More photos and details about my vacation.
As I wrote before, the canals were picturesque but dirty. I purposely didn’t snap any photos of the floating trash - or the bridge posters that warned, “Don’t buy street drugs. They may be poisoned.”
We had good weather: sunshine and blue skies. One afternoon got a little cloudy, seen here. The highs were in the 50s and the lows were in the 30s. Amsterdam was windier than I expected, so I wished I had packed gloves and a winter coat. (But they wouldn’t have fit in my carryon anyway.) I wore lots of layers instead.
Colin and I both went to art school and still have a passion for art, so we visited a few museums while in Amsterdam. Touring Rembrandt’s house was not planned, but it ended up being my favorite museum. Initially, I thought all the artwork was fake - reproductions or lesser-known artists whose work wasn’t worth much. But halfway through the tour I realized all the art was real.
I’m a sucker for old world fabric studies. The lace, the gold thread, the buttons. Gah! Artists today can’t paint like this.
The Museumplein facing the Rijksmuseum.
We purchased tickets in advance for the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. The architecture of the Rijks was impressive. It looked like a Playmobil castle. The artwork? Meh. It made me appreciate the Detroit Institute of Arts. And the Rijks’ most famous painting, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, was closed due to restoration. My favorite painting was The Death of the Pharaoh’s Firstborn Son by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It looked like a still from a Rihanna music video. Really nice lighting. The skin? The guy with the shaved head? Beautiful.
Similar to the DIA’s Diego Rivera mural, the Rijks had lovely murals in its main hall.
This started a miniseries of reflection self-portraits.
The Van Gogh Museum had potential but underwhelmed me. Half of the artwork wasn’t even by Van Gogh. Several galleries showcased his contemporaries. My favorite piece was Edvard Munch’s Fertility:
The Museumplein.
The Museumplein.
Amsterdam had a lot of graffiti.
You had to pay to use most restrooms - at a train station, inside McDonald’s, at one of the museum restaurants. Those restrooms were clean enough but nothing great for charging every person €1.50.
Amsterdam had a lot of trash too. In the U.S., most residents put their trash by the street - in bags or bins. In Amsterdam, residents heaped all their loose trash into a pile in the middle of the sidewalk. Then a truck drove around and scooped up the trash.
Colin and I tried to wander different streets or take a new route, but we’d somehow stumble upon the same street or neighborhood. And once you saw one charming block of row houses along a canal, they all started looking the same. Add to that an excessive amount of junk stores selling French fries, dollar store pot brownies, colorful cheese and Jeep dashboard rubber ducks. So toward the end of our week, we rode trains to Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium for a slight change of scenery.
A simple pleasure: drinking canned gin and tonic and eating a Belgian waffle while waiting for the train, then round two while sitting outside Rotterdam’s Markthal. Albert Heijn is a grocery store chain in The Netherlands and it has “to-go” mini marts in most train stations, stocked with canned cocktails and pastries. Not sure if open containers of alcohol were legal in The Netherlands, but no one seemed to care. So Colin and I had a nice buzz while exploring Rotterdam.
Rotterdam was cool and had a really nice public market, the Markthal. The city had bizarre (in a good way) architecture which I didn’t research until after I returned home. In WWII, the city was completely bombed out, so it rebuilt itself and embraced modern architecture.
Kijk-Kubus.
Ironically, I was watching “The Price is Right” while working on this blog post and a showcase prize featured a trip to Rotterdam. The TV show used a stock image of Kijk-Kubus, the yellow upside-down cube houses. 🤯
The horseshoe dome on the right is Markthal, the public market.
Colin and I wandered around Rotterdam, then boarded a train to Antwerp.
Antwerp was all right. Kinda European, kinda Middle Eastern.
Antwerp’s train station was beautiful.
Public transit was excellent on this vacation. A little confusing and frustrating at times, but lots of options to get to lots of places. Train/subway travel was super easy because all I needed to do was tap my credit card or Apple Pay to get through the turnstile. Super easy but a little concerning not knowing what the cost was for each tap. I kept telling myself, “Who cares! It’s a European vacation!”
We caught the train/subway very close to the hostel (Noord) and rode it to a southern hub (Zuid) to continue on to Rotterdam. Noord to Zuid was about €20.
While waiting on a platform to depart Amsterdam Zuid for Rotterdam, we noticed passengers with paper tickets. (We only had our cans of gin and tonic.) It wasn’t until we attempted to leave Antwerp for Amsterdam that we discovered we needed tickets. We didn’t have cellular service to purchase tickets online and the conductor didn’t sell tickets aboard the train. So we missed that train, bought paper tickets and waited an hour for the next train. We guessed that meant we somehow got from Amsterdam Zuid to Antwerp for free.
And wouldn’t you know it? The conductor on that final train didn’t check for our €53 tickets. 🙃
I felt safe most of the time. Then a train conductor announced in French, then Dutch, then English, “Keep a close eye on your belongings because there may be thieves on this train.” Just this train?
Colin and I were in Amsterdam Sunday through Saturday. Thursday was our train day to Rotterdam and Antwerp. It wasn’t until that fifth night we discovered the best food and drinks and service of the entire trip. (Yes, breakfast food at Bunk was delicious.)
Over the week, we learned that most restaurant kitchens closed at 5:00 p.m. “Bar snacks” were still available: fried cheese, chicken nuggets, French fries smothered in cheese, everything fried. Chicken nuggets and fries are great but not every day of the week in a foreign country. Tired and hungry from our day of trains and exploring, with few food options, I suggested we walk to an Albert Heijn near the hostel and look at premade sandwiches or charcuterie boards. We were unimpressed and left the grocery store empty handed. That’s when I saw a restaurant across the street.
The restaurant was small but had a decent number of people inside. I turned to Colin and said, “Let’s just look at the menu.” Two menus, one in Dutch and the other in English, were displayed low in a front window. We crouched down to look at the offerings. A woman seated at a window table turned toward us, pointed at the menus, then gave two thumbs up. We were sold.
De Kleine Kapitein (The Little Captain) was run by a guy from Egypt who appeared to be the owner, host, chef and bartender. Our waiter provided the best service of the trip. Super chill, friendly, attentive and someone Colin and I would’ve befriended if we lived near each other. It turned out he wasn’t even a server. He worked 8-5 in finance, was friends with the owner and randomly helped out at the restaurant a few nights a week. The food and drinks were so good, Colin and I returned for dinner Friday night, which happened to be ping pong night. (The thumbs-up lady dined there both nights as well!) We were there for almost four hours of eating and drinking. Pumpkin-stuffed ravioli, shrimp marinated in Grand Marnier and paprika, jenever and ginger beer, free shots, dessert. It was delicious and glorious.
Ping pong night consisted of the owner clearing one table and setting up a low net. We watched but didn’t play.
The setup for Thursday night.
The setup for Friday night ping pong.
The flights back home went by much faster than the flights there. The flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis had alcohol and I ditched my book for movies. Wicked was boring, ATL was funny and Jurassic Park is always good. At the connecting gate in Minneapolis, I scanned my boarding pass, only to stump the gate agent. “Hmmm,” she hesitated. “We don’t have you as a passenger on this flight.” Even though I went through security twice that day and scanned my passport in Minneapolis customs in order to get to this gate?! She clattered away on her keyboard and reprinted my pass. I made it back to Phoenix. I hate everything associated with flying.
Now I can say I traveled to Europe. Would I return to Amsterdam? No. Would I go elsewhere in Europe? Sure. I was mad about not being able to sleep before and during the trip. (Plus, I got a sore throat on Thursday that led to a cold. Stuffed up, lost my voice, still sick three weeks later.) Better sleep would have made me more present/more alert/less pissy/a better travel companion. Will I travel again with Colin? Absolutely. Will I stay in a hostel? No. I need more space and I didn’t enjoy listening to people snore and fart and pack up all their crap in loud, crinkly, plastic bags at six in the morning.
There were a lot of could’ve/should’ve/would’ve thoughts running through my head after I returned home and began plotting out this blog entry. I wished I had photographed the good food and the crazy intersections of bicycles, pedestrians and cars. I wish I had researched more and slept better. But oh well. I’ll do all that for the next trip.