Dam Good Time (Part 1)

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.  

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. 

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.

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. 

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!