with this beautiful staircase,

We also checked out the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the Jewish Museum with attached synagogues and Rembrandt's house. We visited one of the numerous marijuana coffee shops, a very nice experience; although Danice asked for a glass of wine and they said, "Oh, no alcohol here, just coffee." It got cold and blustery so we finally gave in and went home to pack for the early Sunday (10/5) trip to Budapest.

Paul's Overall impressions of Amsterdam.
The center city is uniformly charming. We enjoyed walking all over, barely using our Tram Strippenkaart. The people are generally friendly, but we did experience some of the rudeness, or dismissive attitude our hosts warned us about. I experienced some physical rudeness as we were entering the Anne Frank Museum, of all places; a young man leaving put his forearm in my chest and shoved me aside. (DMF: Paul does not shove easily). This was really shocking - the kind of behavior that could result in violence in some parts of the US.

The political climate seems to be progressive and tolerant (see marijuana coffee shops). We saw few minorities; but in our small sample, they seem to be better integrated and on more equal footing than in other countries; they didn't have the service jobs we see so often other places.

The cutest blond kids are all over town. Something must happen to the males around puberty, though, since there are very few blond men. But tall blond women are everywhere. And everyone is tall. Most young men look to be about 6' 1" or more, but not many really tall people.

There's a lot of culture in Amsterdam. On the average four live theater pieces open everyday. There are book stores, galleries and exhibits all over. I particularly like this exhibit of working men.


Most people speak English and many very well. It's nice to be able to have real conversation with the natives. And the town is full of young people filling bars, restaurants and all the outdoor tables on the sunny and warm days. Rain does not deter them. In down pours, they walk and ride their bikes around unconcerned, without raincoats or umbrellas, but their cell phones still plastered to their ears.

As we were having a beer in a cafe watching the rain come down, about eight energetic young guys were meeting up. Most were dressed in a similar costume of baggy jeans, contrasted with skinny pin striped suit jackets, dress shirts and ties. They hung around for a beer and took off. Taking their place was about four, shall we say older, guys in suits and ties, not nearly as energetic. I could only think that we had fast forwarded 40 years and these same guys were showing up at their old haunt, older but wiser?

It's been a great city to spend a week or more, and we're sad to leave.