We both slept great last night ... until about 1am local time. Then we were wide awake. I don’t know how this corresponds with jet lag or the circadian rhythm, but, here we were. It’s six hours until breakfast, we’re already feeling somewhat hungry, so Deb did some research and I worked on yesterday’s journal, one of the reasons it topped 1800 words.
We spent the next two hours browsing the works, along with half of Amsterdam. For a Monday, there were a lot of people here.
One of the most famous works, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, was partially obscured by some sophisticated equipment which was measuring how vibrations affect the canvas, in order to best preserve the 400-year-old painting. This is in stark contrast to 300 years ago when the painting, then a scant 100 years old, was trimmed down on all four sides to fit the painting between two columns at the Amsterdam Town Hall. The trimmings have never been recovered.
To view 8000 works in two hours, one must view about 13 of them per second. We are not that fit and the other patrons may not like the kind of speed required so we spent most of the time on the second level in the works from the 1600’s. It was not only paintings that were impressive, but also some of the architecture and furniture. I’ve decided I would like a couple pieces like this in my bedroom. It would blend well with the decor and the other furniture circa 1986.
Leaving here, we headed to the Dappermarkt, an open-air market listed in National Geographic as one of the best open-air markets in the world. This is a whole street with vendors from all over the world offering clothing, trinkets, and food. If we had more time and space, we may have actually bought a thing or two, but it was fun just to look at everything.
At one end was a booth offering some sort of chicken or lamb wrap, another one of those middle-Eastern eateries that are everywhere. We ordered a few of these and sat down to eat. The wraps were amazing. A lot of other people must think so, too. Immediately after we received our food, the place was mobbed by a large crowd ordering the same fare.
It was here that our lack of sleep began to really catch up with us. So we parted ways with Terry and Jill and took the bus back to the hotel to take a nap while they went on to the Dutch Resistance Museum. An hour of shut-eye was just what was needed.
We met back up at Centraal Station and went in search of something to eat for dinner. We ended up at Moeders, a place offering traditional Dutch fare. This is a rarity here, as “Dutch” and “cuisine” really don’t belong in the same sentence. We almost went somewhere else as many of the menu items evoked memories from many years ago. And not necessarily good memories. Such foods as stewed beef, boiled potatoes, red cabbage. Some we make all the time, others we just don’t like. Our tastes have veered towards Chinese food over the last 15 year or so, where flavors can be more intense and varied.
Deb was finally convinced to stay when she learned that the fish of the day was salmon and not something like pickled herring or eel, so we sat down at the tiny table on the sidewalk and put in our orders.
Deb enjoyed the salmon, and Terry and Jill tried the Hollandse Rijsttafel, which is described as a typical Dutch meal which is a combination of all the Dutch specialties we serve: granny’s stewed beef, Dolly’s hatchee (beefsteak with onions), hotchpotch, boiled potatoes, red cabbage, apple sauce, bacon, sausage & gravy.
Indeed it was a sampler of many of the foods we had as kids, although we never had sauerkraut in mashed potatoes--a rather lethal combination. This was a mashup of some of the Dutch comfort foods, the meat and potatoes, as well as some of what we turned our noses up at when we were kids.
We then took the tram and the bus back to the hotel. One of the wiser purchases we have made was a two-day public transportation pass, which gets us on the busses and trams that run all over Amsterdam. We have made good use of them. For 15 Euros each, it’s really cheap transportation.
We have also made every public transportation mistake in the book. I suppose that’s how you become an expert. We’ve taken the right bus in the wrong direction (twice), attempted to board the bus through a door that is exit only, waited for a door to open and realizing almost too late that you have to push a button to open the door, and failed to press the stop button, causing the bus to sail right past our platform. Some of these elicited a sharp exclamation of “Frau!” (woman) from the driver who always seemed to address Jill with these rebukes, so that has become a running joke among us, getting fraued. We have become more confident in the use of public transportation, and I was even able to help out a couple about our age who were struggling with a map and wanting to get off at Centraal Station. When the doors opened, I told them, “If you want to get off at Centraal Station, you should leave the bus now.” I’m such an expert. One day ago, I was the hapless newbie consulting the map.
Back at the hotel, we packed a smaller backpack for the overnight trip to Andijk. We’ll leave most of the luggage here at the hotel so we don’t have to cart it all over the Netherlands.
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