Instead of staying in Amsterdam proper, we rented a house in Haarlem on VRBO. Unlike our usual vacation rentals, this one is a primary home for a family that’s on vacation this week. They said it was a ten minute walk from the train station, but that’s super optimistic. At least it was lovely, through a park and by pretty houses.
The house itself was gorgeous. One of those tall skinny row houses. It’s three stories, and the stairs are crazy steep and narrow. Everything inside is sleek and modern and minimalist. We had a hard time finding the fridge, freezer and dishwasher hidden in the kitchen. I kind of suspect that when we rolled in with our suitcases and backpacks, we had more stuff in the house than the owners.
River and I got up first, so we walked to the nearby market for breakfast food. Then, once Liam was up, we walked to the larger supermarket so he could check it out. Some of the things were obvious, but we also needed to use google translate a lot. There were so many kinds of cheese! The lettuce was hydroponic and included the roots, so it will stay fresh longer.
Even without suitcases, it was a 16 minute walk to the train station, but it was even prettier during the day.
The Amsterdam Centraal station was gorgeous!
We met our guide for a walking tour. The whole town was sooooo beautiful.
We learned a lot of interesting things about the city. The reason the houses are all so tall and skinny is that property taxes used to be based on the width of the front wall of the house. Because Amsterdam (and actually all of the Netherlands) is built on a swamp, the houses were built with long wooden beams underneath going deep into the sand to give support. Water levels going up and down caused the wood to rot, so some of the houses are crooked. The wooden beams have been replaced with metal, and the floors leveled inside the houses, but they still look funny from the front.
This building is an insurance company, and their motto is something about being watched over in blue.
The canals were so pretty. Like Venice, the canals used to be the primary means of transport through the city. Amsterdam intentionally modernized and filled in the canals after cars became prevalent, so it has continued to thrive, while Venice relies on tourism for its economy.
We found a little playground!
We want to a little cafe for cold drinks, and the inside was decorated like someone’s living room would have been in the past. It was right next door to an old church.
There are lots of churches in the Netherlands, because it used to be Catholic but then became Protestant. There was a period of time when the Catholics had to sneak around, but now they’re out in the open. They often built one church for the wealthy and a separate one for the poor.
We found fantastic snacks in Amsterdam. We fell in love with Pofferjes, these tiny puffy pancakes served with butter and powdered sugar. And we went to an epic French fry place that made them to order.
We went to the Amsterdam cheese museum. It had all kind of things downstairs, from old tools that have been used to make cheese for centuries, to a dress up area that the kids had fun with. Upstairs was a shop, and we sampled everything.
For dinner, we went to Food Hallen. We love places with tons of options, because everyone gets to eat what they want.
It seems like all the towns we have been in on this trip have beautiful old train stations. It was a surprise to stop at Sloterdijk and find that it looked like something from the Jetsons.
People bike everywhere here. Our tour guide told us that, at one point, they drained the canal in front of the train station so they could build an underground bike storage facility, then they let the canal refill.
On our walk home from the train station, we met some neighborhood cats.
