Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The End In Amsterdam

Andrew and I got to Amsterdam October 4. We found our apartment, got some groceries and settled in.

October 5 we decided to walk around the main canals, our favourite part of Amsterdam.


We ended up at our favourite canal and managed to catch yet another swerving paddle boat, with 3 tourists bumping into the walls of the canal and getting stuck in the corner. Look at the bridge, people were trying to teach them to steer and taking pictures of them getting stuck.

October 6, it rained all day. We were like little kids looking out the window waiting for it to stop raining so that we could go out and play. We managed to get some errands done, but that was about it.

October 7 we decided to see some things we had never seen in Amsterdam before, so we walked to the 'I amsterdam' sign in the Museumplein.

Next we decided to walk around a 'shopping' area of Amsterdam, another place we had never been. I almost died. There were so many people on these couple of streets and of course the streets seemed to go on FOREVER. I finally convinced Andrew to leave the area, without having gone in many stores.
 
We spent the rest of the day/evening walking around the canals. We were lucky to be sitting by our favourite canal when it lit up.

Since we didn't enjoy doing anything outside our normal element of canal walking the day before, October 8 we went back to wandering the canals. We found a nice spot closer to our apartment in the 'Old West'. It was a giant intersection of 5 canals. Unfortunately we found it late so it was pretty quiet with the exception of a few REALLY large boats.

Night picture of our favourite canal.

We planned on doing a few day trips from Amsterdam in order to see some more Dutch cities, so October 9 we went to Utrecht. Since half of Holland is at or below sea level even the farm land have canals running through them. Here is a picture from the train, This is very typical of a farmers field, sometimes the canals even have boats in them along the field.

When we got off the train at Utrecht we walked right into a HUGE mall (there was no avoiding it). If that was unpleasant enough we finally got out in the streets and the city was crazy busy (probably because it was a Saturday), there were so many people everywhere! One of the reasons Utrecht is deemed to be really special is because the canal is not at the street level and instead there are wharfs beside the canals. The wharfs are now home to a bunch of restaurants.

Andrew and I didn't enjoy Utrecht very much because the canals were not as usable as they are in Amsterdam. There was no place to hang out. After about 45 minutes of being in Utrecht we came to the conclusion that we were idiots for leaving Amsterdam, so we got back on the train and came back. We didn't enjoy Utrecht very much but we learned a good lesson: Don't leave Amsterdam, so we decided to cut out our remaining day trips we had planned.

Once we arrived in Amsterdam we were greeted by boats of pirates.

These people had live music on board, were chanting, singing, 'Arrr'ing', weaving in between other boats and stealing items from other pirate boats.


October 10, our last Sunday here, we decided to go to Vondelpark and take sneaky pictures of bikes. Here are a few of our favourites.

A bike with a box in the front with a couple kids in it. This is how newborns are commonly transported because their carseats can fit in the big boxes.

A family on bikes, both Mom and Dad have a child on their bike.

A bucket of 4 kids.

Unfortunately we missed the 'jackpot' shot, which was a Dad and his 3 daughters on a bike. There were 2 seats in the back of the bike and then one more in the very front. The girls were between ages 7-14... I don't know how he did it. We missed this picture because of 'Merlin the Homeless Magician'. Merlin, which is how Andrew refers to him, came to talk to us with his clan of homeless drummers. After a few minutes of him guessing where we were from he offered to perform a 'real' marriage ceremony, because according to him we were not actually married. At this point I decided it was best to leave before he put some homeless spell on us. Unfortunately Andrew got hung up in an awkward discussion with one of the homeless drummers who was teaching Andrew about how hurricanes got started (offshore drilling in Antarctica... of course!).

We left after this and went walking around the canals for the rest of the day.

October 11 we stopped at the big boat intersection we found earlier. When we sat down at our 'regular' bench I noticed something different. Look at the first picture taken October 10 and then the next picture taken October 11. Can you spot the item that has changed colours (you may have to click and enlarge the pictures to spot the difference)?


The answer: the cross and 2 balls hanging from the pole protruding from the canal changed from white to red, overnight. When we came here on October 11 I was telling Andrew that the cross and balls looked differently. I kept insisting that they were white the day before, but Andrew couldn't remember, until he took out the camera to look at the pictures we had taken the day before.

 Here is a boat about to come to the big boat intersection, they lifted the bridge for him.

October 12 we decided to have a throw back and do things we used to do in the summer. So we left the apartment fairly early and went canal walking. The only problem is that it is now the weather has changed and it is pretty cold out, too cold to spend the entire day outside. So we rushed but still managed to make it back to our favourite places and having a picnic lunch before going back to the apartment to warm up.

Today October 13 we leave for Gatwick. We are sad to be leaving and sad that our trip has finally come to an end but excited to come home.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Rotterdam

 We arrived in Rotterdam October 1. We decided to visit the city because it was bombed flat during WWII and completely rebuilt. It has lots of modern skyscrapers, so is extremely different than Amsterdam.

We found this bench on our first walk. It was very neat because the 'art' (pictured below) above the water stumped us. We think it was an innovative way to keep seagulls and poop off the benches and walking paths.

The famous Erasmus bridge.

 We happened to run into a parade on our walk through the town. All of the bands were great.

October 2 we went on a river cruise of the Rotterdam port, it is the third largest in the world.


October 3 we took a day trip to Den Haag to go to the beach. Although it took us most of the day getting to the beach, it was beautiful and well worth it.

Rotterdam has some strange buildings, including these cube houses.

Every time we met someone from Holland and we told them we were going to Rotterdam they had the same response: 'Why?'. It was an unusual city and definitely not our favourite, so we are glad to be going back to Amsterdam.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Scenery In Bergen

We arrived in Bergen September 26. After checking into our hotel, we went for a walk around city center.

 Next we walked around the docks.

September 27 we went back to the dock area to get more pictures.

Behind the historic old buildings in the picture above were little shops and side streets.

Then we walked around the fortress of Bergen. The grounds were beautiful, but it didn't compare to the view of the city from on top one of the walls surrounding the fortress.
The view.

The wall we sat on.

The train ride from Oslo to Bergen (7 hours) was so beautiful that we decided to day trip to some areas 'near' Bergen. September 28 we went to Voss and sat by the lake. The lake was like glass... until we started skipping rocks, which we discovered we suck at.

Next, we got on a train to Finse. The scenery was so beautiful, even from the train.



Here is a picture of the glacier, which Finse is known for.

Unfortunately we aren't the best hikers and instead of hiking around we walked for about 30 minutes, found a nice place to sit and have lunch, and enjoyed the scenery for quite a while. Here is a picture of me on the bench Andrew made for us.

The view.

We are going back to Oslo for a night, then back to the Netherlands.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Parks In Oslo

We had an unanticipated stop in Karlstad, Sweden before making it to Oslo September 22. Karlstad was a small city, but beautiful. We enjoyed our couple of hours here and spent them in a city park, and then in a Subway (because it was too cold out and because they had hot food free wifi).

September 23 we spent the day in the Vigeland Sculpture Park. Totally beautiful.

Here are our favourite statues in the park:




 Another view from the park.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in the off leash dog park area. We saw 10 dogs to 4 owners and it was great to watch all the dogs interacting. 

September 24 we went for a walk in Bygdoy Park.


It was really rainy so we didn't spend too long outside.

To get some shelter we went into the Viking Boat Museum. Andrew went walking around in the museum, but I had a seat instead. Here are some Viking ships.


Since it has been cold out and because we were staying in a beautiful apartment we had some lazy mornings. Andrew started to affectionately call me Pat in the morning, because I was curled up on the couch in my pjs with the laptop in front of me and watching TV, reminiscent of mom on a weekend morning.

So finally we made it into city center and as in all European cities there was a large pedestrian area in the middle of city center, which we walked.



It was cold out... really cold out.
 This is how I describe my outfit: Incognito, blending in with local fashion. Maybe I'm delusional.

Next we went to the opera house, a very modern building on the waterfront.

Walking on the roof.

Inside.
The opera house was so beautiful, it almost made us want to go to an opera. Almost.
  Then we went to the harbour.

We had a great time in Oslo, but are now off to Bergen for a few days.
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