Amsterdam Part 2: Our Post-Cruise Visit

We booked to stay in Amsterdam for 3 nights after the cruise. This time we stayed at the Amstel Hotel, famous in Amsterdam and one of the older hotels, dating back to 1867. It is now an Intercontinental Hotel and the one Tauck uses for pre- and post-cruise guest stays.

It certainly is beautiful outside and inside. The only disappointment we had was that venues, like the A Bar and the Amstel Restaurant, were not open due to staffing issues. There is a gorgeous patio attached to the A Bar, but we couldn't use it because there was not enough hotel staff to service it. Such is the problem in Europe at the moment. All the people who used to work in the hospitality industry went to other things when COVID closed hotels and restaurants down, and there hasn't been enough new labour to fill the breach.

The hotel from the Amstel River

The A Bar, was used as a hospitality
lounge for Tauck guests waiting for
airport transfers or hotel rooms.

The foyer. It's easy to tell this is
a classic hotel

In our room, the wallpaper and headboard
patterns were an exact match.

We found the Amstel to be in a perfect location to be able to walk to most places in the downtown area. The only restaurant open in the hotel was the Brasserie. A little less formal but very nice, with tables outside along the river.

This is the beautiful Amstel Restaurant, only open for High Tea on Saturdays and Sundays. If we had known that when we came back from our walk on Sunday, we just might have stayed for tea instead of having lunch outside. The hotel is being closed later this year for about 6 months for renovation, according to one of the receptionists. It would be nice to visit again later, when hopefully all of the venues would be open again.

When we arrived on Sunday morning, we knew we would have a fairly long wait for our room, so we left our extra bags with the luggage and started out. When you're used to having your city mapped in straight lines, Amsterdam can be a bit confusing, as it is more of a spider-web shape. We eventually made our way to the Niewmarkt, or New Market and the Waag, the Weigh House. This building was a gate the original city walls.

After consulting the map to see exactly where we were and how we would get back to the hotel, we took a route back that would lead us through Dam Square, where the Royal Palace and the National Memorial to Soldiers and Resistance Fighters in World War II are located. And, as if they knew we were coming, the memorial was covered in scaffolding!

The Waag

The current view of the National Memorial

The Royal Palace, not used as a residence 

Dinner at the Brasserie in the hotel was delicious, but we really couldn't eat a lot. Already pretty 'fooded-out', we just had main courses and shared a lovely cheese platter for dessert. The sunset view from our room at about 10:30 was gorgeous.

When we checked in, Larry talked to the concierge about getting tickets for the Rijksmuseum. We had heard that it was still required to book ahead for capacity control, and that some of the smaller museums were almost impossible to get into on short notice. We got tickets for Monday morning, and walked the 15 minutes to the museum from the hotel.

We spent about 3 1/2 hours in the museum and saw a good portion of the exhibits. The most famous one, Rembrandt's Night Watch, is currently under restoration, so it is in a glass room while the work is being done. So I guess this is the equivalent to scaffolding for the painting! It's fortunate that we weren't here a few months earlier, as the painting spent a couple of months face-down so they could remove the old frame. We wouldn't have been able to see it at all.

It was quite busy, even with the capacity control. It was hard to get close to some of the exhibits, like the Jan Vermeer paintings, but we found some other exhibits that were very interesting:

This is a full-sized work by Willem van de Velde
in ink on canvas. The detail work is amazing. These must have taken
him a very long time to do.

A Delftware Violin

A Windmill on a Polder Waterway
by Paul Constantin Gabriel. It just looks
so serene...

A Van Gogh Sketch: Wheat Reaper

We asked the concierge for a restaurant recommendation for lunch after the museum. He suggested Nel, with a patio on a shady square part way between the museum and the hotel. We found the restaurant and had a light lunch. There was a flower market and a cheese stand in the same square. If we had been staying longer, I would have picked up some cheese to nibble on in our room.

There are lots of houseboats in the larger
canals, and many of them have container gardens
on them. More later.

Lunch - Shrimp Croquettes with
Salad and Bread

A 'Toasty' - Grilled Sandwich with
cheese and turkey

For dinner that night, we just shared two appetizers and had some ice cream for dessert. We had to start cutting down sometime, and the appetizers were large and delicious.

Smoked Salmon on a Phyllo crostada

Caesar Salad with Chicken Thigh and a
Poached Egg

We certainly didn't any more than that!

On Tuesday we decided to do an early canal sightseeing tour, and get our packing done afterwards. There are lots of companies doing canal tours in all sorts of boats. If you're adventurous, you can even rent a boat and drive around the canals yourself.

The nearest canal boat tour starting point to us was a 10 minute walk away, not quite at the Rijksmuseum, and we were there by 10:00, so we had a boat almost to ourselves, except for another family of 4.

Our canal boat

The Rijksmuseum

This is the Lockkeeper's House
at one of the old locks

These are some of the rather well-known Crooked Houses

I wanted to take a photo of the bridge, but
the boat got in the way - had to keep the picture
because of the boat's name!

Our boat captain was very informative, especially since we were the only ones up near the front. He gave us quite a bit of info that wasn't on the recorded explanations. There are literally thousands of houseboats in the canals of Amsterdam. The city has stopped issuing permits for new spots, and the current sale price of these boats is around 650,000 Euros. Even one that we passed that was a true 'handyman's nightmare' apparently sold for over 300,000 Euros.

We had enough time to go for another walk in the afternoon, so we headed toward the Botanical Garden. On the way we found the Holocaust Memorial, quite a moving tribute with 102,000 bricks, each bearing the name of one of the Dutch Jews who did not survive. The walls of bricks, looked at from above, form the Hebrew word meaning 'in memory of'.

Some of the bricks in one of the walls

The Botanical Gardens

Some of these houseboats are quite lovely

Once everything was packed up, we headed down to the Brasserie for another dinner of appetizers. We sat outside for a good part of our meal, but it was quite warm, by Amsterdam standards, and once the sun dropped below the edge of the awning it was going to be unbearable. This time dinner was Caesar Salad and Tuna Tartare.

You never know what kind of boat will sail by! This one reminded us of Larry's cousin Jim's raft that they used to ride around Walker's Lake. Nothing like seeing the canals of Amsterdam in style!

We were out of the hotel by 8:30 on Wednesday morning for our flight home. It was a great cruise and a lovely time in Amsterdam, but we were ready to go home for the summer. Travelling has returned, a little differently, perhaps, and we'll see how things continue to change with COVID still around.

Our next trip will be in September, closer to home as we'll be sailing the St. Lawrence River from Montreal to St. John's, Newfoundland and back.

Amsterdam Part 1: Floriade

 Once again, the blog is being finished a few days after returning home. Funny how real life things like laundry and cooking get in the way...

Our first day in Amsterdam, or shall we say in the Amsterdam area, was our final day on the Esprit. The dockage in Amsterdam would not be ready for our ship until 7:30 p.m., so we sailed instead for the city of Utrecht. From there, we were all visiting the Horticultural Exposition of Floriade, in the town of Almere. Once our tour was done, we would be rejoining the ship in Zaandam, and would sail to our berth in Amsterdam from there.

Floriade is the big International Exposition for Horticulture, and it only takes place once every 10 years, between April and October. We found out that it is one big event that was not rescheduled due to COVID, and always happens on the '2' year of the decade. and this is the 7th such exposition. It moves from city to city around the Netherlands. Each city that wants to hold the expo submits a plan for using new space for the expo, and also what they will use it for afterwards, so the infrastructure is already in place before the space is officially turned over to them. All of the buildings and structures don't have to be kept, but the city has to adhere to the plan for development that they originally submitted.

This year's theme is Growing Green Cities; sustainability, reusing and recycling materials, saving water, saving energy. We were actually allowed to go into the expo an hour before it opened to the public, so we got a bit of a tour around and a lot of information from the guides there.

As an example of sustainability, this building is a school for environmental studies. Not only does it have this gorgeous living wall, but all of the rooms inside use reused materials as much as possible. Buildings like this are already part of the plan for the Hortus area of Almere, which will be combined residential, commercial and educational once Floriade is over.

A closer view of the living wall. It serves as both insulation and green space to recycle oxygen. Given the amount of rain in the Netherlands, the watering system doesn't have to be used to full potential, but there is rainwater collection on top of the building and a system to distribute it to the plants.

This building is made completely of reused and recycled materials, inside and out. It is an example of the extent to which material can be kept out of the garbage stream. The outer wood is all reused from other applications, and everything in the room from the walls and floor to the cups, bowls and plates is recycled.

An example of vertical (sort of) gardening in
these small pots on a stand. Great idea for a
winter herb garden!

Reusing materials for insulation and growing.
The plants in the water are growing inside
cork bricks...

Everything here is made from recycled materials

Throughout the park there are flower beds and plantings that will be left as part of the Hortus District. They're already quite pretty; I can imagine how they will look in 5 years.

This is an international exposition, and many countries have full pavilions where they showcase their own sustainability successes. This is a photo from the Chinese Garden pavilion. All the structures in the garden are made from bamboo, and so is the pavilion itself. 

This pavilion is actually made from mushroom roots! It feels a little squishy, but it is totally recyclable. There seems to be no end to what we can do with stuff that normally goes into compost.

This building with a lovely floral mural all around the outside will be apartments after Floriade. According to our guide, the apartments are listed for viewing, but there's no price attached yet. She figures they will be quite expensive as the Hortus area will be in high demand. There will be other apartment developments in the area though.

This sculpture, called Beehold, is made from steel in the form of 10,000 bees engulfing 2 figures. It represents the dependence we have on bees to pollinate many species of plants throughout the world, and that we need to ensure that they continue to thrive. It will remain in the public square after Floriade is done.

The Rose Garden is a beautiful oasis in the park. Over 3000 different rose species are showcased here. Just spectacular! One of our fellow cruisers, Danny, is a really good photographer and spent a lot of time taking pictures of plants. He was having a field day in the rose garden.

There are a couple of ways to get around Floriade without walking - the Hop-On, Hop-Off Floriade Explorer train and a Cable Car that goes from the south-west to north-east areas of the 60 hectare park.

Our tickets included access to both and our guided tour ended at the Cable Car station. Even the natural

growth in the area was very pretty.

The washroom, souvenir shop, and fast food
area also had some really cute sculptures. I loved this
cow!

The cable car installation, which will not be part of the Hortus district after the expo, has already been sold to a company that will reassemble it in a town in Switzerland.

This was a really interesting map of Floriade, made entirely of Lego bricks!

Our final stop at Floriade in our free time was in the Green House, where many of the more exotic plants and interior design ideas were showcased. There were some really interesting displays in here....and Danny seemed to be taking pictures of just about every plant!

This beautiful mural looks like it is made from painted stones, but
I can't find any info on it anywhere. Nonetheless, it is a
lovely piece of art.

The orchid display was amazing, especially the
blue ones. 

Suggestions for using plants as part of interior design. Great
if you have lots of light!

A living wall inside a vertical terrarium. Another
fantastic idea.

Some of the artwork inside the Green House

Another display of bromeliads and
epiphytes

The garden outside of the Thailand Pavilion

Our visit to Floriade was quite an interesting one. We can see just how far Europe is ahead of us in North America on the sustainability and reuse front. But of course with the large population in a relatively small area, they always need to be developing ways to use alternative energy sources and avoid throwing things away. One of the buildings that we didn't take any photos of here is Flora, a residential home for Alzheimer's patients that is already occupied and will remain after Floriade is done. There are bright yellow areas of the building that are balcony and common areas for residents that were made from recycled bicycles, many of which had been fished out of canals.

This was a really interesting visit, and we're glad we were able to experience this once in a decade show. The amount of thought and experiment being put into recycling everything possible is amazing, and has certainly given us something to think about.

Back to reality - after the show we went back to the ship in Zaandam and packed our bags for Sunday morning's disembarkation.