It was a stroke of luck that I shared my breakfast table with two women from Munich, Germany, who were traveling before the beginning of classes at their university. We talked for awhile then decided to rent a bicycle boat on the canal for a few hours.
Though we did not have weather as good as the day before, it was a good morning for a boat trip. One of my new German friends spoke some Dutch, so the boat rental guy treated us especially well. So we got our boat and set out. Turns out that none of us are particularly good with a rudder. Or maybe the boat just didn't have a good rudder. Yeah, that must be it.
Anyway, you really do see the city from a different perspective on the canals. It's indescribably beautiful. Continuing on, however, we got hopelessly lost on some small canal and some people stuck their heads out from a restaurant kitchen and laughed at us. It was good, though. We...er...saw parts of the city we wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Parting ways for a few hours with plans to meet up for dinner, I paid a visit to two museums.
The Van Loon Museum
The Van Loon Museum is an old canal house that has belonged to several extremely rich families over the past few centuries. It's been kept as-is with its original furniture from various eras of habitation, though some part have been modified to the modern standards of different time periods.
There was some society event going on that day, so I felt really out of place with my dumpy backpack, skinny jeans, and punk jacket. I scuttled around the people with fancy hats (what is it with high society and stupid hats?) and tried my best to be inconspicuous.
Only two floors of the house are open. The other two are, I assume, former servants' quarters. They are not open, though I challenged myself to find the hidden staircase (very common in houses like this) that leads to them. I think I found it hidden within a painting, but it is very hard to know exactly.
I didn't realize that you could take photos until I got to the carriage house.
It's a building disconnected from the rest of the house, and the facade is made to look like a temple to Apollo. Do you see the curtains in the second floor windows? They're not curtains at all. They're painted on. And there's no second floor, it's just one with a very high roof.
The high roof was to accommodate this wagon that the family would have ridden to social engagements or wherever they needed to go. It's about eight feet tall or more at its highest point. The highest point, in fact, is the driver's seat, for which the door to the carriage house had to be made specially so he could ride the carriage through them.
In comparison, the sleigh on the right-hand side is much smaller.
There is a photo of this sleigh being used by two of the Van Loon daughters in the early 20th century. The driver would stand on the back of the sleigh. That doesn't seem very comfortable. But it is quite beautiful. Someday I'd like to ride in a sleigh like this just to see what it's like. They're so elegant.
The Houseboat Museum
Several thousand people in Amsterdam live in houseboats. According to the commentary on the boat tour, this was a response to housing shortages on land. I am skeptical, because several space for several thousand people isn't much considering the size of the city.
The Hendrika Maria was built in 1914 and served a previous life as a shipping barge. It has since been converted into a houseboat for use by many families over the years.
The inside was cramped and hard to photograph. My lens wasn't wide enough (let's be honest, I'm using a cell phone) to depict it well. But I'll share the few photos I have.
This sleeping space was already a part of the barge before it became a houseboat. The skipper and his family slept here. It is very...er...cozy?
The middle of the boat is occupied by a living room and kitchen (where the ticket office is now). The other end contains more sleeping spaces:
With the addition of a bed that is no longer in place on the Hendrika Maria, a good-sized family could (and probably did) live in this houseboat. Like I say, Amsterdam makes use of every bit of space available.
I reunited with my German friends and 6PM and we went to a bar for dinner and some beer. They introduced me to this beer called Radler, which is a low-alcohol combo of beer and lemonade. It doesn't have the disagreeably bitter taste of most other beers, so it has since become one of my favourite drinks. We ate food, drank, and played Yahtzee with a German scorecard. I had to keep asking for explanations because I couldn't understand a word on the scorecards, but it's necessary to know what it says in order to formulate a strategy.
I lost the game many times that night, but it was fun. We returned late to the hostel and went swiftly to sleep.
The German women left the next morning. On their recommendation, I decided to spend my last day in Amsterdam touring two of the more famous museums the city has to offer.
The Van Gogh Museum
Like I've said before, I don't like art museums very much. This one, however, was somewhat different. It wasn't an art overdose and it was spaced out. For this reason, it was much easier to digest.
I bought my ticket to the museum at a good discount from the front desk at my hostel. The benefit of doing this, other than saving money, was that I got to stand in a shorter line to enter the museum. There were a ton of people waiting to go in that day, so I took what I could get.
After the museum visit, I like Van Gogh's art. Even more than after watching that episode of Doctor Who. I don't have much love for the security guards at the museum (you're too close to that painting! Don't stand there! What's in your pocket?!), but it was good. They're probably uptight about having so many people in the museum. I just don't enjoy being treated like a criminal when I paid twenty euros for my bloody ticket even at discount.
The visit was definitely worth it.
Ann Frank House
I stood in line to get in for more than forty-five minutes, but that's peanuts compared to the three-hour line from earlier in the day. It was high tourist seas, what can I say.
Again, security guards need to take a fucking chill pill. They first argued over whether my small backpack was too big to carry in, and then they were oddly specific about how I had to carry it while inside the museum. Fuck.
Anyway, the museum itself is beautiful in a sad kind of way. You can see photos of the place online or in books, of course, but there's something profound about the anticipation of seeing the place in person. The secret annexe where Anne Frank hid for two years is unfurnished at the request of her father, but the magazine photos and postcards that Anne herself pasted to the walls are still in place.
Finally you get to the last room of the annex and, right there in the case, is the diary that has become so famous. It's surprisingly small and understated. I imagined that it was bigger, but I guess its real size does make sense.
The last exhibit was a presentation of recorded guest commentary about the holocaust and the importance of the museum. There were survivors and celebrities in the presentation as well. It's all very...sentimental. Sad. Emotional.
I left the museum around 9PM with a dull ache behind my eyes from looking at stuff all day. I got a quick dinner and them stumbled back to my hostel for one last night before my departure to Alicante.
Next time: trip to Valencia!
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