#10 – A weekend in Amsterdam

Amsterdam held many draws for me which made me want to visit.  I had long wanted to visit the Corrie Ten Boom house and the Anne Frank house.  I had visited the Netherlands once before 5 years ago for a friend’s wedding but didn’t really get to see anything of Amsterdam beyond the airport.  Then Els moved there.  During one of her visits to England she spoke so much about her work there and the city itself that I knew that I just had to visit her there.  Then in December last year Els suggested that since both Elisabeth and I were talking about visiting her why didn’t we try and coincide our visits.  And that was just too good an idea to ignore!  Amazingly we actually managed it …and so a long weekend in Amsterdam was booked!

Despite taking the Friday off work I ended up having to chase up on a few things in the morning so it was really only once I got to the airport that I began to get really ridiculously excited about my holiday.   When I met up with Els and Elisabeth at Amsterdam airport it was as if no time had passed at all and we just got straight on with enjoying each other.  As we reached Amsterdam Central the snow began to fall and so my first glimpse of Amsterdam was of a white covered city.  We crossed roads, tram lines, avoided cyclists and headed down some beautifully cobbled little roads before reaching the warmth of Els’ flat and set about planning a fairly full on three days of activities. 

The first night there was certainly not without it’s excitements! ... At some point in the early hours I woke both Els and Elisabeth with my sudden scream as someone trampled across my mattress!!!  Elisabeth only woke from her sleepwalk at my scream!  I guess I should count myself lucky though as the last time we shared a room and she sleep walked she ended up hitting me round the face.  This time I escaped without injury! But clearly a full nights sleep with Elisabeth around is not to be had.

Despite our disturbed night we woke up on Saturday ready for a trip to Haarlem.  Not only to see the Corrie Ten Boom house, which I have wanted to see for many years now, but to catch up with mutual friend Joke that we also knew from our time in Brasil.  The train journey took us through some beautiful snowy scenes and once in Harlaam we headed straight to the Corrie Ten Boom house.  Not long after we finished there we met up with Joke while wandering Haarlem shoe shops.  Our wanderings took us on to a café where I had my first experience of Dutch apple pie… I was hooked and repeated the experience any chance I got over the weekend on our many coffee stops along the way.

From there it was time to get ourselves a museum card at the Franz Hals museum so that we could achieve the weekend we had planned.  In total we managed to get round 8 museums in the 3 days we had:  covering history, art, religion and culture, international and much more, and plus a whole lot of walking and talking between them all.  In brief… 

Corrie Ten Boom House       
 – The highlight of all the museums for me and totally inspiration.  See entry #8 for more details. 

Frans Hals museum              

– Bizarrely there didn’t seem to actually be a whole lot of Frans Hals pieces here– in fact I think we saw more of his work in the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam than here.  But the highlights instead here were the falling snow outside and the beautiful views through the window, and then the amazing dolls house – so amazingly detailed and beautiful.  

Tropenmuseum
– Pretty much a quick walk around the world.  We had expected a look just at the countries which had been Dutch colonies but actually they ventured to gather bits and pieces from as many countries as possible.  At times the generalisation across regions were a little too general but there were some interesting gems in there.  
Also gave me an entertaining opportunity to give myself a few African hair do's ...I don't think I'll be rushing to the hairdresser any time soon on my next trips! 

Jewish Cultural museum       
– A fascinating balance between ‘what is Judaism’ and the history 
and culture of the Jewish community in Amsterdam and the Netherlands.  So interesting and yet quite sobering too. 

Anne Frank house                  
– Another one I had wanted to see for years and so it gets an entry all of its own.  Coming soon. 

Amsterdam Historical Museum 
– A fun walk throught he history of Amsterdam (not surprisingly given its name!) 

Van Gogh gallery                    
– This is temporarily housed at the Hermitage Amsterdam while the Van Gogh museum is renovated. I've long been a fan of Van Gogh so I loved seeing his paintings up close. Having taught myself to draw and then worked as an art teacher for a few years I really loved his emphasis on learning art techniques 
and that art skill is not just something you are born with. 

Rijks Museum
– Final stop on the museum tour and we were disappointed to discover that the dolls house gallery was temporarily closed.  But there was an interesting presentation on the Queen ahead of her upcoming abdication to her son.  My favourite display was the clock that looked like there was a little man inside rewriting the time every minute.  

The three days went all too fast and we did eventually have to face the reality of the ticking clock and the passing days so that we didn’t get to all the museums we had hoped for – including the interesting concept of a handbag museum.  But what we did do was spend our days having lots of fun together, catching up, chatting and laughing a lot.  It was a great tonic and at the end I felt like the holiday was far longer than the three days it was even if it had gone so fast.