Amsterdam Archives - Page 2 of 3 -

Spui Square

September 12, 2014 Drew

An outdoor book fair, a hidden courtyard, and a floating flower market – it’s Spui Square! Noelle and I both got hit with a pretty bad flu bug over the last couple days, but we managed to stay coherent enough to wander around this cool part of the city.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful for the last week or so, and today was no different. Spui square is a fairly short walk away from our apartment in the Jordaan neighborhood, and the route takes you over some of the best canal views in the city!

I’ve also spotted some sweet VW’s in the area. Seeing these makes me miss my rotting piece of metal back home just a little bit. On Fridays, the square hosts an outdoor book market (I guess going to outdoor markets is a thing we do now?) We didn’t actually buy anything, but it was fun to sit back and watch the bustling activity. Amsterdam is definitely a city in motion; people riding bikes right and left, cars honking, trams streaking by. We love it, and it’s quite a big change from the automobile gridlock of suburbia Chicago! We soon found our way into the Begijnhof courtyard. This hidden quiet space is completely opposite and insulated from the busy Spui square right next door. This place is actually super old, dates from the 1300’s, and used to house a group of religious women known as beguines. Today it is a nice, bright courtyard with a couple cool churches and private houses. We then wandered back out to Spui, walked down the street a bit, and found ourselves at the Bloemenmarkt. This floating flower market area was pretty cool. We wanted to visit this place in anticipation for our soon to be trip to the famed flower auction at Aalsmeer. Honestly, I was expecting there to be more actual flowers for sale, but most of it was the bulbs or seeds, along with the obligatory wooden shoe or kitchy windmill trinket. A little too much on the tourist trap side for me!

At this point, the flu symptoms were starting to kick back in, so we headed back to the apartment – hopefully we will be back at it soon with a couple decent trips planned for next week!

Amsterdam

Westerkerk

September 7, 2014 Drew

If you had told me a few months ago that I would enjoy climbing up a narrow brick tower with rickety wooden stairs and ladders, I would have said something like “I know I’m the one with rusty old VW bus… but you’re crazy!” But sure enough, today we climbed up the Westerkerk bell tower – and it was awesome!

We have been saying that we are going to climb this thing since we got here, but between working and wandering the streets of this crazy city, we just hadn’t gotten around to experiencing Westerkerk. So today we paid our €7.50 and started our ascent.

Westerkerk is the tallest church tower in Amsterdam, and was built by the Protestants in the mid 1600’s. The church itself has a very stark interior, especially compared to some of the other grand Catholic cathedrals I’ve seen. The tower contains the famous bells that can be heard ringing various melodies and chimes throughout the day.

Going into the church is free, but they make you pay a little cash and go in a tour group of 6 to climb the tower. Noelle thought the guide was cute… so that was a good start. The tour was pretty short and simple – he explained a little history of the tower as we stopped on each floor to rest. The view from the top was amazing!

Heading back down those ladders and stairs was a bit of a challenge, but honestly, after 3 weeks of running up and down the 4 flights of stairs at our apartment, we took these in stride – Success!

We also wandered around the inside of the church. They say Rembrandt is buried somewhere – I didn’t notice at first, but the entire floor of this place is actually just a bunch of stone graves. I’m sure they don’t mind the hundreds of people tramping over their face all day long!

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So the tower was awesome, the church was cool, and even the area around Westerkerk is nice. They’ve got a herring stand, a stand selling yummy frites, usually someone out playing some music. There’s also the ever present line to get into the Anne Frank house stretching around the block (if you can’t tell already, lines are not my thing (except at D-world, the happiest place on Earth.)) A great church in a great neighborhood!

On a side note, Noelle and I celebrated our six year anniversary this weekend – so of course we found the highest rated Mexican restaurant in town and went straight there. Los Pilones is actually a Mexican restaurant run by Mexican ex-pats, as opposed to a “Mexican” restaurant run by crazy Europeans who think they can cook but they can’t. It was cool, the cerveza was cold, the margarita’s were tasty, and the fish tacos were awesome!

Amsterdam

Noodermarkt

August 30, 2014 Drew

Building on our fun times wandering around the antique shop earlier this week, we went to explore Amsterdam’s Noodermarkt. This is a fun and busy street market on the corner of Prisengracht and Westerstraat in the Jordaan area. On Saturday, it’s a farmers market with a little bit of flea market mixed in. On Monday, it’s a big flea market with lots of textiles, and a little bit of farmer’s market mixed in – either way its an opportunity to fork over some more euros for some more stuff.

We picked up some bread and goat cheese, and poked around the rest of the stalls. They had a ton of mushrooms, a fish booth, a bunch of veggies and grains. The produce here is all “ecological” (organic), and was priced similar to the local chain markets.

After milling through the crowded booths for a while, we walked down Westerstraat. We had lunch at Cafe de Blaffende Vis, and it was awesome! Relatively cheap sandwiches, great desserts (I had apple pie – heck yeah!), good atmosphere – we will definitely be back for more.

Overall, just another great day experiencing a little bit of the goodness that is Amsterdam!

Amsterdam

I love antiek!

August 27, 2014 Drew

Noelle and I found a place selling antiques… it was awesome! Since we are so “young, cool, hip, etc”, of course we love to rummage through any type of antique store. We have frequented many such places in the States ranging from back-alley basement shops to those huge floor-to-ceiling antique malls off many an interstate in the Midwest. We ducked into what looked like a small little shop off one of the side streets in the Jordaan, only to find that it was actually a large network of interconnected rooms with aisles and aisles of old stuff just waiting to be found – so there went our day!

We stepped into this place to see what old stuff looks like in Amsterdam – we weren’t disappointed. This place had all kinds of crazy stuff, and we spent plenty of time wandering around soaking it all in – we didn’t actually buy anything, but hey we looked at a lot of it!

Some of this stuff is super old, and from all over the place – a little different than your average junk shop back home. Noelle managed to find herself back in a corner of the shop that was too tight for me and the backpack to fit – this place is crazy!

Yikes!

On a side note, we tried a new place for lunch, Burgermeester. This place had good reviews online, and so following with my new general rule about eating out, we decided to give this burger joint a try. Honestly, I think I am just way to fond of Five Guys, and so will probably never be able to find a decent burger anywhere else… but let’s just say Burgermeester hasn’t really ‘meestered’ the art of making burgers! I’ll stick with more traditional Amsterdam fare like fries smothered in ketchup and mayo.

Amsterdam

“Not for everyone”

August 25, 2014 Drew

Thats how Rick Steves describes Amsterdam’s Red Light District. We went to this vice-filled part of the city when we last visited, and now we headed back to take in this interesting experience!

For reasons unknown (or known), our last visit was something of a blur. This time we started our exploration at Amsterdam’s Old Church. This huge building and its tall spire provide a convenient anchor point from which to explore the area; if you get lost just head back towards that church (and civilization). If I was trying to write like a guidebook, I might talk about the differences between Amsterdam’s “New” Church and “Old” Church, and how they are actually only about 100 years apart and both very old at this point. I might also mention that the spire of the Old church inspired architectural design in Amsterdam throughout its Renaissance golden age…. but I’m not writing a tour guide, so go buy your own!

In typical Amsterdam juxtaposition; this beautiful old church is nestled amongst rows and rows of legal prostitutes selling their wares… “nuff said”. In addition to the sex stuff, the red light district also houses the Bulldog, the original Amsterdam ‘coffeeshop’, as well as plenty of gambling, and of course lot’s of eten en drinken!

Really though, the first thing that hits you about the red light district in Amsterdam is the sheer amount of people crowded into the narrow alleyways and canal streets. Noelle and I were there in the evening after dinner, and it was a little insane the amount of people all wandering around – a little less seedy and more Disney that I expected. Of course she walked a little too fast to really take in all the sights and sounds, but I made us walk the canal twice – just to make sure we got the full experience!

In the midst of this cacophony of prostitutes and lights and weed and awkward sex shops selling awkward stuff, by far the weirdest thing we saw all night was a dude dressed as a green dragon pushing his way through the crowd with a small, half dressed, slippered woman in tow – that’s Amsterdam’s red light district for you!

We went back a couple days later during to day to find Our Lord in the Attic, a “hidden” Catholic church. While it stopped being a secret back in the 1700’s, it still took us a while to find it. I’m glad we did though, because this church has been turned into a museum of sorts, and is also a decent example of a preserved canal house from the 17th and 18th century.

The gist is that the owner of the house was a successful businessman who happened to be a Catholic during the Reformation – Amsterdam’s leaders had outlawed public practice of Catholicism, so he built this church within the top three floors of his (and his neighbors’) house. It was really interesting and cool. The place had just undergone an extensive restoration; the woodwork and furnishings had all been brought back to their original colors and condition – sweet!

Amsterdam’s red light district is definitely a unique and exciting place – it’s got a crazy, almost anything goes attitude at night, and has a lot of restaurants, shops, and sights during the day. We had a great time exploring this part of the city, and I’m looking forward to more!