Amsterdam - A Family Get-Together

Left to right: (Behind) Pat, Paul; (Front); Fiona, Adrian

Zurich is very central and many places in Europe are just a short hop away. Consequently, when my brother Paul from New Zealand mentioned that he and his wife were stopping off in Amsterdam on their way back from holiday (visiting his wife’s home ground in Scotland), I said I’d fly over to meet up with them. My other brother, living in the UK, was also able to come over. Apparently, it’s four years since we were last all together. How time flies.

The plan was to meet up with Paul and Pat (Paul’s wife) on Saturday evening, and then discuss from there what to do on Sunday.

I’ve been to Amsterdam several times before, but to my surprise, when I got there, I suddenly realized that I’d only ever seen the canal district, so a large part of Amsterdam had been invisible to me. This time I stayed in a boutique hotel (I think “boutique’ is a dressed-up word for “small”) in the museum district, which opened up another side of Amsterdam for me. I got a little lost after getting off the bus from the airport, so it took me a while to find the hotel.

Amsterdam is famous for the sheer number of people going round on bicycles. What I wasn’t so prepared for was the number of people going round on mopeds and discovering that mopeds also use the cycle paths. It’s really quite alarming! The bicycles themselves seemed to come in a large variety too. Pedestrians are definitely secondary to the cyclists.

It then took me more time to find my brother’s hotel which was in the canal district (on Singel). Although I’d left plenty of time to locate it, I ended up arriving only just at the allotted time (5.30pm), since I got a bit lost yet again. However, it turned out that he’d left a message at reception to say that their flight was delayed by 3 hours. I was really hungry at this point, so I left a note for them to say that I’d arranged to meet Adrian (my other brother) in the foyer of their hotel at noon the next day and I’d see them then.

The next morning I decided to visit the van Gogh museum before meeting my brothers at noon. It was an excellent museum and not too crowded (I think I was lucky), although I was highly amused that they felt that they had to explain that in those days people used to have to write using pen and ink and blotting paper. I had to keep an eye on the time.

I got to their hotel punctually and Paul and Pat were already sitting there – they’d arrived only at 10pm the previous evening, so hadn't done anything in the morning. Adrian turned up shortly afterwards. Paul asked for a recommendation for somewhere to eat but was told that “everywhere is good”, which wasn’t much help, even if it is true (which we doubted, since some places were full and some places were empty). We sauntered down the road and I ended up with a nice satay chicken (I hadn’t really intended to eat lunch, but oh well…).

The only thing we had time to do as a group was a canal trip, which surprisingly I don’t think I’d ever done before. During the tour, the guide kept on saying how hard it was to imagine Amsterdam as a bustling place with lots of boats going up and down the canals. I couldn’t understand why this should be so hard to picture, since there were quite a lot of boats on the canals. However, when we went to our restaurant later, there were pictures hanging showing the canals when they used to be used primarily for trade and it was quite astonishing to see how much faster the water flowed in those times and the sheer number of ships; it was a far cry from the gentle pace of today.

After the canal tour, we stopped off for a quick drink and then Adrian already had to leave. Paul had booked the Five Flies for dinner in advance and it turned out by sheer fluke that it was literally just round the corner from his hotel.

The restaurant occupied a beautiful building that was previously five houses; it retained the original leather wallpaper from 500 years ago, the original beams, etc. Plus a few original Rembrandts. The food was also different – I ended up with a deliciously spiced pumpkin soup followed by candied haddock in aniseed sauce. It was a lovely end to a whistlestop stay (and thank you to Paul for treating me!).