They say that the road to hell is paved with
good intentions. Seems a bit harsh…I
think it’s more likely that the road to hell A) isn’t paved at all or B) is
paved with bad intentions. But what do I
know...I’m not a platitudes writer.
Regardless of the paving situation, good intentions usually don’t end up
with a lot of follow through…especially from me! So the intentions I had for my month long
Easter break were pretty much doomed from the start.
It usually started off with, ‘ooh, I could go
down to Kent…but I’d either have a really long train trip or have to fly and
hire a car and that is WAY too much effort.’
There was no sense in going north cause winter was still kicking around
up there. I even attempted to go more
reasonable and think ‘I’ll just take some day trips’. But again that requires planning and I was
decidedly not in the mood for planning.
Thankfully, though I live the majority of my life as a hermit, I have
been able to make some friends while in Newcastle and they wanted to get away
with minimal effort and expense just like me.
So with a few clicks of the mouse, we were headed off to Amsterdam for a
few days.
One of the nice things about Newcastle is that
it has a good variety of flights out of it.
That’s not to say that’s the ONLY thing Newcastle has going for it but everyone can use a
change of view every now and then. And there’s nothing like going to a foreign country with new friends to find
out if they’ll be friends for life or not.
Thankfully, my track record is pretty solid and I've only ever had one casualty. A literal casualty you may ask? I'll never tell! It also always helps to be on the same page with what everyone wants to see and since we all were in the
same masters programme, it was agreed that the short trip would be heavy on
museums…and you know how crazy a weekend museum bender can be!
Amsterdam wasn’t necessarily on my ‘oh my gosh
I HAVE to be there NOW’ list but given that I had only been there once and that
was as a small child it hardly counted (though technically when tallying up
nations it TOTALLY counted!). But it would
be nice to see Amsterdam as an adult, even if we planned on only seeing the tip
of the Amsterdam iceberg. We arrived at
the Newcastle Airport, I’m surprised it doesn’t have a more jazzy name…Sting
International Airport, Ant & Dec International Airport, they are really
missing a trick there. The nice thing
about European airports is that there are a variety of economy carriers so you can
get to foreign lands for domestic prices (at least from the American mind
set). The down side with these
connections to foreign lands is that certain said foreign lands like to go on
strike a lot and that can play havoc with your flight. I’m not naming names but it does rhyme with
‘prance’…could be anywhere! So once we
got through security, we found we had a delay. We killed that hour with cocktails…might as
well start the trip off right.
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| Flying over Cullercoats and Tynemouth |
Soon
we were on our way across the North Sea.
I got the coveted window seat (sa-weet!) and had a lovely view of the
coastal towns as we headed east. The
flight was about an hour and uneventful.
As we came over land again the Dutch sky was a bit murkier than the
Northumbrian sky we had left, which is a decidedly rare feat. As I
looked out the window, we flew over field after field of tightly lined crops. It would have been amazing if
they had been tulips in full bloom but I guess you can’t have everything. Amongst the fields were massive warehouses and sure they may have housed a variety of things, my first thought was perhaps they had to do with the other ‘crop’ that
Amsterdam is famous for.
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| Hazy Dutch sky |
We arrived at Schiphol Airport, which given
that I have no clue how to pronounce Dutch words became Schnipple Airport (a
bawdy sense of humour is essential when travelling to Amsterdam), and headed
for a taxi to take us to our flat. A while
ago, a friend had suggested I check out Airbnb (thanks, Frannie!) and when I
first moved to Newcastle I spent a couple days in an Airbnb house before I
moved into my place. Overall I think
it’s a wonderful site. Obviously, like
anything you will have the occasional crap places but having used it multiple
times and having had a majority of success stories, I am happy to recommend it
to everyone. If you’re the kind of
person that MUST be in the centre of the tourist area then it won’t be for you
but what you do get is a more authentic experience of the city you’re in and
sometimes you get an amazing place to stay…more on that later.
Having gotten into what the Europeans would
call a ‘people carrier’ (passenger van) we headed off. While I’m a fan of public transportation,
it’s always interesting to see how different nations drive. The drive along the motorway was like any
other but once we got into the outskirts of the city, it became a different
beast. The taxi made no distinction
between driving on the road and driving on the tram rail lines. While I would have thought a tram had the
right of way, the taxi weaved in and out of the rail lines with barely a
glancing look. As holder of the address,
I was in the front of the taxi and while I hung on to the door handle, I tried
not to gasp with fear. No, instead the
gasp came from the back seat and practically gave our taxi driver a heart
attack…that’s all we need! As the poor
guy recovered, it turned out that the gasp was not due to the reckless abandon
of our driver but the breaking news that the Director of the British Museum was
stepping down. Oh, could this group be
MORE museum studies! I think our taxi
driver was more than happy to be rid of us and we were dropped off in the
neighbourhood of Helmersbuurt.
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| Neverending Stairway |
The neighbourhood sat to the southwest of the
city centre and was a rather typical city neighbourhood, not that I’m an expert
on Amsterdam neighbourhoods. Cafes and
shops lined the lower floors of massive and ornate buildings. That’s the beauty of booking a place through
Airbnb; you get to see a more authentic side of a city. There were no cheesy tourist shops or
international chain restaurants, it was a neighbourhood of local places for
local people and for the next couple of days, we would be locals too. We met our host and started the long climb to
our top floor flat. I think it’s safe to
say that there can’t be too many out of shape
Amsterdamians…Amsterdamers…Amsterdamnations?
(Turns out the correct term is Amsterdammers, learn something new every
day.) Not only was it four flights up
but those were the steepest and narrowest steps I have ever experienced! After catching our collective breaths, which
is always a fun first impression to make, we soon lost our breath again when we
took in the flat. It was open plan with
massive windows that looked down onto the street below and gave us a hint of
the skyline above. But the real
breath-stealing moment came when we once again took to the stairs (dear god,
no) and found ourselves on our very own roof terrace. This had been the selling point for us when
we booked the place but no matter how many times you look at a picture, it’s
not the same as the real thing. This was
worth every bloody step we had to climb!
Even better was that we had brought a mini-heat wave with us so we
couldn’t have better weather for some roof chilling.
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| Dam nice view! |
After settling in, we decided to head out for
dinner. Back down to the street, we came
face to face with the horror that is Amsterdam bike culture. That might sound a bit harsh and I guess if I
was a bike person I’d love the bike culture but as a pedestrian it was
harrowing to say the least. You know how
you see those scenes in movies or travel shows of a far flung city where there
seems to be no rhyme or reason to the flow of traffic or the traffic etiquette
is simply ‘kill or be killed’? Well that’s what
it felt like as we tried to avoid being bike bait. Trying to survive the walk from our flat to
the restaurant made the taxi ride seem like a dream. I’m sure we were quite the sight for the
locals as we practically clung to each other as we dashed across the bike lanes
hoping we survived. But survive we
did…at least for now!
