Amsterdam has such personality! It is quirky, efficient, proud, accessible, haughty and pedestrian, all at the same time. The 16th and 17th century buildings are part of life- not some rarified sample of preserved past. Everyone cycles ( that leaves me out!). They cycle with babies and bags, in the rain and in the cold. Parking lots are filled with cycles. Despite this the city is congested and a bit chaotic- but surprisingly not tense or uptight.
Had dinner with friend Amber at one of the famous “ Brown Cafes” which are named in reference to 400 years of soot and smoke. Again—impossible for me not to believe in ghosts in a building where so many have lived and laughed, supped and wooed. References from literature come back to me and I realize how much more “reporting” and how much less invention there was, in Poe, Dickens, Hardy, Dostoevsky. ( NOT that I remember much at all!!!)
Not the entire city is bandbox. There is a little decay visible—as well as construction. And some of the “modern” architecture struck me nearly as much as the historic. Loved the apartment building kaleidoscope; visual puzzle of contrasting planes of glass.
Traveling by canal to the Riljmuseuem let me take s number of pictures at water level. The pervasiveness of water is a powerful reminder that this is a country that is below sea level and only through extraordinary ingenuity and industriousness does it survive. If there are a people on the planet that could lead the charge to stop global warming—I would think it would be the Dutch. The museum was fun – though cordoned off to a single wing due to remodeling. Several Rembrandts—a painter that still seems completely relevant. Bought a few slices of cheese and began to consider it as a good surrogate for chocolate in terms of indulgence! Also got to visit a coffee house to see how the recreationally indeed spend a Monday night. Best of all—an impromptu kareoke of Volare! Lovely to see people relax a bit.
