Day 5: September 6-7, 2015 –
The apartment in Münster was not well insulated and because the building itself was probably a couple hundred years old anything that kept the building warm, before had probably rotted away. After I spend an hour or so tossing in bed, I took a sleeping pill, hoping that I would sleep through the night. I felt dehydrated and had a headache, and as the night rolled on, the room got colder and colder. Around 4 am, I woke up and I didn’t know if I was going to get back to sleep. I just laid on my back and stared at the ceiling, and eventually, I was able to take some deep breaths and calm my mind enough to fall asleep.
As the light crept through the window, I opened my eyes and I looked at my watch. It was 7:52am! Our train was supposed to leave at 8:08, and there was no way that we were going to make it to the station in 15 minutes, even if we ran. Elizabeth had turned off her alarm on her phone at 7am and went back to sleep. Our backup alarm on my watch, however was actually set to 7:00pm, so we both screwed up. We packed up our luggage and folded up our still wet laundry from the night before and prayed that we would at least get a break from the rain.
We power walked to the train station in about 25 minutes. When we got to the station’s information center, I told the lady that I had missed the train and asked if there was anyway that we could take a train that got to Amsterdam later in the day. Without saying anything, she switched our connections to a different city and told us that the new train was leaving in 5 minutes!
5 Minutes! Elizabeth had gone to the bathroom next to the information center, so from outside the doorway I shouted, “Elizabeth, the new train takes off in 5 minutes!!” As she finished up and rushed out the door, I looked down at the ticket and it actually said “9:35” and not “8:35”. I was a bit confused, so I went over the information desk again, cutting to the front of the line, and pissing off the fat German women who had been waiting patiently for their spot in line. I quickly showed the clerk the ticket, that she handed. She shook her head and then assured me that the train was, in fact, departing in an hour and 5 minutes, and not 5 minutes. We breathed a sigh of relief. Next to the restrooms, there was a pastry stand and since we had time, we picked out some pastries and bought a coffee and then headed to the platform.
The train to Amsterdam was about 4 hours long. We didn’t have assigned seats so we were able to sit comfortably and get a little bit of rest, after having a fairly sleepless night. When we arrived at Amsterdam Central Station, it was around 1pm and we were still tired and groggy. The hostel that we were staying at was in North Amsterdam and we could actually see it across the river from the train station, We walked down the platform, followed the signs and a few minutes later, we were on the free ferry across the river. Two ferries alternately cross the river 24 hours a day taking pedestrians, cyclists, and scooter riders from the main center of the city to the Northern half of the city. There was probably a bridge that you could cross at some point in the river, but it wasn’t visible to me. The 12 minute ferry ride seemed to go by in no time. As soon as we got to the other side, the platform came down, followed by a horde of bikers and scooter riders zooming passed the pedestrians like the start of a race.
Must like Münster, Amsterdam was a bicycle centric city. Maybe it was the cost of petro, high cost of a car, the high cost of living, or just the narrow streets, but there was hardly a car anywhere. On both sides of the river were hundreds of bikes that people had locked up. It looked like they hadn’t moved in days, or maybe people were taking them to work during the day and leaving them there at night.
The hostel was about a mile away from the ferry stop, which seemed like an eternity with our packs on. Even though we could see it from the ferry stop, there was a smaller river dividing that part of North Amsterdam, so we had to walk about half a mile in to find a bridge, where we could cross, and then back track our way to the hostel.
It might seem strange to stay at a hostel in Amsterdam, in a place where you have to take a ferry and walk a mile to the city; especially in a hostel that wasn’t peddling weed and hookers. The price of hostels for a bed, in a room, with 8 people, in the city center were about $45 a person per night. So when we found a private room across the river for $100 for both of us per night, it was a steal. For a room to ourselves, peace and quiet when we wanted it, and our own bathroom, it’s worth the walk and ferry ride. From the ferry stop the hostel was probably a 15 minute walk away, luckily it wasn’t raining.
When we arrived at the hostel, ClickNOORD, it looked like an old warehouse. As we climbed up the stairs to the reception area, the walls were decorated with stained glass windows of pelicans. When we turned around the corner to reception, it was like we walked into an IKEA show room. All of the furniture was bright colors or natural wood. The walls and stairwells were painted bright yellow and the place had a very modern feel. We were happily greeted by a blonde, Dutch girl standing behind the desk. She apologized for her poor English, which seemed to be spot on, considering I didn’t know a word of Dutch. “Do you want to pull down your bed?”, I heard her say. “Pull down my bed? What do you mean pull it down?” I said. “Your bags look heavy, you can put them down.” she said. “Oh, our bags.” I said.
She asked to check my passport, so I pulled it out and handed it to her. She asked Elizabeth for her passport as well. Elizabeth started looking through her bag, but she couldn’t find it. She started looking in all her special spots in her bag and started taking out her clothes. Luckily, I had made a copy of our passports and ID’s and kept them in my bag. The receptionist said that the copy would be good for now, but she wanted to see the original, when we unpacked our bags. She was very helpful and caring, and said that if we couldn’t find it in the room, she would help us work on getting another one for the rest of our travels.
The receptionist looked through her computer system and said that our room wasn’t ready yet, so we were going to be staying in a better room that was overlooking the river on the second floor. She also asked us, if we wanted to rent a couple of bikes. There was a bike rental next to the ferry stop, and we could pay a discounted rate, if we rented it from the hostel, instead of directly at the bike shop. The bike rental was €12 per day, per person, and because it seemed like everyone would be biking, I figured that it would be quicker than walking.
The receptionist gave us the key, then we walked back out to the stairs, where elevator was located. We took the elevator one floor up, walked down the hall toward, where our room was located. We approached a door that required card access, put our key card to the pad and walked through. We went down the hall about 10 more feet and went through another door that required card access. It was like the intro of the show, Get Smart. After that every time, I went down the hall in the hostel, I sang the show’s theme song. The hostel was super clean and sterile and you could definitely see why it cost so much more, than the $18 a night beds at the hostel in Hamburg.
We put our key card in the slot, opened the room, and what were we to find, but more furniture that looked like it came from Ikea. I wondered, if all of the furniture in Northern Europe looks like it came from IKEA, or if it is just the go to furniture store for hostels and AirBnB hosts, when it comes to cheap furnishings. Our room was dark, because even though it wasn’t raining for once on our trip, it was heavily overcast. I flipped the switch to turn on the lights and nothing happened. We plugged our chargers into the outlets to power our phones and there was no power. In the bathroom, we flipped the light switch and there were no lights.
Elizabeth rummaged through her bags and was able to find her passport. So, I went back down to the reception desk, but the blonde girl was replaced by a young man and a middle aged woman. I told them about Elizabeth’s passport, then told them that we didn’t have electricity in our room. They asked, if I put my key in the card slot by the light switch, and I told them that I hadn’t. They told me to put my card in the slot and it would trigger the power. They had the room setup, so that if you weren’t in your room, then you couldn’t leave your lights on and in the long run it would save money on electricity.
I went back up to the room to get Elizabeth and change into some warm clothes. We headed down the stairs and started walking to the bike rental. As soon as we walked out the door, it was raining, so it’s a good thing that we left our caricature and face paint signs back at the hostel. When we got to the bike rental shop and showed the guy our form from the hostel, he said, “Well, today is almost over, so you can keep the bikes for another half day.” We told him that we would be leaving in about a day and a half, and he told us that the bike shop closes at 5 and doesn’t open again until 8am.
We explained that our train left the station for Brussels earlier than 8am, so we would have to drop the bikes off sooner. He said, that it would be fine, as long as we locked up the bikes and left the key at the hostel, with instructions to turn in the keys when the office was open again. We thought that would be fine and he took us over to a couple of sea green beach cruisers. They weren’t the manliest looking bikes, but I guess that would make them less likely to get stolen. We cycled over to the ferry and rolled on with the bikers and scooter riders. We were headed into the city, where bikes rule and cars are just in the way.
In my experience riding a bike in the US is nothing like riding a bike in Europe. When I lived in Ohio, the only people that rode bikes were kids and families with kids. There were the occasional mountain bikers or amateur tri-athletes, but people rarely rode bikes to get around. There is virtually no traffic in Ohio compared to California and there are so many open spaces, that it is more convenient to have a car. Ohio also had terrible weather most of the year, so the chances of being stuck with your bike in the rain or with a snow storm looming, were higher than not.
In San Diego, there are a few more cyclists than Ohio, but other than beach cruisers and people that are kitted out and have $5000 bikes, most people over 16 drive there as well. While San Diego, at least has bike lanes, Cleveland and other US cities almost make it almost impossible to ride a bike. Whether you are competing with potholes and disrespectful drives, who force you into feeling like you need to face oncoming traffic to be seen, cyclists in some parts of Europe have it way over cyclists in the US.
Up to this point, in Europe, (Copenhagen, Münster, and Amsterdam) there appeared to be more bikes in the cities than cars. There were people everywhere we looked, but in Amsterdam, there appeared to be maybe 100 cars total. Every car that we saw there was a Mini or one of those small Fiat 500s. There were a few other kinds of cars/trucks, but all of them were tiny. There was picked up trucks that were the narrow enough that only one person could fit in the cab. The streets were so narrow that cars barely even fit on the road. Full size vans or a 70’s Cadillac Eldorado, would probably scrape against the buildings or end up with a wheel in the canal. In all 3 cities, riding a bike was as wild and unpredictable as the running of the bulls. Bicycles wer dashing here and there. Everyone knows where they’re going and they know the best route. There were no stop signs in the city center. There were stoplights, but most cyclists didn’t even follow them. The city is essentially all bike lanes…and there are no fat people.
Even though Copenhagen and Amsterdam served nothing, but pastries and cakes, for every meal of the day; and Germans are eating pretzels, most of the people are thin. I think that it’s probably, because they burn all the carbs by riding bikes to get around, everywhere they go. Even though, San Diego has the weather for regular biking, there are so many hills that are at at a high grade, it is difficult to cycle up them all the time. Beyond just laziness, it would simply take much longer to get from one place to another, if you had to stop to walk and push you bike up a 45 degree angle, a few times a trip.
From the ferry stop, we crossed passed the central train station and followed one of the canals toward the Jordaan. It’s a neighborhood in the northern part of the city center and is a tourist trap for people looking for quick access to marijuana. The narrow streets are lined with “coffee shops” and a few restaurants, which are marked up, because they know that tourists don’t know of any other places to buy pot, as soon as they get in at the train station.
We biked down a few blocks, before Elizabeth was starting to get really crabby, because the pastries that we had for breakfast on the train were no longer sustaining her. She needed to have lunch NOW! We started seeing a few places that looked like they sold sandwiches and other food. So, I told her to pick one out and we would go in and eat. We arrived at a block, where there weren’t any businesses and then came upon a restaurant/bar called, Schuim. We looked ahead and couldn’t see anything else for awhile, so even though “Schuim” didn’t sound very appetizing, I asked her if she wanted to eat there. “No, but we should park our bikes and walk down the road a little”, She said.
I didn’t see a place to eat for at least a quarter mile. There weren’t any bike racks or railings around to lock up our rental bikes and I didn’t want to just set them against a building and cross my fingers that they didn’t get stolen. Instead, I insisted that we ride our bikes down to the next block and see if we come upon anything and then park our bikes there. Elizabeth’s blood sugar was so low that she just snapped, “Do you want to walk AT ALL, while we are here?!? You don’t want to stop and look at anything! You just want to bike everywhere?!?”
I tried to explain, that we probably shouldn’t leave our bikes too far away from where we are eating, because we don’t know how secure they are. I’ve known people, who have had their bikes stolen out of their yard in the suburbs; so I wasn’t confident that these new looking bikes wouldn’t be ripped off in the middle of a city. I also thought it was a little crazy to go a mile down the road on foot and then have to walk a mile back to get to them. We had also only been in the city for 5 minutes, and we could’ve easily lost our way walking, and never found our bikes again. I thought that we should’ve just rode our bikes to a place, that we wanted to eat and then park the bikes there.
Even though, I had enough intelligent reasons to not just leave our bikes against a wall, Elizabeth was so hungry, that she didn’t have the energy to ride a bike, she only had energy to fight! We got into a little more back and forth, and eventually, she won out and we walked back to Schum.
I was tired of Elizabeth snapping at me out of hunger, so I just closed my mouth and didn’t say anything for the next hour, until I thought that I wouldn’t get my head chewed off. I looked at the city map that I had copied out of a Fromer’s guide to see if I could familiarize myself a little with the street names and how they were arranged, but the text was too small to read.
The guy behind the bar was gray haired and probably in his late 60’s. I tried to order some water, but Elizabeth said that he was hard of hearing. I don’t know how she could’ve obtained that information within the first few minutes of us walking through the door and sitting behind the bar, but I wasn’t going to question her. She ordered a Guinness and because I was trying to save money, I just ordered a glass of water. The bartender gave us some menus, but I couldn’t read what they said because they were written in Dutch. When he came back around, I just asked him, if they had a chicken sandwich. He said that they had a chicken club that they made; and I told him that would be fine.
For some reason, Elizabeth wanted to sit out on the patio, so she alerted the bartender and we went outside and sat down at an open table. I just waited quietly for the food, because I knew that as hungry as Elizabeth was, that whatever I said, she was going to just snap at me. After about 10 minutes, she said, “I don’t like the silent treatment!”
“Well, you didn’t want me talking before, when you were yelling at me about leaving the bikes,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about that anymore, I said.” She responded.
“I don’t have anything else to talk about. What do you want me to talk about.” I said.
“I don’t know, but you’re being rude,” She replied.
So again, I would say something and then she would snap at me; I was better off just not saying anything. Once we got our food, things started to smooth out. I ate my chicken club and Elizabeth had her vegetarian item. She eventually started asking about places on my list and I responded. After we finished eating, we paid the bill and then started biking around Amsterdam, looking for a coffee shop that Anthony Bourdain recommended on one of his travel shows, called Paradox.
You would never find it, unless you were looking for it. Like all the best places in the world, they aren’t on the main street. Only locals know where the good stuff is, so we asked multiple people, if they knew where the street was that the coffee shop was on, but they didn’t. Finally, after riding our bikes within a few streets away, and while asking a tour guide whom was taking a break from guiding the canal tours; one of the locals standing nearby told us that it was right across the canal from where we were standing. We biked over the canal on the nearest bridge and within a few feet saw the small tan sign that read Paradox, and then parked our bikes.
A young woman was standing in the doorway and I obnoxiously shouted, “Is this the coffee shop from the Anthony Bourdain show?” which seemed like a commercial to the world for both Anthony Bourdain and this off the beaten path coffee shop. “Yeah,” She said.
This coffee shop didn’t scream, “Tourist Pot Central” and that was what made it awesome. It wasn’t too crowded and the people that were in there, looked like they knew that this place was good. It had a really laid back vibe and looked like a crappy little coffee shop, except that it had an awesome mural on the wall that looked like it was done in marker. We went up to the counter and just flat out said, “This is the coffee shop that Anthony Bourdain went to, right?” The owner, who didn’t look like a long haired hippie, but more like the boss of any longstanding coffeeshop, said, “Yes.”
“Uhmm, what do I do next? Is there a menu? Do we need to get a table?” I inquired. “Here’s a menu. You can sit over there, if you’d like.” He said in a very matter of fact way. I wasn’t the first idiot American, who has walked into his first “coffeeshop” in Amsterdam, who didn’t know what he was doing.
The shop had a pretty extensive selection of weed, hash, and pre-rolled joints, along with space cakes, soda, and of course coffee. We picked out a couple of different things to try and then sat back and enjoyed. I always go back in my head to that movie where Cheech and Chong go to Amsterdam. At one point, they are on a barge floating down a canal, which is also a “coffeeshop” and they start hallucinating. Our Amsterdam experience wasn’t quite like that, but it was definitely an amazing feeling. Next to us at the table that we sat down at, was a woman from the UK and two young men from Australia. The women had some colored pencils that could be used as watercolors and she was coloring in her sketchbook and adding water to transform it into paint.
We started talking to the Australians a bit and found out that they were also artists. They were all really fun to talk to, and seemed to know Amsterdam pretty well. The woman said that she had lived there for years, and the Aussie’s had pretty much just arrived, but were confident and outgoing travelers. I had never been to a marijuana dispensary in the states, but I heard that there were brownies, cookies, and candy for sale, and I wondered, if there was a place like that in the Amsterdam. The woman from the UK seemed like she would know, so I asked her. She told me that while it’s legal to sell weed and hash in coffee shops, it’s illegal to sell edibles, but they did sell “space cakes” at some shops.
While we were talking I drew some caricatures of the people at the table and they were totally impressed. Once of the boys saw Elizabeth’s mandalas, they as I am, were blown away at her abilities. Elizabeth and the boys talked for a little while, while I took advantage of some free wi-fi and checked my emails and my facebook feed.
The shop closed pretty early, around 7pm; so we hopped on our bikes and rode down the road to the Two Swans (which was also endorsed by Anthony Bourdain). It was raining outside again, which was something that we had become used to by this point. However, the bar was still having their annual music festival of traditional Dutch music and a variety other acts. They set up some e-z up tents on the walk next to the canal, where the musicians were performing and another tent across the bike lane for people to watch.
We walked in and ordered some Bavaria draughts and then looked for a table where we could sit and hang out for awhile. There was a soccer game on, that we could sort of see above our table, but we lost interest pretty quick when our necks got tired of twisting up and sideways. A couple of seats opened up at the bar, that had a perfect view out the front window, where we were able to see the musical acts.
One of the acts was a couple of female impersonators, who started off dressed as nuns and then stripped down to blue sequin dresses. They were incredible entertainers and really funny. You could tell that they were in it for the laughs, because they weren’t fooling anyone into thinking that they were really women and their campy lip syncing was hilariously over the top. They performed two sets, both consisting of the ABBA songs Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia (Both of which got stuck in our heads for days) and some songs that were in Dutch. After their performance, when they came into the bar, I asked if I could get a photo with them, and they agreed.
While I sitting at the bar, an older man started randomly talking to me and asking me questions, like “where was [I] from?’ and “what do [I] do for work?” When told him that I was American, he lit up and started telling me how much he loved President Obama. I told him that I liked Obama as well and he was got even more excited. He said, that he loved the USA, because they gave the Netherlands freedom from the Nazis. If the USA wouldn’t have come in, then Germany would still be in power.
A friend of his came over and he introduced me to him. He told his friend, that I was from America and he lit up. It really excited him, so we chatted a bit more about the US Presidents that he had liked over the years. We also spoke for a minute about the Dutch government and the King of the Netherlands, but mostly we talked about America and enjoyed the relatively low priced beers that we were drinking.
After a while, Elizabeth and I felt like we needed a change of scenery. So we set out to try to find the famous “Red Light District”. It’s the neighborhood of the city where prostitutes dance in windows and try to entice guys to pay for their services. The rain had stopped, but the sky was dark and the cobblestone roads glistened under the street lights. The empty streets and canals were beautifully lit with several globes of light that lined them. We consulted our map, and rode our bikes down streets, that we thought would lead us in the right direction. However, we just ended up near the train station. After we continued to ride in circles for close to an hour, we gave up on our search, and just biked towards the hostel.
Near the train station there were lots of little stores, down narrow streets. Some of them sold souvenirs and t-shirts, and others sold questionable items, that appeared to be narcotics of some sort. It was still sprinkling a bit, but there was still quite a few people out and about. There were a few restaurants, but we always need to find a place that has something vegetarian. We found a tapas place that we were sure would have a little of everything, so we went inside. It was a pretty small place with a very laid back vibe. It was dimly lit and had a few booths, but mostly small tables. We sat in a booth by the window and looked through the massive menu, that had probably over a 100 items to choose from. Instead of stepping too far out of our comfort zone, Elizabeth ordered falafel and I ordered chicken wings.
The wait staff was really friendly and the food was pretty good for the price. It’s really hard to mess up chicken wings. When we finished eating, we thought about what other sort of fun that we would get up to. As soon as we stepped out, we saw that it was raining pretty hard now, so we decided to head back to the hostel and wind down.
Day 6: Amsterdam
When we woke up the next morning, we took our showers and then readied our packs for the day. I was determined to finally get to set up and draw some caricatures, because one of my main goals for the trip, was to draw caricatures in all the major cities in Europe and so far I hadn’t drawn any. Also, the way that we were spending, I could tell that we were blowing through our savings at an unsustainable rate. I was okay with doing a little extra spending, but that was under the assumption that I would be able to make it up by drawing people on the trip. It was already 6 days in, and I was starting to get a little discouraged about the whole venture.
I took my big backpack and pulled out anything that I wasn’t going to need and repacked it with my drawing board, my easel, markers, and the signs that we had brought for advertising. It was going to be a lot to carry while riding a bike, but hopefully, I would be able to make some money, so it would be worth some discomfort.
We walked through the Get Smart hallway of doors and down the stairwell, and out the door. The weather was looking a little gray, but it hadn’t started raining, so we were optimistic about our decision to bring the caricature stuff. We biked down the road and around a bend and arrived at the ferry station. There was a sign that had a timer on it, letting you know when the next ferry was departing. As we arrived the first ferry was pulling away, and the next ferry wouldn’t be arriving/departing for another 12 minutes.
We were hungry and we thought that 12 minutes would be enough time to get some breakfast, so we stopped into the Cafe Du Pont, a cafe that was right across from the ferry stop. The Cafe Du Pont had a real nautical feel to it, which wasn’t surprising since it was right on the river. At first I thought that we might just be popping in for a pastry, but we ended up being taken to a table near the back of the restaurant. It was around 10am, so we had missed the breakfast rush, yet had not hit the lunch rush. The prices were a little high, but I knew that with some good energy behind me, I would finally break even and draw a bunch of tourists.
While we were eating, we were able to look up directions to a few spots that might be fun to check out that day. Full of energy, we hopped on our bikes and took the ferry across the river. As the platform, went down, we sped through with the wave of locals and then veered to the right, over the bridge, that took us over the railroad tracks. We seemed to really be getting into the feel of Amsterdam, and aside from the massive backpack that was throwing off my balance, we were keeping pace and remembering streets from the day before.
We started biking to the Rijksmuseum, but I found this coffee shop that might be worth stopping at along the way, because it was on multiple Amsterdam lists. We followed the directions that I had written down at the Cafe Du Pont. Over a few bridges, through some narrow streets and we arrived at Dampkring coffeeshop. This coffeeshop was a little off the beaten path, so you knew that there was probably a local audience. We locked our bikes and set them against the building, but would later be told that we needed to move them to the other side of the sidewalk. The first thing that I noticed as I approached the shop, was that there was a cat sleeping on a bar, that was up against the window. Had someone brought their cat to the coffee shop? Did this coffeeshop own a cat? Either way, it made me smile.
This coffee shop was relatively famous, because, it was used in the filming of Ocean’s 12. They had a little poster on the wall with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, just to let you know that it was the same place. The interior design was super psychedelic looking. It had weird, 60’s lighting, and orange and pink swirls painted on the walls. It wouldn’t have been surprising, if the whole 60’s, pot smoking, Hippie movement started at this very location. Instead of the previous space cakes, which were marijuana infused pound cake, we ordered a nutella and banana muffin and a cafe latte. We slowly ate pieces of the muffin, but because it was so delicious, it was hard to control ourselves and remember that, if we had too much, it might have unforeseen side effects.
After we finished our coffee, we rode our bikes to The Rijkmuseum, which was less than a quarter mile away. From the outside, the museum looked like it was formerly a palace or a building of other historical significance. It is possible that in the time that it was built, art was more highly revered and deserved to be housed in a palace. Either way, it looked amazing. The road that we were on, seemed to continue through the museum, under an archway, but was barricaded, so that cars weren’t able to enter.
Surprisingly, there weren’t any bike racks, from what we could see near the museum. It was strange, because Amsterdam is such a bike friendly city. After we rode our bikes through the archway which divided the museum, we saw a group of bikes gathered around a light post. One or two bikes were actually locked to the light post, while the others were sort of parked around it. Our bikes had wheel locks and chain locks attached, so we figured that, if we just chained our bikes together, someone would have to be really determined to walk off with them.
We gathered our gear, our backpacks, easels, and signs, and walked to the revolving door in the archway of the museum. The door was guarded by a man dressed in black with a walkie-talkie and a badge of some sort; which gave him authority over who entered the museum. He stopped us and said that I couldn’t bring in my backpack, unless it was further compressed. He said that the coat check people won’t accept anything that large, and a bag that large would never fit into one of the lockers.
This was a little discouraging. So, we walked back to the bikes and decided whether or not we had anything that no one would want to steal. We had some PVC pipes that were the frame for our sign. We had our easel and our facepaint / caricature signs. I guess that was it. So, we sort of attached these items to the bikes and just hoped that Amsterdam’s criminals weren’t interested in starting their own caricature/facepaint business. We walked to the door again with our bags and this time the guard let us through.
The interior was clean and modern, with white stone walls and marble statues at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor. We went to the lockers and the new mission was to gather €3 worth of change. We also would need to find a way to divided and squeeze my backpack, drawing board, jacket, etc. into these lockers which looked like they were made for school backpacks and purses. Elizabeth walked off looking for change, while I arranged the various items like Tetris pieces into two different lockers.
After the locker adventure, we stood in line for tickets, which were about 20 Euros each person. To the unfamiliar, the Rijksmuseum houses some of Rembrandt’s most famous works, including the Night Watch, one of his famous self portraits, and other commissioned works for royalty and noblemen. There were probably 10 or so pieces of his in total found in the museum. Some of his paintings were massive (10-15 feet long) and others were smaller (2-3 feet long). The grand hall of the museum was lined with 30 foot tall stained glass windows and murals, depicting Dutch history. A few of the other amazing pieces, we saw were models of old clipper ships and coaster sized circles of painted glass that were reflected from the back.
About midway through the museum, the muffin definitely started to kick in. Every piece of artwork looked amazing and brought smile to my face. It was a full body high that tingled, but wasn’t overpowering. Every few minutes, I would look around for Elizabeth so that I could give her a hug.
The pieces that really stood out in the museum, were those by Rembrandt and Vermeer, but we were able to see an amazing collection of different works of art. As time neared 5pm, security guards escorted the crowds out of the museum and into the streets.
We walked out to our bikes with all of our baggage in hand and we planned to set up the easel nearby to see if we could do some caricatures and make a little money. The problem with scouting locations in strange cities is that you can’t always predict where there is going to be a consistent amount of people for a long period of time. It’s also tricky to set up just anywhere, because you don’t know if you are going to get a ticket or fine. Also, when you are trying to experience a city, you aren’t motivated to do too much work.
We rode our bikes down to the Vondelpark, where lots of people supposedly go out strolling, biking, and laying about. When we got there, the crowd was really mellow. There didn’t seem to be too many people around. When you only have a handful of people in a certain place chances are, you aren’t going to draw anyone.
We were able to set up at the “i amsterdam” installation behind the museum. The words were spelled out with letters that were about 10 feet tall, and people were posing and taking photos in front of them. It was hard to get people’s attention, without coming out and hustling the crowd, so I pretty much hung back and waited.
We had forgotten our chairs at the hostel, so we had to set up on a platform that was covering a large fountain. I sat on the edge of the platform with my easel in front of me and I was going to try to get someone to sit on the edge of the platform and twist to face me. A Middle Eastern family approached me and they wanted me to draw all 6 of them on a page. I decided against charging full price, because I was just trying to do something. So I told them that it was on donation. There were 4 females wearing hijabs and two males, so there wasn’t a lot of hair taking up the page. I was able to draw them fairly quickly and I thought that the drawing looked really good. Family on vacation, 6 people in the picture, they gave me a €10 tip. That’s like $1.50 per person. It was actually a little insulting and could discourage me the rest of the trip.
We were getting hungry and decided to go to De Pijp to get some food. De Pijp is a neighborhood rich with ethnic restaurants. Every culture of man was represented with food, which actually made it harder to decide where to go. You can take a chance on a place and have it end up being horrible, or you can go to a place that looks familiar and have the same old boring thing. The main street in this area looked a little sketchy, like these type of neighborhoods tend to look, but hidden a street over were more upscale establishments.
We took our bikes down a side street that was lined with pizza places, tapas places, and your typical blend of hipster and yuppie establishments. We walked passed the touristy Heineken Experience (which is a fake brewery that was built to give tours for €20 each). We ended up stopping at a little place called the Thrill Grill; which serves gourmet burgers and fries. It was pretty cheap considering all the other hipster restaurants around, but you wouldn’t mistake this place for a Wendy’s or Burger King.
You don’t always want to spend €8 on a chicken sandwich, but when you know that it was made with the love of hipsters, and the chicken was free range and grass feed, it makes it feel like it was worth every penny. The food was really tasty and we complimented it with a tasty beer. After we ate, we wanted to go to this little house with a bunch of blacklight art called Electric Ladyland. When we looked it up, we found out it was closed on Sunday and Monday (the two days that we were going to be in Amsterdam). We ended up just riding our bikes around and exploring. Early in the day, I looked up all the best “coffeeshops” in Amsterdam and we came across one that was on the list, called the Dolphin Coffee Shop. We went inside to scope it out and it was decorated with a sea theme.
Inside there were life-sized, fiberglass, dolphin statues hanging from the ceiling and fish tanks built into the walls. The items on the menu were a little pricier than they were in the shops that we were in earlier, so we decided to continue our journey elsewhere. We rode our bikes back over to the Jordaan, because we decided that we wanted to pop into a shop to pick up some marijuana, for the rest of our trip. If we thought that we were going to be paying a lot at the Dolphin shop, we didn’t realize how much more we would pay on the main drag.
We went into one shop that was packed with tourists. We looked at their menu and after seeing their prices, we couldn’t believe that we hadn’t stocked up at Paradox or Dekampring. When we walked out of the shop, we could really feel that, it was starting to get colder. Biking around in the rain was starting to lose it’s charm; so we were second guessing our desire to get high outside of Amsterdam.
A local couple saw us standing with our bikes, in the middle of the road, and looking around aimlessly; so they asked us where we were headed. We told them that we were looking for a good deal on some weed, and asked them where they buy their marijuana. They said, that they always went to the other side of town, where it isn’t so touristy, but all the of the shops would probably be closed for the night. They recommended that we just pay the premium and buy in the Jordaan. We heded their advice and went back towards the Dampkring Coffee Shop, even though it was probably closed.
After riding around a bit, we eventually saw a place call the Free I Coffeeshop down a street with some sketchy looking bars and night clubs. It was a pretty quiet spot with sort of a tiki vibe and maybe one or two people inside. We purchased some loose product and grabbed some paper and filters.
We sat down at a table near the front window and I tried to remember what people did in the movies when they were rolling cigarettes. It was the first time that I ever tried to roll anything and I was definitely terrible at it. After I was able to finally get something that could pass for a joint, we hung out and smoked for a bit. We asked the server at the coffeeshop how to get to the red light district and he showed us on the map. He told us to head towards the Dam and we couldn’t miss it.
I had to use the bathroom, so we stopped into a bar called Old Wembley. We felt like every place that we went just to use the restroom, we should at least buy a beer. The place was a British pub with soccer on all the tvs. When I came out of the restroom, Elizabeth had ordered a Heineken, that we would share and then we walked a block over to the naughty red light district.
We walked down a narrow road, turned the corner, and instantly there were half naked women in the window. The sidewalks were filled with 90% men, looking for a free show, or maybe some hot, Eurosex, but either way, they were in the right place. Every variety of thin, fit, woman was on display and available for the purchase. There were also a few live sex theaters. The cost of one of these shows was 40-50 Euros. Elizabeth commented, that you could go to two museums for that. There ARE plenty of nudes in the museums, but I don’t think that you are allowed to reach climax in any of them.
So far, it’s always raining in Europe from our experience here, so it was obviously raining as we headed back to the hostel. We biked back around the train station, and rode the ferry back over to North Amsterdam. We locked up our bikes at the bike rental shop as we promised we would, and then walked back towards the hostel. Because we were always trying to find short cuts that would limit our time in the rain, we cut through a park, that lead us to a bridge that went across the canal to our hostel. Unfortunately, the gate up in front of the bridge was locked. So, we had to double back and go around to the next bridge that crossed over the canal, a half mile down the road.
When we got back to the hostel, we dropped off the keys to the bikes at the registration desk and told them that the bike rental office told us that we could leave our keys there. We went back up the stairs and through the “Get Smart” doors and into our room. It had been a pretty long day of touring in the rain, so we crashed out early. We set our alarms, so that we could wake up and catch the train and dreamt of our next big adventure.
Places We Bought Food And Drink
Schuim
Spuistraat 189, 1012 VN Amsterdam, Netherlands
This bar that also serves food is a quick stop on your way to the touristy hash bars that line the street. We ordered a few beers from a deaf bartender and I ordered a chicken breast sandwich. There was at least one vegatarian option on the menu and there is seating available on the patio.
Thrill Grill
Gerard Doustraat 98, 1072 Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Thrill Grill located in De Pijp specialized in gormet hamburgers, which cost a little more than fast food burgers, but also have a bit more taste and thickness to them too. The beef might have been organic and grass fed, but I was on a chicken kick at the time, so I ordered a chicken breast sandwich. Between the charm and presentation, we might as well have been in any hipster hamburger joint in the states. They provided a vegatarian burger, that Elizabeth indulged in, and had some pretty good fries. If you are in the mood for a tasty burger in Amsterdam, but don’t mind spending €10, then this might be the place for you.
De Pont
Buiksloterweg 3-5, 1031 CC Amsterdam, Netherlands
This restaurant, which is seconds away from the ferry station in North Amsterdam, is a great spot to stop for some eggs and toast, if you missed the ferry and have to wait 12 minutes for the next one. While the service wasn’t exactly the quickest, at a time when we were the only ones in the whole restaurant, the eggs were prepared the way that I asked. There was free wi-fi available, if you are dining in, so if you need to search the list of the top hash bars to visit, while you are having breakfast, then this is the place to go in North Amsterdam.
Paradox
Eerste Bloemdwarsstraat 2R, 1016 KS Amsterdam, Netherlands
This place was previously featured on the Anthony Bourdon show, so we thought it would be a fun place to stop in. The menu isn’t much different from the other coffeeshops in Amsterdam, but the prices are significantly cheaper than the shops on the main strip. This place is a little hidden and it took us asking multiple people directions before we actually found it. There was a awesome mural on the wall, which didn’t hurt it’s atmosphere which seemed to get more comfortable by the puff. Unfortunately, it closes at 7pm, so make sure that you stop in before then.
De Twee Zwaantjes
Prinsengracht 114, 1015 EA Amsterdam, Netherlands
This place was also on the Anthony Bourdan show. If you are looking for a totally fun place to stop for a beer and a good time, then this is it. Whether you just stop in for a cheap pint, while you watch soccer, or you are there for one of their music festivals, you will be entertained. This place didn’t feel the least bit mainstream, so if you aren’t into experiencing things for novety purposes or experiencing something a bit kookier than you might be used to, don’t go here.
De DeKampring
Handboogstraat 29, 1012 XM Amsterdam, Netherlands
I don’t know, if this place was made famous by the movie Ocean’s Twelve or it was in the movie, because it is a cool place, but it is a cool place. Whether you pop in for a cup of coffee and a banana muffin (space cake) before you look at amazing works by Rembrant or Van Gogh, or you are replenishing your stash, this out of the way place is perfect. The prices were lower than on the main strip, but you should know how to get there before you stop some place else or you might miss it. The decor is perfect for smoking a joint and getting lost in the weird lighting. There is also a cat that hangs around inside. We tried to find this place later, at night, but I think that it might have vanished with the sunset, so try to go there early.
Coffeeshop Free I
Reguliersdwarsstraat 70, 1017 BN Amsterdam, Netherlands
This place was our last ditch effort to replenish our stash, before heading to Belgium, the next day. We were looking for DeKampring, but this place had decent prices and seletion, so it served it’s purpose. I felt a little sleezy going into this place, with no one else inside, but it didn’t feel as sleezy at the places by the train station, where horny, assholes shop for pot before heading to the redlight district.