I AMsterdam (are you?)

Sorry for the corny title, I couldn't resist. The city of Amsterdam has a tourism campaign called  "I AMSTERDAM", and there are big red and white signs all over. I kind of think it's a clever pun...

Tonight was our third night of four in Amsterdam. I'd heard reports from friends before I came of how charming and cool this city is, and they're all true - I could definitely live here, provided I had my own bike to ride around on the cobblestone  and brick streets.

Our trip started off a little slowly. Were you in New York last Thurday night? Do you remember the thunderstorms? I do. Our flight was delayed for four hours in JFK, so instead of leaving NY at 9:30pm, we took off at 1:30am. The great part about that, however, is that I slept for almost the entire flight, which never happens. (If you've ever flown economy to Europe before, I'm sure you can commiserate.) So the next day in Amsterdam, which was really only evening and night because we missed our connecting flight from Frankfurt, I had almost no jet lag. Another first. Woohoo!

On Saturday we got the big things out of the way: the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. Both had beautiful exhibits (and the Rijksmuseum, is currently being renovated and only has their Dutch Golden Age paintings on display) and many works of art that I'd studied in art history class. It's such a cool feeling to walk past a painting and have studied it before, especially by artists (I'm ashamed to say) I knew nothing about a year ago. In the evening, we had a delicious impromtu dinner at Pamela's friend Peti's apartment. Peti knows an Iranian family, mother, father, and son, who own a teahouse, and on Saturday nights have music jams. She took us there, and it was great. It was like being in someone's home, just a teeny little place with musicians (and some instruments I'd never seen before) playing all kinds of music. They even somehow got me to sing for one song. It was such an obscure little place that one woman asked us where we were from, and when we told her New York, she said, but how did you find this place?

Today we rented bikes in the morning. Actually, it was 11:30am by the time we got to the rental place, and they had already sold out of small adult bikes, and neither I nor my mom could fit on the medium adult bikes. They had one large child-sized bike left, so my mom rode that one, and Linda, her high school friend who lives in Amsterdam, rode the rental bike, and I rode Linda's bike. It's one of those old bikes with the beautiful curved handlebars - I felt like I was in an old Italian movie, or in "Life is Beautiful" when Roberto Benini calls out to his future wife, Buongiorno, Principessa! and she thinks he's crazy. But anyway, biking through Amsterdam was quite an experience. The bikers are particularly relentless, you really have to go fast or stay to the right and let them pass. Also, it's a bit like jay-walking in Manhattan; you have to make quick decisions or stay on the sidewalk. No dawdling across the street, even on a bike, or you'll get run over.

Our first stop was De taart van m'n tante, the cake of my aunt, a cake shop that my friend Chelsea absolutely insisted we go to in Amsterdam. We had intended to go yesterday after the Van Gogh museum, but it had already closed. It was very over-the-top girly and pink and kitschy inside...right up my alley. It reminded me of Alice's Teacup, or a restaurant I went to in Madrid called Jardin de las Mariposas (Garden of the Butterflies). It wasn't crowded at all on a Sunday at noon, which I think is unusual, and I had a delicious cake and cappucino. I ordered a pink strawberry lemonade cake called the Annemarie. I think that's actually the one Chelsea told me about. It was delicious!

Then we continued on our bike tour led by Linda, and ended up in the center of town, in old Amsterdam, where we visited Rembrandt's house. None of his paintings are there, but there are lots of his sketches and etching / engraving prints. The house is furnished exactly as it was when he lived there. The box beds were so tiny...they slept propped almost upright. We also got to see an etching demonstration which was fascinating. 

After that, we biked around some more, around the canals, and passed through a few markets, one of them being the famous flower market. Everything is so colorful here, the houses, the boats, even the bikes! We ended tonight with dinner at a Tibetan / Nepalese restaurant, which we decided to try because none of us had ever eaten that kind of food before. It was a lot like Indian food, but a little more Chinese-influenced, at least that was my impression. Tomorrow we're going to see the Anne Frank House (we tried to buy our tickets online tonight but they were all sold out...so we're getting up at an ungodly hour to see it before we have to return our bikes, which were 24-hr rentals), and then see the Monday Morning Market (flea) and maybe take a canal boat tour. We're having dinner on Linda's houseboat tomorrow night. I can't wait to see the inside of one, they're so interesting from the outside. Today I passed a houseboat with a garden patio on top, and another rowboat that was shaped like a gigantic wooden shoe!