I Heart Amsterdam

I have fallen in love with Amsterdam.

It is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen – well everything but the Red Light district, which is filthy dirty and like Pier39 but with sex and drugs. So here are some adjectives that come to mind when I consider Amsterdam.

Green
Trees galore line the canals and streets. Buildings have rose vines growing over the windows. Even potted plants and gardens on top of house-boats. You’d never think there was room for so much green in a city of all water.

Aside from colorfully green, it’s also environmentally green. Everyone here bikes. And that’s an understatement. All the bikes are the classic antique style that people in America would pay hundreds for just for artistic merit. But here it’s the norm, only, they have tons of cool gadgets for carting around kids in little wheelbarrow-like extensions, and you’ll see 5 year olds standing up straight on the flat cover to the back wheel while they hold the shoulders of their parent who’s pedaling.

Calm
Due to the fact that everyone bikes, a car rarely drives down the street which makes for no street noise. I was walking home at 10:30pm and it was countryside-quiet. No sirens, horns, engines. Just bliss.

Light
The light is one of the most beautiful things and it goes hand in hand with the water. All the windows in the tall, tall, skinny buildings are lit up as you walk by. Hardly anyone pulls the curtains. And they give such a warm glow against the dark street. The bridges are lit too and double the light since they reflect in perfect stillness off of the canals.

Simple and Clean
Since you can see into the windows of these houses, you see that the interior design is simple and clean. Kind of Mac-like. And very artistic in a modern way.

Artistic
The artisticness isn’t just displayed in the home decorating, but in the clothes styles, the boutique designs, and I can’t even explain how but it’s in the air.

Brick
Lots of brick buildings. I even saw a brick houseboat!

Varied
This is in regards to the food. There’s everything under the sun. Healthy stuff too.

Overall, Amsterdam is totally livable. I’m going to add it to my potential list.

Bussing
I took a bus ride over here, an 8 hour long bus ride. Sounds crazy cuz trains could’ve done the trick in 4, but not crazy when it was only 19euros round trip! I met some riders on the way and we chatted for 2 hours. They had been studying in Paris and one was an art history major. So I asked him a whole bunch of bottled up art questions. He explained cubism and Pablo Picasso quite satisfactorily, was a little vague on my Dutch art questions though.

Drugs
There was a bit of an awkward moment when my bus buddies asked me about my planned Amsterdam activities. They were of the British/American tourist mold, who are the ones who supply the red light district with all of their money in exchange for the forbidden. So when they asked me if I was excited for some weed, they were mute for about 15 seconds as I said “I don’t take drugs.” Which of course sounded lame, but fortunately the succeeding “Just Say No” phrase stayed bottled up inside me :-) Anyway, I resolved to be prepared with a less awkward response the next time the subject came up and I settled upon “I’m not into that stuff,” spoken with a very casual air :-) I was all set with it on the tip of my tongue, so when I bunked down at my hostel and discovered it to be a Christian hostel, I had a few laughs from the irony.

Art
The Van Gogh museum was rad. There was a temporary exhibit on “Starry Night” and all Van Gogh’s attention and work dealing with twilight and stars.

Starry Night (one of his two)

Between that and the permanent collection I gained a new appreciation for Van Gogh. I like that he wasn’t obsessed with nudes. His obsession was with peasants and working class who he idealized, lauding their work ethic, their simple life, and their spirit. I also had no idea that he was spiritual, more-so in his earlier life than later. And I liked that he was rejuvenated and calmed by nature: landscapes, stars, sunsets…And that he was sort of self-taught. And how he analyzed color and how to capture vibrant contrasts. Too bad prints of his work don’t reflect his brushstrokes. If only I were rich enough for an original I think I’d get this one:

Night, after Millet

The top floor had works by Odilon Redon and Emile Bernard who I’d never heard of before but I liked some of their art.

Emile Redon

Odilon Bernard

I also went to the Rijksmuseum with Veronica (friend from Paris who’s now living in Holland) and her friend. In the museum we saw some Dutch art from their Golden Period. I’ve always been amazed with how absolutely realistic they can make their paintings. Like this one, where his eyes shows wrinkles and red and his hands show veins like you are just sitting in his presence.
***oops. can't find the pictures. coming soon.

And this one was fabulous the way he captured shiny objects like the satin dress. Amazing! You sort of have to think backwards to do it.

Gerard ter Borch, Paternal Admonition

And I love Rembrandt. It's the combo of realism and thick brushstrokes I think, combined with his light and dark technique.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, The Jewish Bride

And when I went to church on Sunday (everytime I see a ward in random places in Europe I smile) I ran into a sister of a good friend from Salt Lake. We’d actually met once before hiking an incredible mountain in Utah. She and her new husband invited me over for dinner Monday night which was super nice. And on the way home around 9:00pm the sunset was so gorgeous I decided to walk the 3 miles back to my hostel rather than take the metro and tram. This was the view I had along the river.

And then as it darkened, along the canals, notice the roofline. They have cool shapes.

Tulips or Lilies Rather
I just happened to be in Amsterdam during "tulip" season. "Supposedly" they have these gardens with loads and loads of bright and beautiful tulips all arranged in huge manicured gardens, like so.

Keukenhof is the closest big tulip park to Amsterdam and I was just at the tail end of the season, mid-March to mid-May, which means the tulips were likely on their way out, but I was willing to risk it. I prepared myself mentally for lots of fading and wilting flowers, knowing that even if it were just for the beautiful park of trees, I’d be satisfied. But what I didn’t expect was an eradication of tulips.

In the whole park, these were the only big bunch I saw.

Which was ok, because the park was exhilarating just the same. Less flowers means less people :-) and earlier in the season when the tulips were in full-bloom, the trees were still bare. So it was a fair trade-off. Plus, they had this extravagant lily exhibit in the indoor conservatory.

I’m not a huge fan of lilies owing to the smell that makes me mildly nauseous, but these were amazing and definitely worth breathing through my mouth for 15 minutes. There were also remnants of some other flowers in the park: hyacinth, daffodils, rhododendron...



I forgot to mention that at the Rijksmuseum, they had other things besides painting. Silver art, doll houses, model boats, ceramics… And they had these gorgeous “pyramid” vases, other wise known as tulip vases.

I started plotting how I could acquire my own.

Biking
I was going to go to Haarlem on my way back, but was feeling like I missed out on a bit of Amsterdam by not having biked yet. So I returned and rented a MacBike for a couple hours riding all around, and parking every time I saw a store that looked tempting. I learned that hand brakes are WAY easier to stop in front of cars, trams, and pedestrians with than pedal brakes.

Anyway, that’s Amsterdam. Tonight I’m on my all nighter bust back to Paris and leave right away once arriving to take a train down to Nice. I’m soooo ready for the beach!