Amsterdam Part I

Last night was our first night in Amsterdam. After being awake for 36 hours, I was rather delirious by the time we checked into our hotel, The MEININGER Amsterdam West. Since we've been in Amsterdam, it has been rainy and a brisk 55 degrees F. Thank goodness I invested in a rain coat before leaving! The rain has not seemed to deter the bike traffic, in Amsterdam, biking is the main mode of transportation. It is not uncommon to see two full grown adults on one cruiser or a mother with a child on the handle bars and child in the rear. The canals are gorgeous and run throughout the entire city. People fill the cobblestone streets.

On Friday we went to the Van Gogh museum. We started the exhibit with a 15 minute movie explaining a bit of Van Gogh's history. The Dutch painter only painted for about one decade before tragically ending his life by shooting himself in a wheat field. His work evolved from intensely dark portrayals of peasant life (example "The Potato Eaters") to more vibrant colorful works (ex. "Sunflowers") during his move to Paris. Towards the end of his career, he was voluntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital where he produced about 150 works of the hospital garden. Van Gogh's most important relationship was with his brother Theo, the only reason we know so much about Van Gogh's life was due to the thousands of letters sent between the two men.  

After a lovely visit to the Van Gogh museum, the three of us walked to Vondelpark. It was an endless secret garden filled with beauty and adventure. We came across a pond where Vivien managed to attract every bird in a radius with her deceptive offer of a twig. A stroll through a winding pathway revealed a tree top jungle gym with an unknown destination. We climbed up some rope netting and navigated through the sky path bridges and tunnels. The rain began to come down a bit harder and we made our way back to the park entrance in search for food.

We finally came across an Indian restaurant that we agreed on, Bollywood Indian Restaurant. The food was very good and as the name suggests there was no shortage of Bollywood music videos. We wanted to catch a canal boat tour after so we ran to catch what we thought was the last tour of the day. We made it in just the knick of time for the 6 pm boat, although the boats actually ran quite a bit later. The tour started out great but after about ten minutes I fell cold asleep in exhaustion. Megan and Vivien made sure I would remember with photographic evidence (not currently pictured).

We had walked past a jazz bar earlier in the day and Megan was adamant that we check it out. Since it didn't open until 9 pm, we decided to find a café to kill time. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than we thought, after four failed attempts (too crowded, too druggy, too loud, too douchey) we finally settled on Pancake Corner in Leidseplein. The three of us shared a pancake (huge crepe) with chocolate sauce and chocolate shavings  and enjoyed cappuccinos followed by hot chocolate. 9 o'clock finally rolled around and we headed over to "Jazz Café Alto".

We enter the bar and found an empty table right in front of the stage. Our waitress came by I asked her for her best "jazz" whiskey and a round of beers. The band was setting up and to my surprise I overheard the saxophone player speaking in Hungarian. I became excited and began chatting and practicing my Hungarian with them. They started playing at 10 pm and we were instantly captivated by their sound. The club was packed and everyone was snapping, swaying and rocking with the flow. Megan whipped out her sketch book and began drawing the scene. We ended up staying at the club for over four hours! We listened to 3 out of the 5 sets and then moved on to a piano bar across the street. The bar was a stark contrast from the where we had came, the pianist was playing along to a pre-recorded soundtrack of chimes and drums. As he destroyed the most cleché piano bar song, "Piano Man" by Billy Joel, we chugged our beers and bee-lined for the exit. Unfortunately the buses stopped running at 1 pm so we were forced to track down a taxi.

We were still feeling rather musical when we arrived back at our hotel, The MEININGER West Amsterdam. There were two acoustic guitars hanging in the lobby so we grabbed them started our own concert. Before we knew it we had a room full of Italians, Germans, Indians and Dutch people clapping along and shouting requests. For some reason one Indian gentleman was rather adamant that we play a Bryan Adams tune even though none of us knew anything by him.  We felt obligated since he bought us a round of beers so in return we struggled through "The Summer of '69". I'm sure that somewhere out there on the interwebs, there is a video of this. By 5 am I was little more than a zombie, we called it the night and said our good-byes to our new fans.

-Shenzi