Days 1-2 Part 2

(This part covers my first day in Amsterdam)

 

So, after arriving in the airport, we took the train to the main station. When I got out and really looked at the city, I was amazed. There were bikes everywhere. There must have been at least five thousand bikes, just where I was looking out from. There was even a parking lot designed just for bikes. There were also cars too, though not as many. There were also trams, that just hummed along tracks on the streets, alongside the cars. And there were even canals with boats (Mostly tourboats) in them. The buildings were old looking, although there were a few modern ones. We walked to the place where we were staying at, an apartment where my dad's friend Barbara was living. Along the way, I noticed how some of the buildings were leaning inwards. It almost looked like an exaggerated painting. And another thing I noticed were the roads. These roads were tiny, allowing only one lane for one direction. Of course, there were wider roads in the downtown area, but the majority of the city has thin one way roads. I'm mainly pointing this out because this city is not car-friendly. If you really want to get around here, you take a bike, because this city is bike heaven. There are seperate bicycle lanes on almost all the major roads, and the minor roads are nearly empty, leaving everything open for cyclists. Whereas in Vancouver you would see a couple of cyclists pass by on the quiet roads occasionally, in Amsterdam you see streams or clumps of them rolling by on their commuter bikes.

 

Anyways, enough babbling about bicycles. My point is, there were lots of bikes here. And that's great. So I was seeing this while I was walking to Barbara's apartment, along an area referred to as the horseshoe. The horseshoe is basically a half-octagon with canals running beside the streets. So far, it's my favourite part of Amsterdam. We reached Barbara's place, which is at the top of a typical Amsterdam building. To get to the top, we climbed up a huge spirial of rather steep stairs. It was quite fun actually. At the top we were shown around the room and we unpacked our stuff, and then we went back outside. I took a bunch of photos to highlight the sheer amount of bikes in this city, mainly to show to my sister, who actually publishes Momentum, a cycling-oriented magazine back in Vancouver. We then went to a resteraunt, which had a bar. The interesting part was people of any age could go in (I saw a mother and her baby in there) and with my appearance, I could have actually ordered a beer. (Maybe) We had our dinner and dessert, which was great, and we just hung out a bit. Some guy apparently got drunk and fell over, but I was outside exploring the surrounding the area at the time so I missed it.

 

Another neat thing I noticed about Amsterdam is that almost everybody knows English. If I go into a store and order something in English, then the person working there will just get it for me and tell me the total price and make normal conversation and stuff as they would in Canada. Some people here don't even bother to learn a few phrases in Dutch and they live here. It's quite amazing actually, but English must be pretty easy to learn for the Dutch people, because there are many similarities. (eg. Stadion = Stadium, Miljeon = Million (The J is pronounced as Y) Sportterrein = Sportsground, Industrieterrein = Industrial Area, Zwembad = Swimmingbath, Parkeerplaats = Parking place) I can easily recognize many Dutch words since the languages are so similar.

 

When we were finished dinner, we just walked back to the apartment, and set up the bed, and I had a shower. Even though I was jetlagged as hell, I wasn't feeling all that tired. I guess the fact that I slept until 11 AM the next morning contradicted this though.

 

Day 3 is coming soon!

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