We were planning to head out on our bike tour on Sunday, but we had some bad luck when putting our bikes back together on Saturday night. I have a bolt that is holding the seat on and the bike rack. Unfortunately, the bolt got completely stripped when I was trying to tighten it after putting my seat back up. Since everything is closed on Sunday, we were not able to get a replacement bolt until Monday. Plus, we don’t even have the tools to get the stripped bolt off my bike to replace it. Fortunately, we were able to stay at the Bicycle Hotel one more night, and we just had to move to another room. With another stroke of good luck, our savior, Clemens, was working at the bike garage for the Bicycle Hotel on Sunday morning when we went to drop off some of our bike stuff. Clemens let us use his tools to get off the stripped bolt. We couldn’t get it off with pliers, so we ended up sawing it off with a small file saw. Then, Clemens also had a replacement bolt that worked perfectly on my bike. We were so relieved to have our bikes ready for our bike tour!
Since we had an extra day, we decided to go to the Rijksmuseum. It was really neat to see the amazing paintings done by the Dutch masters, and the painstaking detail in their paintings. The paintings were so realistic that they looked like photographs. However, after three hours of looking at paintings, we couldn’t stand seeing another painting of a vase of flowers or a portrait of a formally posed person dressed in black. 🙂
Also, since our bikes were finally in working order, we went for our first bike ride around Amsterdam. It is awesome to ride around Amsterdam with the dedicated bike lanes and stop lights just for bikes. It can also be a little terrifying because the cars drive so fast and so close to you when you are riding in the bike lane. The trams also go right next to the bike lanes. It is a great city for biking, but it is also very fast-paced and chaotic. Monday, we head out of Amsterdam into the countryside, and we’re ready to the leave hustle and bustle of Amsterdam.
Today, we wandered all over Amsterdam, and here are a series of photos from our walking tour.
This is sign at the pedestrian crosswalk showing you how to push the button for the walk sign. I’m not sure if I could have figured out how to push the button without it. 🙂
In the US, we have no parking signs for cars. Since there are bikes parked all over the city, they have to put up no bike parking signs.
They also have special stop lights for the bikes.
I saw this three wheeled miniature truck parked on the street and had to take a picture. 🙂
Westerkerk is in the Jordaan neighborhood. It has the highest church tower in Amsterdam of 85 meters, and you can climb the tower. You can only go about halfway up the tower, at 42 meters, where you can walk outside around the tower and get an amazing view of the city. The climb up the tower is very steep and treacherous, and you could definitely not do this in the US. The first person that tripped and fell would sue the church and that would be the end of the tower tour. As you climb the tower, you can also see the bells in the tower that are pulled by ropes below. They also have 50 bells for carillon concerts every Tuesday.
Bell inside tower
View from tower
View from church
View from tower
We also went inside the church and were amazed at how plain and simple the decoration was. The walls are just painted a plain white. We found out that this is one of the first Protestant churchs that was built in Amsterdam after the country’s rulers converted to Protestantism from Catholicism. Originally, the Catholic churches were stripped of their decoration and coverted to use by Protestants, but then, they began building Protestant churches.
Inside the church
Woonbootmuseum (Houseboat Musuem)
Amsterdam has lots of houseboats in the canals, and we went to the houseboat museum. The houseboat used to be used to carry sand and gravel, but it was converted for use as a houseboat in 1917. The houseboat was remarkably spacious, except for the tiny, cupboard bets where the family that lived there slept. I did not realize that houseboats required so much maintenance. Since the houseboat is made of iron, it must be dry-boated every 3-4 years for maintenance such as puting a protective coating against rust. Amsterdam is no longer issuing new leases for houseboats, so houseboats cost as much as a house, plus more money for maintenance. The houseboats have all the amenities of a house with hookups for electricity, phone, water, and sewage. It seems like a neat way to live in Amsterdam.
Entrance to houseboat
Houseboat living room
Houseboat living room
Houseboat kitchen
Houseboat kitchen
Van Gogh Museum
It is amazing to see the progression of Van Gogh’s paintings. He was self-taught and the rapid progression of his skill is incredible. All of his great works were produced in just 10 years. He died so young at the age of 37. His first paintings were so dark and dreary of peasant farms in the rural Netherlands. His brother, Theo, was an art dealer in Paris who wrote telling about recent trends in art and encouraging him to use brighter colors and stop using black completely. Van Gogh’s paintings are much better once he does this. 🙂
We went to the Van Gogh Musuem on Friday night, so there was also a live concert going on in the open area in the middle of the musuem. They had a camera set up above the audience and projected the image of the audience onto the wall. Since the audience was sitting in blue chairs and on blue carpet, they were able to filter out the blue to insert the audience into Van Gogh’s painting, The Harvest. It was really cool. We saw a women in blue go into the audience, and she disappeared into the painting.
All the houses in Amsterdam are narrow and have steep staircases. Therefore, it can be a challenge to get furniture moved in. All the houses have gables at the top that a rope can be attached to for moving heavy objects through the window. We woke up one morning to find that the house across from our hotel was moving a chest of drawers out of the house.
Rope attached to gable and furniture
Easing the furniture out the window
Catching the furniture from below. I didn’t get a picture of the terrified expression on the woman’s face who was on the ground. She believed the furniture was going to come crashing to the ground. 🙂
We’ve been having lots of fun exploring Amsterdam the last couple days. We’ve been strolling down the canals and looking at all the neat houses along the canals. It was interesting to go to the Museum Willet-Holthuysen and see what the inside of one of the canal houses looks like. This canal house was incredibly ornate, made to show of the owner’s wealth. The house has an elaborate garden in a city where land is at such a premium because all of the land used to be underwater and had to be drained. Also, the ceilings in the house were so high, about 15-20 feet. The property in Amsterdam was taxed by the width, so the builders built as high as they wanted. Jacob Willet, the last owner of the house, has a funny life story. He studied many professions but never received a degree. His passion was collecting art, but he soon ran into financial troubles since he didn’t have a profession to provide income. So, he married a wealthy women so that he could continue collecting art and not have to get a job. His wife left the house to the city upon her death in 1895, requesting that it be opened to the public.
We also went on an evening canal cruise. We went right at sunset and returned after dark, so we went through the canals when they were beautifully lit up at night. Some of the canals are so narrow that the captain of the boat had to do careful maneuvering to get through. For tight turns, the captain had to back up the boat to make the turn, and a few of the canals only had inches of space to spare on either side. We also ran into a canal boat traffic jam! The captain turned to go down a canal, and there were two boats parked in the canal blocking it. So, the captain had to turn around and go down a different canal. 🙂
Resistance Musuem
The Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis during WWII, and Amsterdam has a really neat museum that shows how the Dutch resisted the Nazi occupation. The museum was really well done, and I especially liked how it included excerpts from journals and letters from the people who lived through the occupation to give a personal feel for what it was like. When the Nazis invaded, they dismissed all the Jewish professors from the universities. The students set up huge protests of the dismissal of their professors. In response, the Nazis required the students to sign a loyalty pledge saying that they would not resist the occupation. If students did not sign, they were forced to leave the university and deported to forced labor camps. An amazing 86% of students refused to sign the pledge, and many had to go into hiding. The Nazis also forced the Dutch to turn in their radios so that they could not get news from the outside world. In response, the Dutch made their own radios, and the coolest example was a tiny radio that fit in a matchbox. The Dutch also had printing presses for underground, illegal newspapers and for forging documents required by the Nazi. They would also remove the J on identity cards marking people as Jews.
Jonathan and I made it safely to Amsterdam with our bikes in one piece! We’re staying at the awesome Bicycle Hotel with our bikes parked in their bike garage. We’re staying on the fourth floor of the hotel, and the stairs to the fourth floor are crazy! The stairs are so steep that it is almost like climbing a ladder to get to our room! We had lots of fun yesterday exploring Amsterdam and seeing all the canals, neat old buildings, and lots and lots of bikes!
Jonathan, Paul Rowe, and I built a miniature hot air ballon from a trash bag and powered by heat from Sterno. We were amazed at how well it worked. Unfortunately, it was really windy the day that we launched the balloon, which made it more difficult for the balloon to fly. We think the trash bag balloon would fly much better on a calmer day with little or no wind.
Paul building the balloon
Jonathan showcasing our balloon
Jonathan and Paul launching the balloon
Final successful launch of the balloon:
Also, we had a nice adventure at Waterworks when we were launching the balloon. Jonathan was driving, and he thought it would be a great idea to park in the field. But, the car got stuck in the mud. So, Paul and Jonathan had to push the car while Cassie steered. After a lot of effort, we finally got the car unstuck.
Tire tracks from getting stuck in the mud at Waterworks Park
The wheels of the car were coated with mud from getting stuck
Jonathan is triumphant after successfully getting the car out of the mud!
Jonathan, Kelly Hanken, Paul Rowe, and I built a tennis ball mortar from three Pringles cans, and then went to Waterworks Park and shot a tennis ball from it.
Kelly, Jonathan, and Paul preparing the tennis ball mortar for launch
Amazingly, the tennis ball mortar worked great on the first try! Unfortunately, we do not have a video for the first launch, but we do have a series of videos of our varying degrees of success. We found that we had to wait a little bit after shooting the tennis ball for the fuel and smoke to clear before attempting another launch. Otherwise there was too much fuel in the mortar, and the tennis ball did not launch.
We are working in our sunroom on the second floor with the trees right outside of the windows. While working, we watched lots of squirrels and birds in the trees. We came up with an idea to build a platform outside our window and put food on it, so we could see the squirrels and birds close up. We put up the platform a few weeks ago, and we’ve gotten lots of squirrels, chipmunks, and birds. The chipmunks are really funny because they stuff their cheeks full of food.
We have named a few of the squirrels:
Adam the Squirrel
Rocky the Squirrel
Mario the Squirrel
Casper the Squirrel
This is the squirrel platform Cassie and I made outside our window
Our apartment is on the second story, so we had to get creative
This is one of our chipmunks. He comes, fills his cheeks until they are bigger than the rest of his head, and then takes off.
His cheeks are getting bigger 🙂
This is the showdown between the chipmunk and the squirrel. The chipmunk was already on the platform when the squirrel decided he was hungry too
