Dreaming of a White Christmas - Day 15
The city of bikes and canals
After a day wandering the streets of Amsterdam, I am left wondering what
the statistics are for death by bike. And I don’t mean the helmetless riders …
I mean the hapless pedestrians who forget themselves for a moment and step into
the path of a cyclist. The bikes here are relentless, numerous and unforgiving.
If you are lucky, they give a cursory ding on the bell, but more often than
not, they just come straight at you and rely on you to hear or see them and
make sure you are not in their way. Being a pedestrian in Amsterdam in a
dangerous occupation.
We had a day to fill in the city of bikes, so after breakfast the 7 of
us made our way to the Railway Station and purchased tickets for the Hop on Hop
off bus, usually a good way to navigate a new city and find some worthy sites
to explore. Jill and Phil decided to go their own way buying tickets for both
the bus and canal boat tours, while the remainder of us opted for the bus only,
as there was a nighttime canal boat tour being offered by arosa that we had
signed up for. The weather was cool and overcast, but not cold, not by Munich or
Prague standards that is.
The bus seemed a little light-on for commentary, but we were at least seeing
more of the city than we would have managed on foot, in one day. We decided as
a collective to get off in the Museum Square. Here we found a small Christmas
Market, but we had heard of a large permanent street market with a kilometre of
stalls – not a Christmas Market – but something that might be worth exploring anyway.
However, after wandering aimlessly and failing to find any sign of this market,
we explored some canals and shopping streets, settling on a quaint café called Café
Hans en Grietje, for lunch in a dark and tiny space, before resuming our
search and finding the flower market instead.
We then made our way back, taking our life in our hands as we stepped
out in front of bikes frequently, our programming being to watch for cars, not
bikes, at least not in the plague proportions they are found here, and again
hopped on the bus which took us back to stop number 1 close at the Centraal Station.
Here I indulged Wallsy’s love of all things railway, and we wandered around
the very attractive front of the station taking photos, before walking in the
direction of our ship. We were only waylaid one more time when Wallsy realised
the ferry plying its way back and forth across the river to North Amsterdam,
was free. Suddenly we had walked onto the ferry and found ourselves crossing
the river Amstel with the locals who obviously did this on a daily basis, some,
although very few, on foot, others on mopeds, mobility scooters and of course, many
on bicycles.
Back on board we had a well-earned pre-dinner drink and caught up with
Jill and Phil’s adventures for the day. Dinner was tasty tonight and there were
more dishes than usual available to me, which was lovely. At 8pm, all rugged up
for the night air, a large group of us set off with a guide, to the canal boat tour. We were excited
for the canals of Amsterdam at night. As the tour started the guide provided fluent
German commentary, and was apologetic when ten minutes into the tour, our tour
director from arosa, went up and informed her that there were English speakers
on board. She apologised and promised to translate.
Her intentions might have been good, but whilst the German commentary
would go on for five or more minutes at a time, the English would be one or two
sentences at the most, and usually well past the actual attraction or area that
was being detailed. Anne Frank’s House for example, was ‘back there’, as was
Rembrandt’s home, by the time she remembered the English tourists. Not to harp
on the negative, but it is also disappointing when it gets to the little bit of
English information and the rest of the boat talk loudly over it, again making
us acutely aware of being in the minority. The canals were beautiful at night, as
were the buildings we passed, but we did find it disappointing for the
additional money we had paid for the privilege.
Back on board, we have now pulled away from our dock and are moving on,
travelling overnight to the small town of Nijmegen where we will spend the day
tomorrow. It is disconcerting to find that the map of the area provided in German,
is in colour and contains 12 numbered points of interest, with details. The English
equivalent is a black and white double-sided page, with a map containing nowhere
near the amount of detail and information on only 4 possible places to visit.
It doesn’t bode well for the day ahead, and it doesn’t sit well either.
Luckily it doesn’t detract from the beauty of these unique towns, which
we probably would not have otherwise had the opportunity to visit.
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