Hotel Stairs - With Stairs Like This Amsterdam Doesn't Need Violent Crime
After finishing our visit in Brugge, we traveled by train back to Amsterdam. We only had one catch, our route included changing trains in Antwerp, but Antwerp has 3 stations. In our trip from Amsterdam to Brugge, we made our connection at Amsterdam Central because it was a Sunday. Unfortunately, on the weekdays, the connection to Amsterdam was through Antwerp Bergum station, a detail we missed on the web site. This wasn't a big deal, but it did lengthen our trip by about 2 hours as we discovered our mistake and make our way to the right Antwerp station.
That evening we had a quick quiet dinner and settled into the hotel early.
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Hotel Stairs - With Stairs Like This Amsterdam Doesn't Need Violent Crime |
Today we spent the day just getting to know the city a bit. We started out with a canal tour of the city, where we learned a lot about this history and makeup of the city. Then we headed back to the central station to buy transportation passes, exchange all the Belgium money we had left over. We also visited the beautiful St. Nicholas Church, which is nearly surrounded by today's red-light district.
Dorothy On Hotel Balcony |
In the afternoon we visited the BEA Office to pick-up the BOB trailer and our gear bag for packing. We ended up crashing the going away party for Herman the BEA VP who spearheaded the BEA operations in Amsterdam, which gave us a chance to meet many more folks from the office. Of course like any meeting of BEA old timers, the conversation tuned to finances and the stock. This was my first discussion of finances and BEA's stock plans in 3 month. Although this topic is near and dear to many of us at BEA, and it leads to some interesting discussions, I'm really glad I have been able to get away and put out of my mind for 3 months.
Today we moved at a much slower pace then the rest of our trip. We slept in late, had a very leisurely breakfast, and then had a relaxing day of wandering the city visiting a few of the sites. Our first stop of the day was going to be the Anne Frank house, but we encountered a huge line and gave up.
Our next stop was the Royal Palace, which is about 3 blocks from our hotel. This large palace sits in a big square in the center of town, and today serves as a big museum. However some of the artwork and decorations in the interior are very spectacular. Inside the Palace a special exhibit showing the Dutch connection to Japan was extremely interesting. In the mid 1600's the Japanese went into a 200-year isolationist period, and the only foreigners allowed in were the Dutch traders. This 200 year exclusive cultural exchange was very important both for the Dutch, and the Japanese. I found it interesting that the Japanese rulers maintained their relationship with the Dutch because of their purely economic interest in Japan. The Dutch weren't like the Spanish nor the English, who wanted to convert the Japanese to Christianity - they Dutch were just there for economic reasons.
Great Room Of Royal Palace |
After visiting the Place we walked along one of the busy pedestrian streets, stopping for some Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, and strolled along the flower market.
Later in the afternoon we made out way to the Van Gogh museum (http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl) to enjoy it's large collection of paintings. This museum includes many works by Van Gogh's contemporaries including Toulouse-Lautrek, Gauguin, and Monete. It was surprising to see how prolific Van Gogh was in his short lifetime. In a period of about 10 years, he created more than 800 paintings, 1000 drawings.
Today was one of the first sunny days Amsterdam has seen all summer long.
We decided to visit the Rijksmusum first thing in the morning. They had a special exhibit "The Glory Of The Golden Age, Dutch Art Of The 17th Century" which included quite an impressive collection of Rimbrant's Paintings. All in all I was most impressed with some of the paintings of different Guilds of the time. My favorite was the "Celebration of the Treaty of Muster" by Bartholomeus Van Der Helst. This giant work portrays a group of 25 people with striking detail without loosing the concept of the group's unity. The Rijksmusum has a great web site at http://www.Rijksmuseum.nl where you can see many of these wonderful works.
Stainless Steel Half Pipe Near Museum |
Dorothy At Rijksmuseum |
Celebration of the Treaty of Muster by Bartholomeus Van Der Helst |
After visiting the Museum, we had a nice relaxing lunch overlooking one of the canals in the trendy Leidseplein area of the city.
John By Iquana Statues at Leidseplein |
After lunch we met one of my colleges, Tim Uttormark , for an afternoon of talking and enjoying the nice weather. We started by rollerblading in Vondel Park - Amsterdam's equivalent to Denver's Washington Park. Then we had a nice dinner at a Greek restaurant, and we capped of the evening with a visit to Amsterdam's red-light district.
Vondel Park |
Dorothy And Tim By A Six Person Bike |
Tim Uttormark's House - It's The Red One |
The red-light district is pretty strange. It is full of coffee bars that specialize in all the drugs that are legal in Amsterdam, places with live sex shows, sex toy stores, and prostitutes selling their stuff in little street side booths with floor to ceiling windows. Since this was Saturday night, all the streets were packed with a strange mix of tourists and loud partying groups of young men having a good time.
The place that I thought had the right concept, but didn't seem too popular was an internet-cafe version of a coffee house. Here you could rent a computer to surf the net while enjoying your bag of marijuana or "magic mushrooms". I guess this concept was a bit too tame for the red-light district it might be more successful in other parts of town.
Today is Sunday, and although Amsterdam is a big city, many things shut down. This gave us a perfect excuse to take it easy and spend the morning just hanging around the hotel reading about the city, and catching up on email and our writing.
In the afternoon we decided to visit the Jewish Historical Museum because the Amsterdam Jewish community was one of the hardest hit by World War II. This interesting museum is on the site of one of the oldest synagogues in Amsterdam. It had many old Jewish religious relics, and many displays about aspects of Jewish life. It also had an interesting history of the Jewish communities economic involvement in the development of the city of Amsterdam. However I was surprised it didn't have a stronger story about what happened to the Jewish community during the war years. This museum did tell the story of what happened to the Jewish community during WWII, but it's main focus how on what it means to be Jewish, and what the Jewish community has contributed to Amsterdam.
A Night On The Town With Peter And Betty Lo |
In the evening we met with my long time college Peter Lo and his wife Betty for a splendid Indonesian "rice-table" dinner. I was surprised to hear that Betty had grown up in the Englewood area. Her parents owned a restaurant in Cinderella City, and she graduated from Cinderella City just a few years before me. I was really shocked when I asked about her wedding rings. She said "It was an anniversary ring that Peter had given her that was custom made by a small jeweler…" - I finished her sentence by "named Tan in the brook ridge shopping center on Federal!" This is the same little shop that made Dorothy's 10th Anniversary ring, that we recommend to all our friends. I've known Peter for 5 years, but it took this visit half way around the world to discover that Betty and I share a lot in common. Somehow I've got to find a way to spend more time getting to know the families of people I work with.
This morning we endured the lines to visit the Anne Frank House http://www.annefrank.nl. Although almost every American junior high school girl has read The Diary of Anne Frank, I was only passingly familiar with the story of the little Jewish girl who's family hid from the Nazi's in a secret part of the families place of business, until their eventual capture. Everyone in hiding suffered terrible fates after being deported to German concentration camps. The only survivor of the ordeal was Mr. Frank, who was later able to have his daughters diaries published to help show the world can come from zealous nationalism, and war. After learning about the story, I know why so many parents encourage their young girls to read the book. It teaches a very powerful, which may one day help keep these kinds of atrocities from happening again.
Statue Of Anne Frank |
Since the day was sunny and warm, we headed across town to visit the maritime museum. Here we learned more about the important interactions between the Dutch and the Japanese during Japans self imposed isolation of the 17th and 18th century. We also learned much more about the sophisticated Dutch maritime exploits, and their extensive knowledge of geography and cartography. Before leaving we boarded the Stad Amsterdam, which is a reproduction of one of a 1700's sailing ships that made the 9 month long voyage from the port at Amsterdam to Nagasaki in the 1700's.
The Ship Stad Amsterdam |
We ended the day talking away over dinner with John and Tina Graves and Carolyn Sampson.
Carolyn Sampson On Her Bike |
Windmills At Zaanse Schans |
This morning the weather was outstanding for Amsterdam, sunny and warm (~80 degrees). So we put on shorts and make headed out of the big city with Tina Graves. She took us to a place called Zaanse Schans, which is a nice little reproduction of an old time Dutch village, complete with working windmills, artisans, an old style cheese factory, and a factory that makes wooden shoes. We spent all day just wandering around talking, and taking pictures, before we decided we just had to bring home some authentic wooden shoes from Holland for Lewis and Eva's little girls who love to play dress up.
Dorothy And Tina Graves By Windmill |
John And Dorothy In Wooden Shoes |
This evening we visited Mark and Caitlin Campbell's house for our first home cooked meal in 3 months. We enjoyed sitting on their nice patio talking about our little trip, and their big adventures opening a new office in foreign country. Although you can tell they enjoy the challenge, you can tell that it hasn't been easy to pick up a family of four with a rambunctious little boy and move to a foreign country. It took a lot of guts to step up to this challenge, and it has taken even more guts and hard work to make it successful. I think all the BEA expatriates over here deserve a lot of respect. Not only have they been successful at getting building a profitable European office just two quarters, they've done it through a lot of cultural and corporate adversity that didn't have to face when we grew the Leader Group.