A long weekend in Amsterdam

After my morning/afternoon classes on Thursday, I had to scramble to finish packing and run (literally) to the Hannover Hauptbahnhof to catch my train with Bill to Amsterdam.  Because of a few poorly planned errands like hitting up the ATM and letting my monthly transit pass expire, I ended up almost missing our train but thankfully everything worked out.  Our train ride to Amsterdam was fairly uneventful, with the exception of a bit of confusion on our transfer in the Netherlands, and we made it to Amsterdam Centraal Station around 9:30 pm.  After wandering around what seemed like the Amsterdam China Town we ended up finding a nice little place to grab dinner before we headed out to the campground where I had booked a cabin that we would be calling home for the next three nights.  Little did we know that after our quick tram ride, we had to walk halfway across this giant bridge to get to the campground.

The next morning, we woke up around 9:00 am and were having a nice relaxing breakfast enjoying the view of the bay from our cabin when these geese and ducks started following me looking for food.  One goose in particular persistently followed me around for a good ten minutes and even tried to sneak into our cabin to steal some food.

 

We made our way back to the Centraal Station and walked around Amsterdam for a bit before heading to the Rijksmuseum (National Art Museum of the Netherlands) which was my favorite museum of the trip and possibly so far this year.  We then grabbed lunch and beers near the Leidseplein and walked around a bit more before hitting up the Van Gogh Museum.  To be honest, the Van Gogh is a great exhibition space, and it does a great job of showing the development of Van Gogh as an artist, but my favorite parts of the museum were probably this special exhibit they had on Belgian Painter Alfred Stevens who was known for his portraits of "ladies of fashion" and also the top floor of the museum which showed Van Gogh's relationship to his contemporaries and his influence on a younger generation of artists.  While the Van Gogh museum wasn't really much more crowded than the Rijksmuseum, the setup of the permanent exhibit made it feel uncomfortably crowded at times and really took away from the art.  After walking around a bit more we bought some needed groceries and beer and headed back to the campground to play some cards before getting some much deserved sleep.

 

Waking up on Saturday, it looked like it was going to be a gray, rainy day in Amsterdam, but thankfully my predictions were proven wrong and it turned out to be a beautiful day.  We started our day with a walk through the famous Bloemenmarkt (flower market) and then coffee outside of a farmers market near the Waag before heading to the Rembrandthuis--the former residence of Rembrandt which has been turned into a really neat historical museum.  After enjoying a nice lunch on a bench overlooking a beautiful canal, we wandered through this great street bazaar selling everything from used clothes to flowers to souvenirs to art to books--I found a great "Amsterdam" hat that I just had to buy.  We then made our way to the Amsterdam Historical Museum which came highly recommended from Jackie.  Halfway through we decided to call it quits for museums for the day and to finish the museum Sunday afternoon before our train back to Hannover.  We walked through the Jordaan quarter of Amsterdam until we found this great little Italian pizza/pasta place.  After dinner we strolled through the Red Light District for a taste of a major reason Amsterdam has become so famous and then headed back to the campgrounds for some wine and winding down.

Sunday morning I used the last of my shower tokens (you had to pay for showers at the campground, but the facilities were really nice so it was ok by me) and we said goodbye to Camp Zeeburg before heading back to the Amsterdam Historical Museum.  The museum didn't open until 11:00 am, so we waited out a morning rain shower at a cafe on Dam Square.  We finished the museum (which I still can't believe held our attention for so long--quite a feat!), and I made a beeline straight to the first falafel place I could find.  Amsterdam still has a strong Indonesian/Asian influence from it's colonial days and is famous for its falafel stands and restaurants.  After that we walked around a bit more, and I made Bill go into a few stores with me to look for postcards and then a few more to look at coats.  While I did find some postcards, unfortunately my tastes are too expensive in winter coats (since I guilt-tripped myself out of buying one I found).

Upon our arrival to the Centraal Station thirty-five minutes before our train left, we were surprised to find that the schedule had been changed due to construction, and our train had already left.  After a few annoying customer service employees told us "You have big problem", we got everything straightened out and a new return trip route that got us into Hannover only two hours later than expected.  Of course though, Murphy's Law went into effect and our new train was fifty-five minutes late getting to Duisburg, so we missed our transfer.  We then frantically had to run to catch an alternate train to Dortmund (along with a few university students we met who were also headed to Hannover) and then transfer to a train headed to Hannover.  After the day was over, I finally got home right at 1:00 am and only four hours later than scheduled.  Needless to say, I was in less than top shape for my morning classes today, but both lessons went swimmingly!