5 Amsterdam Food and Market Flowers

We (okay... I) ate our way around Amsterdam- and it was great!

 Ben and Jerry's was everywhere! Of course, I had to indulge in a Belgian waffle with my favorite Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt on top!

Henri Willig cheese shop with free samples!

One place I don't have pictures of, but you should stop at is a bakery/chocolatiere-
't Goede Soet
Keizersgracht 95
I bought lots of chocolates there, including dark chocolate covered marshmallows, dark chocolate nonpareils, and dark chocolate coins.  (I only like dark chocolate, if you can't tell!)
Stop in, she's got a great selection of all chocolates and varieties!

 We stumbled across a restaurant that seems quite popular, now that I'm looking it up online- The Pancake Bakery.  Just down the street from the Anne Frankhuis, it wasn't too far from our holiday apartment, either.  The first time we ate there I wanted to be healthy- so I ordered the Masai pancake, with broccoli, zucchini, paprika, carrots, onions, mushrooms, leeks, and cheese.  It was delicious!
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I might have insisted we go back the next night, so I could get a dessert-like pancake- which was such a hard choice!  I ended up on the English pancake, with William pears (like the canned kind), vanilla ice-cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream.
Note for Americans: these "pancakes" are European- so what we'd call crepes. Still delicious, just different.

 I made this breakfast for myself at our apartment.  Some sweet, sticky cakes I got at a bakery with sliced fresh strawberries on top!

 Flowers from the Lindengracht Saturday street market.

Hold onto your socks-

(is that the phrase? I have no idea...)

I've got Amsterdam's posts done for you!!

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(Since this links to the label, you'll get this post again.  Just scroll down- sorry!)

0 Seven Tips For Your Visit to Amsterdam

1. American travelers take note: we found very few businesses in Amsterdam that accepted swipe credit cards- they only accepted chip-and-pin cards found in Europe.  Most of the major tourist sites did (Rembrandthuis, Van Gogh Museum) but little shops, bakeries, and restaurants did not.  Euros are the local currency, although we stumbled across a couple of shops that wouldn't even take cash- sadly, this meant we couldn't give them our business.

2. If you're visiting in tulip season, buy some gorgeous bunches at street markets or street stands!  We saw bunches of 50 flowers for a low as €8, whereas the train station and airport had them for sale for as high as €15 for 50.

From the Saturday morning market in Jordaan, on Lindengracht.

3. Prebook your tickets to Anne Frankhuis and Keukenhof.   The lines at Anne Franhuis are very long, at any time of day.  You can pre-book a specific time, and with those printed tickets in hand, go past the line to a barely-marked door to the left of the line's entrance.  Here you'll see a sign that says "Online tickets press ringer" (or something like that).  Press it, go in, and there you go!  Keukenhof was a bit trickier- we opted to do the Combi ticket with the bus from Schipol, so we first took the train to Schipol, then followed the signs at the bus depot for the Keukenhof bus.  From there we got in a long line that seemed to split off into those who still needed to pay and those who didn't, but no one checked our tickets until we got to the park.

4. Trains are easy and great!  We took the train to Zaanse Schans, we took the train from/to the airport, we took the train to The Hague.  This recommendation seems a bit uneasy since we were there for the biggest train collision Amsterdam has had in recent history, but, it's not a common occurrence and train travel is generally easy and stress-free.  We did have to buy our tickets at the service desk, paying a €0.50 charge, since our cards wouldn't work in the ticket kiosks, but the representatives were helpful and wrote down stops we needed to look for.  The seats are spacious and comfortable, too- far more so than in the U.K.!

5. Another tip for tulip season: if you're wanting pictures of tulip bulb fields, the ones at Keukenhof are a bit of a walk down the road, then you have to tell yourself that the sign asking you to stay out of the tulip fields means don't walk in the flowers... but the dirt paths between the fields are okay.  (Grey area, I know... we were careful and didn't touch any flowers!)  However!  On the train to The Hague we saw several miles of gorgeous fields of tulips, all between the towns of Leiden and Haarlem.  You could either ride the train to one of the cities and then walk, rent a car and drive there, or bicycle.  I'm not sure the rules on these fields, but we did see walkers, joggers, and cyclists alongside the fields.

6. The I Am Amsterdam card could be a benefit for your trip- but crunch the numbers first!  We did some adding up and the "must-dos" on our list that were available on the card's discounts didn't add up to the cost of the card for a 24-hour period (the cheapest option at €40).  While there were enough things on the card's list that were potential "maybes" for us, we would have had to make sure we did them in order to get our money's worth.  We opted to not purchase the card, but it was a close draw, so I wanted to pass the information on to you!

7. Here's the big info on a place to stay!  We had THE BEST holiday apartment!  After getting bug-eyes at some of Amsterdam's hotels' prices, I decided to check with Airbnb- the site I booked our Barcelona stay through.  It had pages of options, but I settled on a one-bedroom Jordaan apartment, since that neighborhood offers beautiful canal-side streets with lots of restaurants and local bars.  The apartment was perfect!  It had a small but full-functioning kitchen, a living room, dining table, comfortable bed, shower and bathtub, and overlooked both a courtyard garden through the bedroom and large windows to the street in the living area- although no street noise!  The prices were (comparably) reasonable, coming to around $180/night.  I highly recommend this apartment- and not just because the bookshelf offered work by some of my favorite photographers:

I'm not doing a separate Seven Tips for The Hague, since we were only able to be there for half of a day- but the city seemed lovely and charming, and I hope to get back someday and give it the time it deserves!

0 Zaanse Schans: Sawmill and Wooden Shoe Making

Het Jonge Schaap, the sawmill, was probably my favorite.  It's actually a 2007 re-creation of the original sawmill, which was demolished in 1942.  The unique thing about it is before the original mill was destroyed,  an engineer was brought in to create detailed plans and blueprints of the existing mill.  The current recreation was made according to these plans, using historic methods- dovetail joinery, pin-locks, etc.  The only modern implements was the use of cranes for heavy hoisting.

The mill has a niche market for cutting irregular length/width boards, mostly used in reconstruction and renovation of historic properties.  It would cost too much for an industrial sawmill to reset blades for these limited orders, but the cap sawmill can change blades and widths easily. I love that the historic sawmill is used to keep historic properties alive!

The logs are kept in the water until they're ready to be cut.  The bark is stripped with hand-tools, then the logs are fed into the saws.  

Lumberyard!

Zaanse Schans also has a wooden shoe workshop with demonstrations.

They use modern machinery.

I was fascinated by the rows and rows of wooden shoes- on the walls, on the ceilings, stacked on the floor.

The plain-colored but intricately carved shoes are traditional wedding shoes.  They were my favorite!

0 Zaanse Schans: The Windmills!

Everything I read online said that Zaanse Schans is the place to go for an easy day trip to see windmills.  I love windmills, so of course I wasn't going to pass them up in Holland!  We took the train, an easy 20 minute journey which only cost €6.30 each return (roundtrip).  The train drops off in the village of Zaandijk, but signs point the way to Zaanse Schans, which is a 10 minute walk through the village and across a bridge- all of which give picturesque views!
(Oh- we also walked by a delicious little bakery, where we bought some cookies, chocolate, and tasty cakes!)

 De Bleek Dood, a flour mill, was the first windmill we saw, on the Zaandijk side of the water.

As we proceeded across the bridge to Zaanse Schans, the sky looked bleak and grey.  

Zaanse Schans is a very picturesque village, with many shops, windmills, and workshops open to the public.  There are some private homes, though (seen here) and I wondered about these people's lives, lived so closely to thousands of tourists every day.  I know I wouldn't want people photographing and walking past my windows everyday...

This was a spice mill, and it smelled AMAZING.  Mostly cinnamon, but a good mix of other spices, too- all for sale in the shop. This mill was the only one free to enter, and had an extensive shop, where I promptly paid for our visit many times over!

The houses across the river.

De Zoeker, an oil mill, was making peanut oil.  A lengthy process that involved grinding, pounding, mashing, and roasting, the by-product mash of the oil-less peanuts becomes feed for cows.

The skies cleared up a bit for us, which I was excited about!

0 Amsterdam: Rembrandthuis and Other Museums

Thursday was Museum Day for us.  We saw Foam, the photography museum (which had a fascinating exhibit of images from the New York Times Magazine), the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandthuis, and the Anne Frankhuis.  

 The Van Gogh Museum is similar to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, in that it displays a chronological progression of his work, emphasizing the early pieces.  It, too, is missing some of the most well-known paintings, such as Starry Night and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear; but that's standard for any major artist's collective display.  It was interesting to read about his self-promotion and constant failure; it did make me wonder how that contributed to the degree of his mental illness overall.   We didn't buy tickets for any of these museums in advance, but had no trouble getting right in to any of them.

We did buy our tickets for the Anne Frankhuis in advance, and, upon seeing the line snaking around the building, were quite glad we did.  It is a powerful place, and I highly recommend any visitor to Amsterdam take the time to see it.  I haven't read her diary since I was 9 or 10, but Paul read it just a couple of years ago.  I wish I'd read it closer to our trip, but the museum does a good job describing the house as she knew it, the life they led during hiding, and offers pertinent excerpts from her diary throughout the house. 

On to the Rembrandthuis; the only one to allow pictures!

The museum is set up in the house Rembrandt lived in from 1639-1656, and has been re-furnished and re-decorated as closely to his residency as possible.

I love the detailing on the tile work!

Rembrandt's printing press.  I thought it was interesting that he made most of his own prints, contrary to artists with apprentices and workshops that did that for them.

Windows from the landing overlooking the ground floor room and front door.

The largest, brightest room in the house was his studio, and I was envious immediately!  A spacious, airy room with incredible natural lighting, any artist would kill for that set-up!

The room was redecorated based on a self-portrait he painted in this room.

Stove in the studio.

Rembrandt's collection of still-life artifacts.  A thorough catalogue of his possessions was made in 1656, when the artist went bankrupt.  This catalog both aided in the re-furnishing of the house and gives us a clear reason as to why an artist who was successful in his own time went bankrupt.  Most of Rembrandt's money went into funding his collection; some of the rare items (particularly African items like spears and shields and natural items such as tortoiseshells and taxidermied exotics) would have been extremely costly for him to own.

An etching of a windmill scene.