Amsterdam: First Impressions

Toto, we’re not in Rotterdam anymore! 

Amazing, the change from one city to another. Amsterdam is a bustling, sprawling beautiful European metropolis. Separate mazes of canals and narrow streets criss-crossing one another. So many people on the weekend. We have enjoyed the crowds surging up and down busy shopping and walking streets.

But ever more so than in Rotterdam, beware the bicycles! They seem to go faster here, and there are so many of them! The trams ply the narrow streets at moderate speed, with a single bell to chime their presence and scare tourists off of the tracks. There are also buses, and a few cars. I filmed a UPS truck parked at the top of one of the little bridges over the canal. Would’ve made a good advertisement.

What a wonderful city. It’s as if it were built all those centuries ago just to be beautiful. Everywhere you look, something interesting: a canal, a bridge, a boat, a building facade that looks like it’s falling forward, a tweedehande (second hand) shop in a basement. There is a street of antiques, another of boutiques. There are lawyer’s offices with polished, engraved brass plaques on the doors, just yards from graffiti-splashed delivery doors. The distinctly non-coffee shop aroma of the coffee shops spills into the streets.

Most of the avenues leading out away from the Centraal Station like spokes are heavily touristy. But it’s easy to cut back and forth along the smaller perpendicular streets to find a calmer taste of the city. There is little pollution; any city with so many bicycles should be this way.  Besides, the trams are electric.

A visit to Amsterdam can be a sort of pilgrimage. For art lovers, there is Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the Dutch Masters School. For boaters, there are all manner of floating vehicles, from dinghies to yachts, moored along the canals.  For those seeking an embarrassing wealth of personal freedom, there’s always the Red Light District (more on my unique experience with the Red Light District in another note). And I’ve already talked plenty about all the music there in the city.

But the thing that really touched me the most, the thing that draws me the strongest to this city, is it is a complete pleasure to walk it. It is in turns crowded and quiet, winding and direct, boisterous and bucolic. I loved scooting along one of the tourist-oriented shopping streets, such as the Liedestraat, swarming with the shopping bag-toting women, dodging the trams, peering into the windows of the endless line of designer boutiques. But then,  take a quick left or right onto a street that follows a canal, and you’re in a whole different world. You find yourself walking in the shadows of the 18^th century mansions, along tree lined streets, hearing the water lapping against the boats tied alongside, and the occasional swish and rattle of a proper Dutch bicycle passing by.

On these streets I found the second hand record store with the shopkeeper who knew – actually knew – something about French film composer Michel Colombier. I discovered  boutique of designer clothes by a woman from the Czech Republic, with that country’s peasant tradition romanticized beautified into gossamer creations, worn, by the way, by the shop girl, a personal friend of the designer, and a most beautiful example of why peasant chic is absolutely adorable. There were kids lunching at a platform over the water, tossing bread crumbs to ducks.

Then, when you’re ready, back to the streams of people. I loved it all.