Amsterspam
(Amsterdam is the world weed capital. Did you guess?)
Now, I always like to post photos as promptly as possible, so I thought I would show you all my trip to Amsterdam, which took place in, er, September 2009. A mere 18 months overdue, let’s review my experience of seeing Poli-Ajax, featuring a trip to the Rijksmuseum and a lot of elephants.
So, my trip to Amsterdam. My first trip abroad since 1997, when the Twin Towers were still standing, Tony Blair hadn’t been elected and I wasn’t even vegan. That’s how long ago it was.
We actually came within about five minutes of missing the boat entirely, since ancient_bat assured me she knew Newcastle like the back of her hand and could find the docks easily. Ha. Suffice it to say that an A-Z of Newcastle is now kept in our car at all times.
Our last glimpse of Newcastle, taken from the cabin, which was quite big and nice. (We were travelling midweek, so the ship wasn’t very crowded.) After collapsing on her bed and gibbering for a while, ancient_bat asked me to give her the map so she could memorise the route for the way home. After a short nap she attempted to do so, only to complain, “This map of Newcastle’s got no roads on it.” She was trying to read a sickbag.
Our first view of the Netherlands; not inspiring. Fortunately, it wasn’t Amsterdam, but IJmuiden (Amsterdam is on the east side of a small peninsula; you dock on the west side, then a coach drives you into the city. Or it drove us, anyway.)
...Guess where the Poli fan was staying. (Poli's colours are white and violet.)
So after unpacking our little rucksacks in the hotel room, we wandered around the streets, successfully found the tram stop and boggled at the street life. 99% of Amsterdam looks like the photo above.
The bits that weren’t full of bikes were children’s playgrounds, complete with amazing graffiti;
this is more of their playground. Yeah, in the street.
And then they have amazing contraptions like the one above, designed to ferry around shopping and children. Yeah, seriously, the kid goes in the box. The cyclists aggressively mow down pedestrians who get in their way; I tried to imagine that being possible in any British city, and failed miserably. (Of couse, Amsterdam’s all on the flat, so it has a natural advantage, but still.)
Posh frontage. This was in the shopping district. There was fancy clothes shops (Chanel and stuff) that we didn’t even go inside. We did stop at a café who provided us with a vegan banana bagel with cinnamon sprinkled on it (possibly slightly too much, since I inhaled some and nearly choked to death) and freshly squeezed raspberry juice. That was the first and only time I’ve tried fresh raspberry juice. I was deeply impressed; brought tears to my eyes.
Anyway. The street in the picture above was where the tram stop was located, and that tram stop was the hub around which the next two days of my life were constructed. I had to take a tram and a train to the match with Ajax, then another tram and a train to the Holiday Inn so I could stalk the team. And, somewhat unbelievably, it all worked! My eyes have truly been opened to the poverty and utter crapness of British public transport. In Amsterdam, you buy just one ticket, get on a tram (which is on time and displays the next stop on a helpful LCD board), change to a double-decker train (which is on time, clean and ALSO displays the next stop on a helpful LCD board), and arrive at your destination with no setbacks. It’s like... not being disabled. It is heavenly.
(Amusing side note: my tram stop had “J C Decaux” written on it. I made a careful mental note to get off at the J C Decaux stop. When I noticed that every tram stop in Amsterdam had “J C Decaux” on, I realised it was the name of the people who made the stops.)
I didn’t take my camera to the match, or the attempted stalking, so have no photos of those. There wasn’t much to take photos of anyway at first, apart from an endless queue for the ticket box that didn’t seem to be getting any shorter. I’d asked Ajax to send the tickets through the post, and they hadn’t arrived by the time ancient_bat and I set off for Amsterdam, so until three minutes before kickoff I didn’t know whether I would have a ticket or not. When I reached the end of queue no. 3 and received the blessed slip of paper, my relief was extreme. And I only missed the first ten minutes! \o/
This is one of the two photos in this spam not taken by me. It's as good a representation of the arena as any; it really was that empty. I wasn’t seated with the Poli fans; I was in with a random gaggle of indifferent-looking old folks. Panti, to my delight, was extremely easy to see from a distance. <3 He is so amazing. (It finished 0-0, which for us is like a win.)
I got back to the hotel with, again, no difficulties, and compared notes with ancient_bat who had been watching the match on Dutch TV. Then I turned in early because I knew I’d have to get up at 6am the next day to do my stalking!
The other photo not taken by me: this is an official picture of Poli at their hotel (the Holiday Inn). I didn’t take any cos I didn’t bring my camera along, and I couldn’t have taken any of the players because they’d already left by the time I got there at 7am :( Sadface. Not that it mattered because I got to see large parts of Amsterdam while the sun was coming up, a beautiful experience I’d recommend to anyone. You can’t actually see it in that photo above, but under the brick bridge is a canal; the canals were everywhere and behind the Holiday Inn was a really big formal pond. And while I was sitting around on the decking watching the pond and waiting hopefully for Poli to appear, I saw a heron. A heron. It was fishing very purposefully and totally ignoring the commuters, and they were ignoring it. When I stared at it people actually gave me funny looks, like, “Strange girl. What’s so unusual about seeing a heron fishing in a capital city?”
But I must move on. At length I disappointedly gave up my quest, returned to the hotel and ancient_bat and I began our sightseeing. Since our hotel was near Museumplein, we began there. (That’s the Concertgebouw, as you can see. I’m impressed by how twinkly the gold lyre thing is.)
Here’s the Museumplein, with the Rijksmuseum at the back. It was taking pains to let people know that, despite the cranes, it was open.
Van Gogh museum: also becraned. (They look very aesthetic, though. I’m sure he’d not have minded painting them.)
The plein has an unusual number of Holocaust memorials (OK, two). This is the Ravensbruck one.
More cheerfully, it had these intensely bright red birdhouses. Wahey!
...Admittedly, they were offset a bit by the other Holocaust memorial.
This one is very minimalist and has a tape recorder that plays creepy noises at you as you walk around it.
It was really quite unsettling, and a bit surreal given its proximity to the birdhouses and the elephants.
Ah, yes, the elephants. Here they are!
...No words.
As you can see, the purpose of the project is to protect the elephant. (I think it’s now moved on to London; according to the footie sites, Graeme Le Saux contributed a design.) If only more charities raised money this way!
*Pained sigh* Ruby, this is for you.
That’s more like it! This one’s brilliant.
OH MY GOD IT’S A DALA ELEPHANT. IS THAT NOT THE MOST AMAZING THING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN?!?
Babar!
The beautiful ancient_bat with one of her favourites.
MAMMOET. GEDDIT?!
Here’s the big pond in front of the Rijksmuseum. As you can see, a woman was letting her dog play in it.
In fairness, that did give me a pretty good picture.
A grumpy pigeon.
...I think I like these people.
So. Next we went into the wing of the Rijksmuseum that was still open. I can show you no photos of it because cameras weren’t allowed, but this doesn’t really matter because few of the exhibits really made up for the excruciating pain in our feet. Yeah, I know that sounds whiny but I can’t really stand up for long periods of time because of my M.E., and can museums really not afford to scatter a few chairs around somewhere??
Here are the photos I took outside. Behold a lion,
a REALLY BIG CRANE
and a little Arc de Triomphe. (As you can see, it was a really nice day; thank god we visited during some nice weather.)
We had a ticket entitling us to a free barge trip, but decided to set out for the vegan café/restaurant I’d located on the net.
Amsterdam has nice parks,
LOTS of bikes,
And pretty canals. Did I mention that pretty much the whole city seems to be beautiful?
So, after getting slightly lost (which wasn’t too bad, since we saw some scenic streets and met some cats) we reached the eaterie. It was the Golden Temple, and the food was wonderful; I can’t remember the main course after all this time, but the dessert was a raw chocolate cheesecake. I normally steer clear of raw food, but this was amazing. They’d basically pressed a load of grains (oats, perhaps) into the base of a baking tin to make a base, then filled it with raw cocoa powder, orange juice and what I think was probably silken tofu and put orange segments on top. IT WAS GREAT.
We’d had enough walking by then, so we got the Divine Tram back to the hotel. Although we’d already packed and taken our bags down to the lobby, we were carefully allowing three-quarters of an hour to hang around waiting for the coach to take us back to IJmuiden. Accordingly, we got a nasty shock when we arrived in our street and saw the bus taking off without us. Fortunately, it did a big circle and came back for us and the driver, an amazing middle-aged bird with bleached blonde hair and leather skin, apologised profusely. She never actually explained why the bus was 45 minutes early, but we were so relieved we didn’t care.
(Oh, and on the way to IJmuiden we saw a statue of a cow in a Superman costume, but it went by so quickly I didn’t get a photo.)
The ferry journey home was uneventful and the breakfast was still good. We meant to go out on deck and take some pictures of the sea, but in fact we were both so tired we just went to sleep; all I have is pictures of grey old Newcastle.
Back home. Journey over. Wasn’t it worth it, though?