Language: When I started asking people Spreekt u Engels they were offended, looking at me like 'why would you think I don't know English? Don't I look educated?' Don't bother. Unless you're fluent in Dutch or you're trying to be, English will work almost all the time.
Centraal Station leaves you in a section of Central Amsterdam I call 'Id Epcot,' a designation that for me continues two thirds of the way down the Medieval center. There is, for sure, much to redeem it, historically, kultcurally, and within the tourist infrastructure itself, but those redeeming characteristics can be saved for later. Bike rental can be arranged at the train station at NS and at many other locations.
If you are inclined to go to where you're staying first, do so. You want to set this up ahead of time, as not doing so provides a local history lesson in housing shortages, which can be made less frustrating by grossly overpaying. Hostels vary in quality and fill up: Flying Pig Downtown is festive if you are 35 or younger. One option if you book late or early is to call the Edam VVV at 0299-315125 and ask if they have home stays available. These can be cheap, and though you have to take a half hour bus to get there it is more relaxing to stay in Edam unless you plan to go clubbing. There's places to stay in Haarlem, which is a 15 minute train ride and a walk from the train, where there's a smaller, more personalized bar scene.
Socializing changes considerably when you get out of the Amsterdam center. This is my main reason for avoiding the Id Epcot rather than prudishness. In the city center there's an endless procession of annoying visitors indulging themselves along with the junkies and thieves, and residents are more guarded and less friendly. Not getting to know the Dutch people is missing out on the best part of the visit.
If you get on the main tram, the 4/9/14/16/24/or25, it takes you down the Damrak so that you can take in Oude Kerk, Nieuwekirk, The Royal Palace, and the National Monument all without having to move. Make sure your wallet doesn't move out of your pocket. Get off at Muntplein, where the Amstel meets Singel. At Muntplein there's a Maoz Vegetarian there for cheap, tasty falafel takout, a cafeteria in the La Marche department store, and a free panorama atop the Kavertren shopping center. The Munttoren (mint), reflected gracefully in the canal, stands where the moat divided the Medieval city and its neighbors to the south, featuring a 1490 tower and a 1620 steeple.
Northwest on Singel, the floating flower market on Singel dates to the 1860s and is an impressive, fragrant expression of the Dutch passion for flowers with its share of tourists, high prices and pickpockets. Crossing the Konigsplein at its end, there's an Albert Hejn supermarket which monopolizes the city, in which can be obtained notable sources of protein like the trusty Edam and Gouda, the ubiquitous smells of which you should accept hereafter in your day bag. A few steps down the west bank of the Singel is the neo-Gothic Krijtberg church (open til 6), built during the 19th Century when free expression became possible for many factions over what was a clandestine Jesuit chapel, with exhuberant paintings and statues inside.
Cross the next bridge back to the center to arrive at Spui Square, the traditional intellectual and activist center of town, in which you can linger after having attended to food, the missing toiletry, and mandatory tulip observation. To the right is the University Library, which dates in part from the early 17thC and has hosted citizen militia and the West India Company, where a Script Museum, if open, offers a history of writing in the literal sense. In the center is a statue of a boy donated by a tobacco company in the 60s which was declared the emblem of the emerging Zeitgeist of consumerism during the protests organized by the Provo momement.
The west of the square is where you'll find several book stores including the massive Atheneum, which has a seperate section for international newpapers, the legendary coffeeshop Tweede Kamer where you can alight their inventory in front of a portrait of Queen Beatrix, the literary Cafe De Zwart and the more food-oriented Cafe Luxembourg. On Voetboogstraat south of Spui is the student eet-cafe De Schutter.
This can all be returned to later but the American Book Store flanks the street leading north to the Bejinhof (closing at 6-630), a notable preservation of a 14thC courtyard which is a calming highlight of the Medieval center. Built for the Beguine order of nuns and seafaring widows, the women owned their houses which kept them from being ransacked by Calvinists in defiance of Spain as with Oude Kerk and elsewhere. Most buildings date from the 16th to 18thC but the wooden house with its preserved gables at 34 is the oldest in the city, dating from 1470. The Gothic church, not privately owned, was confiscated for a time but features pulpit panels desiged by Mondrian before he got his boogie on.
Exiting through the north gate takes you to the Civic Guard gallery, free to enter, which exits onto the Amsterdams Historisch Museum's courtyard, another highlight of this area. The History Museum is worthwhile, especially as a crash course upon arrival, and if this is your inclination, abbreviate or eliminate the walk as need be to see it before it closes every day at five. It has been recently updated and includes notable paintings such as Rembrandt's seminal The Anatomy Lesson, van Neulandt's detailed cityscape Procession of the Lepers on Copper Monday, a unique 17th and 18thC sequence of portraits publicizing the social welfare initiatives of the ascendent financiers, a computerized display of the growth of the city and a chance to play a carillon.
Go north of the museum up Kalverstraat to west-east St Lucienstraat/ Rosmarijinstraat/ Raamstraat until you get to Singel, which despite all the names is a few steps, cross Singel and then Herensgracht, which you cross and turn left. Here are some 17thC canal houses you want to see while you're fresh (in the canal house sense). 364 features the crooked wood the sandstone neck gables of what comprises the Bible Museum, which features worthwhile ceiling murals, and 380 is in the French style, the first building in town have electric lighting, 394 has a curved wooden gable. Follow Liedsestraat west to cross Keisersgracht, continuing north for more goodies.
This is obviously a showcase of Dutch architecture and an essential walk on any trip to town, back and forth on those two canals and Prinsengracht, continuing further west with a degree of planning anywhere from meticulous to nonexistent. The increasingly gentrified Jordaan to the west is a historical working class section which was paved first so that the queen could ride by without stones being thrown at her. In its northern stretches brown cafes retain historical interiors and traditional songs enhanced by Flemish beer. Artists, who register with the state to get perks and protections such as free admission to museums, have moved into the less picturesque area west of Jordaan and interesting galleries can be found. Speaking of museums...
RIJKSMUSEUM
It makes sense to print out internet tickets for the Rijksmuseum and enter when it opens at 9am, since visitors of all levels of appreciation are headed for the same galleries: Dutch Painting in the Golden Age, which occurred over a period of less than fifty years in the middle of the 17th Century. The Dutch masters of these decades dominated the worldwide legacy of the 17th Century: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael, Steen, Hals. None of those five were friends or students of another.
This flourishing cannot be accounted for by the patronage of the aristocracy, state commissions, or the emerging titans of overseas trade. Of that list, only Rembrandt had success in Amsterdam, trading on his undeniable mastery of conventional portraiture after his signature style had been fully developed in Leiden. Vermeer and Steen were Catholics from Leiden and Delft that had difficulty selling work, Ruisdael sold few works, Hals painted quick portraits of the Haarlem middle class which Amsterdam society wanted no part of. The relative freedom of the cities of the federation and comfort of the middle class provided the opportunity for these geniuses to emerge, and the affluence ended with the French invasion of 1672, bringing on a dark age of Dutch art after the masters painted their epilogues.
The basic accomplishments of the period were the absorption of Caravaggio’s use of light (Rembrandt, Vermeer), the loosening of the brush stroke (Hals, Rembrandt), the rethinking of subject matter (all), the development of secular narrative (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Steen) and irony (Rembrandt, Steen). The first two were most significant as they were more unique to those three artists, who were heavily influenced by Reubens’ chiaroscuro and brush.
Of Vermeer little is known of where his use of light came from and what it means. It can be documented, though, that the signature style of Rembrandt was simply a refinement of the styles used by the artists he was surrounded by in Nord Holland. Rembrandt was a toddler when Caravaggio died, and when he started out an ‘Utrecht Caravaggisti’ built on his example as did the Flemish masters. Rembrandt worked closely with a friend, Jan Lievens, who copied Caravaggio using exaggerated light effects, colors, and robotic figures typical of minor Renaissance painters. Rembrandt didn’t need to change Lievens’ style in any way so much as do everything better, and in so doing realized the potential of the Caravaggio’s vision. Titian was perhaps Rembrandt’s most enduring influence.
There are four Vermeers in this museum and many people that want to look at them. They should be your first stop. If I had anything erudite to say about Vermeer that wasn’t conjecture I would say it: he had his eyes open so that you can do the same.
The featured piece of the museum is Night Watch which is truly a masterpiece which didn’t transform the Dutch group portrait so much as its use of motion and composition was an anomaly that no one picked up on. It was a day scene that became the Night Watch due to cigar smoke so you can say it was the precursor to the cinematic day-for-night in post-production. It takes several walks through to absorb the Rembrandts here, as the minor works, including pen sketches and etchings, are often more important than the major ones due to some particular stylistic effect or moment of draftsmanship.
Rural low-lifes were a popular genre in the 17th Century painted by Rembrandt, which usually amounted to shallow contempt and stereotyping. Jan Steen, who owned a brewery-inn and saw it all, took this practice to a new level, creating narrative depth teeming with humor, pathos, moral ambiguity, and symbolism. There’s nothing like it and extended study of what’s going on is well rewarded. Not only is the Red Light district different from a Steen painting only by virtue of the invention of electricity, but you can still find bars that are essentially a Steen painting.
I suggest surveying the 17th Century first with a return to selected favorites later in your visit. Other stuff to look for.
18th C: See if the comic scenes of Cornelis Troost interest you.
Hague School (turn of the century realism) and Amsterdam Impressionism.
Medieval: A Belgian statue of the Three Kings on a mountain, some cast statues from tombs.
International masters (can’t miss ‘em)
Delftware: This I highly recommend checking out for a while. Look for a violin and a calendar.
Two dollhouses from around 1700, apothecary cabinet, tapestries of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Dresden china and Japanese porcelain.
History section documenting colonial outposts and naval battles.
VAN GOGH MUSEUM
In 2009 the Stedelijk Museum is still closed and the highlights of its collection, strong in CoBrA and Kasmir Malevich, will be shown in the Van Gogh, saving money and time for rushed visitors but disappointing others. I think it was closed when I was last there, and the Rijks was being renovated as well. Doing the Rijks and the Van Gogh on the same day seems a bit much, especially as both are crowded, making utilization of off-peak times essential.
Both Rijks and Van Gogh are open til 10 Friday night. Best to go in around dinner time and take your time.
There are 278 Van Goghs at the Kroner-Muller Museum inside the country’s largest park outside Arnhem. Take a train to Arnhem (70 minutes) and a bus will take you to the paintings. If riding around the park on a free bike doesn’t fill up the day there’s another modern art museum with a 50% women rule and the national open-air folk museum in Arnhem.
CoBrA MUSEUM
The Stedelijk renovation is all the more reason to consider visiting this gem which displays in depth the seminal postwar movement of NW Europe. The name came from combining the capital cities of Denmark, Belgium, and Holland after the Belgian Christian Dotremont had formed a splinter group of Surrealists, and was soon changed to the Internationale due to more locations becoming involved and their Marxist leanings. They were influenced by Dubuffet, Klee, and Miro, folk and primitive art, which led them to a figurative strategy utilizing subjects from the imagination with loose brush stroke and much color.
You get on the 171-172-173 bus there, near the Amsterdam Woods (Bos) which has bison and a forestry museum.
JEWISH HISTORY WALK
The old townhouses have been mostly replaced by ugly municipal buildings and a new highway but this has three sites of interest from when the town had the most influential Jewish population in Europe, beginning with repression and expulsion of Shephardic Jews from Spain in the 16th C. Catholics from Northern Flanders wanted to side with Protestants to gain autonomy from Spain (Catholics from Southern Flanders formed Belgium), so the Union of Utrecht was ratified granting religious freedom but maintaining Protestant control of the professional guilds.
By the mid-17th Century the west side of the neighborhood was the hot address for artists with commissions rolling in and wealthy sophisticates, and Rembrandt took out a mortgage to have an opulent townhouse renovated for his workshop and residence. Painting luminaries in the neighborhood included his teacher, Peter Lastman, Nicoleas Eliasz next door, who may have commanded more for a portrait than Rembrandt, Thomas de Keyser, and David Vinckboons. The Rembrandhuis possesses the complete collection of his etchings.
Don’t go to the Holland Experience. The flea market on Waterlooplein has tourists and pickpockets but can detain you. A free exhibit in the Stopera to the SW shows the county's water levels and there are free concerts midday Tuesday. Walking east over a highway you get to the Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue which was once the largest synagogue in Europe. South of there, over another highway, is the Joods Historische Museum which connects four Ashkenazic synagogues. The Ashkenazis came later and may have less impressive synagogues, but the exhibits include Charlotte Solomon pictorial narratives of life in the 30s and 40s which I saw in DC once.
HISTORICAL MUSEUMS
abound, including a substantial maritime museum, the crowded, emotionally compelling Anne Frank house, the resistence museum, and a museum of the tropics with recreations of former possessions. The Rijksmuseum has a historical section if you are rushed.
RED LIGHT DISTRICT
What makes the Oude Kerk (and the Niewe Kirk) unique is the timber vaulting since stone was unavailable. It was ransacked by militant Calvinists during the wars with Spain, but some interior features remain - 15thC paintings on the vaults and three 16th windows in the northern choir aisle. Its most famous feature is the large organ added in the early 18thC.
Though this area, which has been a center of prostitution since the 14thC, suggests a Jan Steen canvas, the juxtaposition of Oude Kerk with the high rent rows of women in windows to its south suggests Bosch. I went there once with a group of rowdy American men, and the punishment for being rowdy appears to be to have police and residents ride their bicycle into your leg, which didn't provoke indications of pain from the bearers of the legs. The police are in evidence and charged with letting people enjoy themselves: women can witness this spectacle without being mistook for a professional, men can massage their ego by having beautiful women beg for them, secure couples walk by grinning. Though this is the most hygenic of red light districts, several STDs go initially undetected by tests.
Crossing over to Zeedijk street gets you to Chinatown, which features a recently built Buddhist Temple a block north of the Waag. North of Zeedijk, you get to the point where the canals meet the river, where canals are flushed.
FOOD IN THE NETHERLANDS
Herring stands are becoming increasingly uncommon. However, they afford you the opportuity to lower raw hering into your mouth in the morning, as well as serving roasted eel, shrimp, and mackerel.
If you think every place serving french fries gives you authentic Belgian fries you'll have, as I did, your share of McDonald's and Hellmanns. If the sign says 'Vlaamese frites' then it's a good bet.
SURINAMESE is the way to go. It's cheap, informal, and an experince relatively unique to the Netherlands and Suriname. African slaves revolted so Indians were brought in to work the fields, until Gandhi did away with that and Indonesians were brought in. The cuisine combines these influences, featuring delicious rotis an rice dishes which can suit the vegetarian or those in search of large quantities of meat.
INDONESIAN food is all over the place and the feast for the Dutch invader has long been the rijsttafel. This tends towards comfort food deemed palatable to the Westerner though it is worthwhile and flavorful. It's more authentic if you order Indonesian recipes a la carte, with nasi meaning rice and bami meaning noodles. A Chinese-Indonesian place is a Chinese restaurant that makes bland rijsttafels and if you're in one, order Chinese. Also if you go to a rijsttafel with people who have been to a coffeeshop, don't go to the rest room while the food is being served because there won't be any left when you come back.
A worthy food detour get on the 16 or the 24 tram at Centraal and don't get off until Albert Cuypstraat in the De Pijp neighborhood. When you get off there's a great, cheap Surinamese place at 67 called Albert Cuyp 67 and reportedly still a herring stand in the Albert Cuypmarket, an outdoor street market.
SAUNAS
Sauna Deco on Herengracht 115 just south of Prinsenstraat/ Herenstraat has high quality facilities and an Art Nouveau interior transplanted from the Bon Marche in Paris when it was going to throw this stuff out to modernize. At 19.50 euros it's a little more expensive than most Dutch saunas but is 17 euros til 3 MWThF cash only. You need a towel to sit on, so bringing one saves you 2 euros rental. The problem is it bustles with some confused expats and people who aren't using the facilities, and, more importantly, it has no place to sit outside between sauna sessions. Worth seeing at least once for the interior. A block west on Keizersgracht 124-128 there's Sauna De Kaizer which may be worth checking out.
You shower, sit in the sauna or Turkish steam bath as long as you can, shower, jump into the cold pool (don't do so without showering first), sit out in the sun (optional), shower, and repeat the process twice or more. If you're into transcendental meditation this is something you can do when sitting out, although this can end up being very social. In the Netherlands, Germany and German Switzerland there's mixed gender nudity which the extremes of temperature don't give you time to think about. Certain saunas in Amsterdam are for gay cruising which shouldn't be hard to distinguish.
I prefer places like Sauna Center Haarlem because it's all locals who know what they're doing, it's cheaper, less crowded, and there's a place where you can sit out in the sun which is an important part of the treatment.
GETTING OUT OF AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam is a great city but getting out of it is great too, for as I said, tourists are more of a novelty elsewhere and can immediately become part of a circle of people that spend large amounts of time at a neighborhood bar. For a lively college scene there’s no place like Utrecht, and Haarlem has the Jelts Tavern on the south of town amid its wondrous town square and the Hals Museum. Zandvoort, just outside Haarlem affords a day at the beach which is large enough to accommodate the large crowds during holidays and summer weekends.
Den Hague (The Hague): Don’t let the war criminals have all the fun.. The Mauritshaus has the second most significant collection of Dutch golden age art as well as a better Flemish collection. The Gemeentemuseum is strong in Mondrian and modern art, galleries reflect a large artist community and the beach is also crowded.
Places like Delft and Edam provide the sedate image of the Netherlands, while Rotterdam is gritty fun with one of the great modern art museums in Europe. Into the SW, Maastricht is a special town, and it’s right next to Aachen, which is right next to Cologne, and Dusseldorf, and Bonn, and the Rhine, and...
