We’ve arrived in Amsterdam, where we’ll be staying for about a week as we explore the city and some surrounding towns.
Our hotel is in the Amsterdam Zuid (South) area, a little ways out of the city core, and it feels much more sane than the overcrowded areas near Dam Square. The immediate surroundings are a mix of upscale residential and modern office parks.
We are close to Amsterdam Zuid station where trains, subways and trams converge, so getting around is very easy. The streets are dominated by well-used bike lanes
It is impossible to overstate the number of bikes in Amsterdam. Everyone from every demographic rides them, and they are almost all the awkward, heavy upright type. People ride confidently but not recklessly and there are very few spandexed Tour de France types. Nobody wears helmets. Outside stations or large businesses it’s common to see vast bike parking lots — this is only a small portion of the bike parking available at Zuid Station, as there is much more in an underground lot.
A week before we arrived a large storm blew through Amsterdam and caused a lot of damage. Here I saw some freshly cut tree stumps that look like they may have been victims of that storm.
A new North-South metro lined opened last summer, and it connects Amsterdam Zuid to Amstedam Noord (North) with several stops in the city center and at the main Amsterdam Centraal train station. A subway had previously never been built through the old part of Amsterdam due to the fact that most of the city is built on wooden piles driven into swampy bog. Only in the 1990s did technology reach the point where it was possible to safely and affordably tunnel beneath it.
We took the metro to the De Pijp neighbourhood, which is filled with bars, cafes and coffee shops. After a wander through the busy Albert Cuyp Market we had lunch on the patio of Cafe Buiten and then found ourselves at Sarphatipark.
Alongside the park was some very nice traditional Amsterdam architecture.
Josie invaded some privacy and took a photo of this cool concrete architectural model and artistic display inside somebody’s front window.
I had a very nice pour-over coffee from Scandinavian Embassy which is one of those universal third-wave coffee shops that could be anywhere but is still great.
Down near Dam Square we came across one of the first Hudson’s Bay department stores outside Canada. Unfortunately, it seems that neither the chain nor this particular location are doing very well. Nice building, though.
Jet lag got the best of us at that point, and it was hard to get excited about the wax museums and chain stores along Rokin, so we headed back to Zuid to recharge for a bit.
Before dinner we wandered through Beatrixpark, a quiet park near the hotel, which was originally built in the 1930s under the design of a woman named Ko Mulder. During the German occupation of WWII the park was briefly renamed after a German composer named Diepenbrock.
The park was being put to good use with locals biking, snoozing and picnicking in the sun.
There are wildflowers and poppies everywhere.
