Amsterdam

Amsterdam has been a thoroughly new experience for me, the first country I've visited where a different language is spoken, cars drive on the wrong side of the road, and perhaps worst, I haven't had internet access on my phone, so have been relegated to old fashioned methods of getting around like paper maps and asking people!

What has been a real brain twister is the cars driving on the right side of the road. It is so ingrained that you look to the right before stepping out onto a road, that even when you're consciously aware of the side of the road the cars are driving on, it is impossible to break the habit.

Adding to one's chances for being cleaned up by traffic in Amsterdam are the cycle ways on each side of the road. These are mini-roads for bicycles, and also scooters, whose riders zoom along at decent speeds, without helmets! So when crossing a typical road, one actually has five hazards to look out for (preferably in the right direction), bike lane, car lane, tram tracks, car lane, bike lane. There are even some teensy two seater cars, that sound like their powered by motorcycle engines that can apparently use the bike lanes.

Although arriving into the Netherlands was certainly a change from the Anglophile world of the UK, many Dutch people can speak English, so it was not too difficult to navigate from the ferry terminal at Hoek van Holland via two trains to Amsterdam Centraal Station. My hotel was one of the cheaper options, perhaps because it is located some distance from the city centre. It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes by tram from the central station, however it is a comfortable room, and the trams are frequent. The hotel itself, called Blue Square, is funnily enough clad entirely in blue panels. Makes it quite easy to spot from a distance!

I was a disorganised tourist yesterday, enjoying a sleep in, then catching a random tram, which happened to deposit me in the museum quarter. Some beautiful buildings, and quintessential canals, with ornate houses lining the sides. I took the option of one of the many canal cruises, and perhaps should have been more particular about which company I booked with. I seemed to have inadvertently chosen the one with the longest line, for a boat that had no outdoor area. Being late into the queue, I also missed a window seat, which limited somewhat the ability to take photos out the window. It was a pleasant cruise however, and I soon lost all sense of direction and place (something else internet access on the phone is good for is checking maps) as we wound through various small linking canals, and the three big canals, the Princes, the Gentleman's, the Emperor's, built during the 17th century. We briefly popped out into the harbour, would be an interesting place to take a longer cruise on.

Today, I joined an organised tour in two parts, visiting Volendam, Marken and Zaanse Schans in the morning, and then Delft and The Hague in the afternoon and evening. Volendam was once seaside town with a big fishing industry, until dike construction closed off access to the North Sea, and relegated it to being a lakeside town. We visited the cheese factory, where we were entertained by a presentation on cheese making, followed by a hard and soft sell of the cheese itself. I could have been tempted into buying a small wheel of the soft cheese, however was not quite sure about the rules for bringing food back through customs when coming back into Australia. And even the small wheel is not the amount of cheese one would hope to digest in a hurry over the next few days!

Following the cheese factory, the tour guide Edgar advised now would be a good time for lunch. It was 10am. Given the nature of the tour, this would be the last time we would be able to buy food, until returning to Amsterdam at 2:30pm. I was booked onto the second half of my tour, beginning at 2:30pm, so took the recommendation for an early lunch at a quayside restaurant, where the foreigners (myself included) ordered by pointing to pictures on the menu, and no doubt drastically mispronouncing the names listed. I had the kibelling, which was either cod or haddock, and was truly excellent!

We then took a boat for the former island of Marken. A dike constructed in the 1950s removed its island status, and provided road access. It's an odd island in that the residents were so used to being flooded (when it was open to the North Sea) that the houses were built on mounds dotted around the island, houses clustered together to take advantage of the small patches of artificially created high ground, and other houses built on stilts. Marken is home to a clog factory, and that's where we were headed (a surprisingly large number of tourists fit into a double decker bus, so we were quite a large group meandering through tiny alleyways on the island, passing between residents' houses. I get the feeling they didn't much care for the marauding hordes of tourists, given the disruption to their bicycle traffic, but I guess must tolerate the income generated).

The clog factory seemed to follow a similar mould (hehe) to the cheese factory - short demonstration followed by 'buy our stuff'. However the demonstration of clog making was quite captivating, as the guy demonstrated both old fashioned manual techniques, and 'new' methods using machines about to reach their 80th birthday. The machines are copyin devices, much like a large scale key cutting machine, where a cutting wheel or drill on one side follows a guide on the other side running over a model. Interestingly, clogs aren't just a cute souvenir item, and are still in demand for use today, where the main customers are farmers - the clogs provide water resistance, and excellent ability to traipse about in muddy, sodden, fields without getting stuck. As many of the fields the farmers work in are reclaimed land, below sea level, water is constantly being pumped out, and the clogs provide the ability to walk about on sodden ground. Ahead of gumboots, they apparently provide warmth, and don't get stuck, and for cattle graziers and dairy farmers, are the equivalent of steel capped boots, where it doesn't matter if your Friesian steps on your foot.

Next we were off to Zaanse Schans, to look at the windmills. This is an area with a number of traditional mills still operating, some grind spices, others pigments for colouring and dyeing, and others cocoa beans for chocolate products including dutch cocoa. As a result, the area was filled with some amazing smells.

Then, back to Amsterdam. I had booked the tour thinking it was a day tour, but instead it was just a combination of two separate tours, which began and finished in Amsterdam. Changing to the new bus, we were shortly off on the road to Delft, a town which is the home of Royal Delft, that quintessentially Dutch porcelain and ceramic work decorated in blue. Which the dutch originally copied from the Chinese, the Chinese are now returning the favour and flooding the souvenir market with 'Delft' style porcelain and ceramics! Quite an intriguing tour through the factory, learning that the 'blue' is initially black paint, which is hand painted (for the good stuff, they do transfers for the cheaper mass produced runs) onto the once fired ceramics, then when it is fired a second time, the high cobalt content of the paint undergoes a chemical reaction, and becomes blue. Invisible at this stage, it requires a third firing where the last glaze applied becomes transparent, and the bold blue colour is revealed.

Losing energy by this stage, and nearly nodding off on the bus, we were off to The Hague. The Hague is actually quite a decent sized city, and is the seat of government of the Netherlands, along with being home to several well known landmarks, like the International Criminal Court, Yugoslavia Tribunal, and the Carnegie funded Palace of Peace. It is also the home of the dutch monarchy, in both a working palace (fancy name for office) and nearby residence.
Tourist mode on and lots of photos taken! Then on the bus back to Amsterdam, a tram back to the hotel, and all that remains is to book a method of transport back to the UK for tomorrow, and I can call it a day!