Amsterdam Action

We headed over to popular Dutch city of Amsterdam for a long weekend, to get a bit of a taste of mainland Europe again. We had a great (and varied) time in the vibrant city, and sampled some of the delights on offer. While there, we took photos which I have uploaded to my Picasa profile for your viewing pleasure.

We travelled by plane for a change, and the flight from London to Amsterdam took less than an hour. After a quick train from the airport, we arrived in the centre city of Amsterdam.
Our hotel was a bit out of the centre, so we used Amsterdam’s efficient tram system, which stopped right outside the hotel. Inside, the hotel was quite nice, and reasonably priced, especially considering that the UK pound had lost value vs the Euro since we were last over the ditch.
By the time we’d checked in and made our way back to the centre, we had just enough time for a boat trip on the canal before they shut up shop for the day. The canal trip gave us a good overview of the city, and by that time I was thinking that Amsterdam was like a cross between Zurich with the trams and German influence; and Venice because of that floating feeling.

My perceptions of Amsterdam changed a bit once we took a walk around the city after dinner. While we were searching for the red-light district we walked past quite a few of Amsterdam’s famous “coffee houses”. I had imagined they would be like normal cafe’s where people happened to smoke dope while sipping on lattes; but they are more like dark and dingy bars full of guys smoking and sitting around looking high.
The red light district itself is situated either side of a canal in buildings that look much like the rest of the buildings in Amsterdam. And yes, we did see the ladies of the night in their individual windows very nearly revealing their wares. The streets were busy, but I think most people were tourists that were just window shopping.

On Sunday morning we took a tram to two of the most popular museums in Amsterdam; The Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. The Van Gogh Museum was first, and it didn’t disappoint. They had some his most famous works on display such as The Starry Night, The Sunflowers and The Potato Eaters. A lot of his less famous work was no less impressive.
When we stepped out of the Van Gogh Museum, we spied The House of Bols across the road, a front shop for the popular distillery, which had been recommended to us by some friends of friends. We took the tour which consisted of interesting displays which informed us that Bols has been around since the 1575, and is the oldest distillery in the world. They specialise in Genever, a precursor to English Gin, which we got to try at the end of tour as well as a cocktail each (included in the price).

Feeling a little tipsy from our mid-afternoon drinks, we made our way to the Rijksmuseum. It’s currently undergoing renovations, but there was still quite a lot on display from famous Dutch artists such as Rembrandt as well as relics from the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century when they were a world trading power.
We checked out the flower market afterwards, but it was closing, and the flowers were only just starting to come out, so it wasn’t very impressive. We had meal in the city before retiring to our hotel.

We headed over to the Anne Frank House early the next morning. Inside, the rooms of the building were absent from furniture, as that was how her father, the only surviving occupant of the attic during the war, wanted it left. They have some good displays and video testimonies from survivors depicted in her diary talking about Anne. It wasn’t quite as moving as I had thought it would be, but it did make the Nazi era seem more real and tangible to me.

After leaving Anne Frank’s House, we walked into the centre city area. We had a look around Dam square, then headed down the main street where we came across the Sex Museum (link not safe for work). It was quite cheap to get in, and pretty cheap inside. They basically have lots of pornography from throughout history and the world on show. Some of the more interesting ‘photos’ was porn from the 1870’s, as the guy in those photos had the most impressive moustache I’d ever seen!
After getting out of the museum, we were at a bit of a loss for what to do next. We wandered into a tour operator and found there was a well priced tour of some of the area north of Amsterdam leaving in 20 minutes. We paid up, and were on the bus a short time later heading out of the city.

Our first stop was Volendam, a small fishing village that now relies on tourism since most of the fish have died in the lake that the village is at the edge of. There were a lot of souvenir stores, but not too much else to keep us interested for long.
The second stop of the tour was at a small Farmhouse Cheese Factory. We received a short lecture from a Dutch woman on the processes they used, then it was on to the cheese samples; this was more like it! We ended up buying some very tasty smoked goat cheese which we are still enjoying.
The last stop was at a clog-makers, situated in a town surrounded by windmills. We were given a demonstration of how the clogs were made from a block of wood to an unsanded clog in just 3 minutes (using machinery). We didn’t buy any clogs though, as they were around €35 a pair.
Once we made it back to Amsterdam, we didn’t too much else interesting for the rest of the day, although we did take a look in Amsterdam’s very modern central library.

It was raining on our last morning in Amsterdam, and we had enough time to do one last thing before we caught the plane back. So we headed to the FOAM gallery, where there was a collection of photos on display by the American photographer, Richard Avedon. I hadn’t heard of him either until we went to the gallery, but his work was really very good, and consisted mainly of portraits of famous and powerful Americans during the 60’s and 70’s.

Wealthy Windsor

Last weekend, we headed out to Windsor to visit the Queen. She wasn’t impressed that we hadn’t phoned ahead, so were bluntly refused an audience; we were not amused. Not to be disappointed by bad manners, we did tour around her castle and took a quick look around Windsor and nearby Eton. The photos we took of the castle and town can be seen here.

Our journey out was a rather epic adventure in itself as we elected to use our local (and small) rail station: Acton Main Line, as it’s on the line that heads toward Windsor. Unfortunately after 2 changes on the short trip to Windsor, including wait time for connections it ended up taking over an hour and a half, including a ‘picturesque’ stop in Slough, which has been ranked as the least tranquil area in England.

When we eventually arrived in Windsor we found it to be a bustling town with everyone out as the weather was great. After buying our lunch, we sat outside the Windsor Castle walls to eat it.
Windsor Castle is what you would imagine when you think of a castle. Its got tall stone walls with towers, gates, arrow slits and battlements. There is also a large central tower in the centre of the castle that dominates the skyline.After lunch, we went up to the entrance, but found that there was a long line which we joined. After 45 minutes and shelling out £30 we got into the castle.

The wait to get in and the travel time, limited the amount of time available to tour the castle area, so we went straight to the main attraction, this being the State Apartments. Although there were a large number of warnings on queue lengths, our arrival was timed perfectly, so there was no line. There was a whisper of excitement over the attraction in the first room, eager to see what it was, we turned the corner to find a huge doll’s house. The dolls house belonged to Queen Mary’s and is rather impressive, constructed in the 1920s for the wife of George V and made to a scale of 1:12 as a functioning replica of items in Windsor castle. The carpets, curtains and furnishings are all copies of the real thing, and even the light fittings and plumbing work.
The remaining rooms in the state apartments were a mish-mash of styles, although all equally extravagant and lavish. The most impressive room for us was the entrance-way decorated with suits of amour, arranged weapons and ‘trophies’ from conquered lands.

The last stop our our whirlwind tour of the Castle was St George’s Chapel. In the last couple of months we have seen more than our fair share of chapels/cathedrals, and this was impressive, but no more so than any of the others we have seen so far.

To finish our tour of Windsor, we decided to wander around the town a little, and ended up on the road down to Eton. When we got there, Eton college was closed and the shops were shut, so with no more to see or do we returned to the train station to depart for the brighter lights of London city.