Amsterdam with Em

Em is here for ten days!

We spent three nights in Amsterdam right when she arrived, and we packed the days full of museum visits and putzing around the canals.

We had arranged (through airbnb) a somewhat swanky Scandinavian modern styled apartment for our stay, but the owner was not in town, so we were instructed to pick up the keys sometime around 14:00 at her friend’s cafe. Em’s flight arrived at 8:15, and we got to Amsterdam center around 10:30, so we had time to kill. We made a point to find this cafe when we first arrived, and we sat outside to people-watch for a bit. One thing I had realized is that the rain in Amsterdam and also in Delft comes suddenly and stops suddenly, then it comes back again. The sky will go from zero to downpour in about two seconds. During a downpour, pedestrians will take cover under the nearest awning and wait until the rain slows down or stops, which usually happens within a few minutes.

After our snacks and after the activity died down a bit, we took a short nap in the seats outside – it sounds funny – as though the cafe staff would be put off by this act, but it felt completely acceptable to do this, and no one seemed to mind since there were plenty of empty tables.

Once the rain quit, we went for a walk. I found that Amsterdam has the sense of camaraderie that comes with the scale of a place like New York City – the living spaces are so tiny that residents essentially make the city into a communal living room. However, Amsterdam doesn’t feel quite as dense as New York (further research corroborated this, with Amsterdam at a population density of 4,457 residents per km² to New York’s 10,630). People are quite relaxed and welcoming in Amsterdam as opposed to the feeling I get in New York that there are far too many people already and the locals can’t stand to have another person to squeeze by on their way to the subway. Tourism sites reference the Dutch word “gezellig” (which supposedly cannot be directly translated to English but means something similar to “cozy”) to describe the city.

We saw a team of three guys moving a couch out of an apartment by pushing it out of the second floor (which they actually call the first floor here) window onto a cushion that was rolled up on the sidewalk. I stopped to take a photo, and the guy standing on the floor gave me the thumbs-up after he successfully guided the couch onto the cushion.

Just about every residential building in the city has a pulley like this, which is used to lift furniture to the upper floors (the stairs are too steep for the practical moving of furniture).moving furniture out of an apartment.

Not sure if this is how it’s typically done, but this is one method of people moving furniture out of an apartment.

steep stairway up to our apartment

We wandered into a restaurant, and I got a Dutch savory pancake similar to the one I had in Leiden. I think Em got soup of some sort. Em noticed later that there was a dog curled up in a dog bed underneath a large group table in the center of the place. Also, a small piece of cat furniture sat next to the dog bed. Later, we saw the cats. One of them hung back while the adventurous one surveyed the place to see which visitors would offer snacks. It seemed like a good life for these pets. The adventurous cat looked quite a bit like Kepler, and the less-daring looked like her late brother, Tycho.

In full-blown tourist mode, we visited the Rijksmuseum, the Stedlijk Museum, and the Van Gogh Museum in the same day. The Museumkaart makes this not completely crazy; also, they’re all located together.

: There are a few of these signs around town (including one at the airport) – this one was among the cluster of museums we visited.

: outside the Stedlijk Museum

: The way people stared at this abstract piece reminded me of Cameron in the museum scene from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off.

: The Rijksmuseum had a fun temporary meta-exhibit involving these tongue-in-cheek annotations to the work (and to the museum itself) placed on sticky notes. There was something lovely about how approachable this made the otherwise austere museum.

Another day, we did a rondvaart (canal tour). Near the end of the tour, Em spotted a houseboat museum, and in an impressive display of her navigational skill, she was able to walk to it from the street surface!

: famous view of seven canal bridges

: If I understood correctly, these wing-type things (I forget what they’re called) on the sides of the houseboats are a sort of crude sail that can be used to nudge the boats a bit downwind.