Where do bicycles have their own highways and traffic lights?

After all-day travel via Madrid, we arrived in Amsterdam for the last few days of vacation. Our hostel, Hortus Pension, was modest but clean and the staff were most helpful. As taxes are paid on the ground floor street frontage, it explains the narrow, multi-floored buildings everywhere. Including our hostel! And we’re on the top floor – up 3 very steep, narrow flights of stairs. The first trip up with suitcases was a chore we were glad we didn’t have to repeat – for sure! We were located in the Plantage area of the city and we even had our own canal and bridge around the corner!

While the city has numerous museums (about almost any topic you can think of), we spent our time walking and exploring the sights in the downtown core of Amsterdam (the centrum). The Bloemenmarkt (flower market), Rembrandt Square, the Waterlooplein book fair, and Dam Square were features amidst the many canals and bridges, clock towers and old buildings.

The Beginjdem (a cloistered community hidden away off the busiest shopping street) featured the oldest house in Amsterdam – a dark wooden structure (picture to the right).
This grouping of houses, together with two churches, offers housing to older, single women with low income.

What was surprising (and disappointing) was that many of the old historic buildings are no longer kept as historic sites but instead house restaurants or shops – and no mention is made of the historic significance.

Karen had warned about the bicycles in the city – but there is no way to prepare by a mere description. 800,000 inhabitants in the city, and 800,000 bicycles – with their own pathways, traffic lights and rhythm.

Not only do you have to watch out for cars, but more importantly, you have to watch out for the bicycles zipping along between the car roads and the pedestrian sidewalks! And it wasn’t obvious that they cared whether you were in the way or not! Clearly, in a city with many narrow, one-way streets, this is a fast means of travel – but to pedestrians, a dangerous adventure.





On our last day, we took a tour which featured several beautiful villages in both north and south Holland (Volendam, Marken). Enroute we visited: a cheese factory and saw the cheese making process, working windmills, a clog maker (a traditional trade passing from fathers to sons, but now slowly disappearing), one of the two remaining Delft pottery factories, The Hague with the International Court of Justice, the Queen’s working palace and the Houses of Parliament for Holland.

We also visited “Madurodam” in The Hague – miniature (to scale) depictions of famous buildings across Holland as well as industrial activities. This was developed as a war memorial and is extremely well done. While clearly tourism sights, these were a nice counterpoint to Amsterdam.

Despite forecasted rain during the time we were here, the weather was quite pleasant - when Amsterdam indicates rain on 250 days each year, we felt blessed that our time there was "dry".