Amsterdam

We landed in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on a cold, rainy, windy afternoon. 

Not a very welcome sign but we soon realised that the weather in Amsterdam is indeed very fickle. Shine, rain, windy, cold, warm all in a day’s work! Hence, while in Amsterdam, don’t look for the perfect weather to go out. Just pick up your itinerary, raincoat and set out to enjoy your day! So, without any further ado we headed towards Foodhallen, the happening food court in Amsterdam on a Saturday 

evening and wow we were infected by the enthusiasm of the people gathered there for a lovely evening of music, food, companionship and Heineken to wash it all down.

The first thing I noticed was that the parking area for cycles was much larger than that for cars and while there were quite a few spots left for car parking, the cycles were filling up fast and furious!

After hustling for a while, we managed to get a table to sit together and enjoy world cuisine. We started off with the famous Bitterballen, a classic Dutch snack, followed by Thai, Mediterranean snacks.

Next morning we set out for a bicycle tour of Amsterdam. 

This was the prime reason of my visit to Amsterdam, the most cycle friendly city in the world. 

We cycled through some interesting places like the Anne Frank Museum, the Skinny bridge (so called because once upon a time the poorest of the poor lived there), 

the narrowest house, the beautiful Vondel park where we saw an intriguing piece of Picasso’s art.

The tour guide explained the strange narrow fronts of the houses in Amsterdam. The houses were taxed depending on the width of the houses but now of course it isn’t so but these are prohibitively expensive due to its heritage value. You will also find houses tilting to one side as these houses were built on swamp land on wooden pillars which are now slowly sinking.

While in Amsterdam I did not want to miss the unique Street Art Museum – Straat! It was absolutely amazing!

The boat tour of Amsterdam is another way to see all the beauty of Amsterdam, which we did. Our canal boat tour guide mentioned that the canals are nine feet deep of which three feet is mud, three feet are bicycles and three feet is water!

The Grand Centraal station is an amazing, impressive structure. The parking lot for cycles is in the basement and they have an escalator to wheel your cycles up and down!

Then of course we visited Keukenhof, Zaandam and Zaanse Schans which deserve individual posts. Stay tuned!

My only regret is I could not meet up with a blogger friend due to sheer lack of time. He blogs about Amsterdam at sccollections . Spoke to him on the phone and hoped to meet up sometime! Do visit his blog for more local insights.