Farewell to Amsterdam, for Now.

We are leaving the house we have called home for 11 days. We are now headed to Amsterdam Central Train Station to meet the boat crew. We will take the train to Breukelen where we get off and take a taxi to Locaboat head quarter in Loosdrecht to get on our houseboat. The next adventure begins.

Apple Tree

When we arrived in Amsterdam this apple tree outside our door was just beginning to bud. Now, as we leave it is in full bloom.

More to follow about our trip once we are settled into our new lodging, the houseboat, with Bob, Laine, Farley, Sue, Wendy and Stewart.

We are not sure what our wireless access will be so our blog postings may not be regular.

Train Ride to Haarlem

We took the train this morning to Haarlem to meet Bob and Laine for lunch. Haarlem is a much quieter city than Amsterdam.

Laine and Bob leading the way to the brewery. The brewery was located in an old church that had been turned into a brewery.

Farmers market. The fruits and vegetables were cheaper here than in the states!!

Selection of cheeses from one of the market sellers.

We went for lunch at a restaurant that was located beside the town windmill and along the canal. The restaurant is to the right of the windmill. We sat outside along the edge of the water and watched the boats travel up and down the canal and the kids and ducks playing along the water's edge.

Large boats had to wait for the draw bridge to open before they could continue traveling down the canal. The canal leads to Amsterdam.

After lunch we took the windmill tour. We learned all about the workings of a windmill. 

Views from the top of the windmill.

This round dome building is the prison, which is in the middle of Haarlam. Holland is in the process of  closing some of their prisons due to a lack of criminals!!! In 2014 Holland had more prision staff than inmates. (9,710 inmates, 9,914 prison staff)

A side canal

Stedelijk Museum- Museum of Modern Art

The main exhibition at the museum was called "The Oasis of Matisse." This is the largest exhibition of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) works in the Netherlands. His work included paintings, sculptures, works in fabric and in paper.  It was amazing the amount of work that he created over his lifetime.

This was the first museum we visited without having to wade through a large crowd of people. We enjoyed being able to walk around at our own pace and view the work at our leisure.

The following are pictures of Matisse's work.

The Hermitage Museum & Rembrandt House

Wednesday, April 29

Hermitage Museum- This museum is the Amsterdam branch of the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, Russian. The special exhibit that is on loan from St Petersburg is called "Alexander, Napoleon and Josephine." The exhibit consisted of paintings, clothing, military artifacts and information about the ties between Russian and the Netherlands. The artwork was beautiful, but pictures could not be taken in the exhibit. These pictures are from the Hermitage website.

Napolean & Alexander 1

A rare painting of a large dog.

Van Gogh Museum

Tuesday, April 28

We went to the Van Gogh museum today. The paintings on the first floor were of his self-portraits. The second and third floors were the story of his life. These floors included not only his painting but the paintings of his friends and colleagues- Monet, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others.

Picture taking was not allowed in the museum. The pictures below were taken at other museums
or from the Van Gogh website.

Self-portrait

Sunflowers

Self portrait

After the museum we went in search of the Albert Cuypmarkt. This is Amsterdam's largest street market. You can buy anything from food (fish, cheese, fruit, vegetables, etc.) to used clothing, fabric, junk, etc. We picked up some vegetables and fish for supper.

Lots of flowers for sale

King's Day- Koningsdag

King's Day is the day the entire country celebrates the birthday of King Willem-Alexander, April 27. Thousands of peope have been arriving in Amsterdam since Friday night to help celebrate his birthday. The parties go on into the wee hours of the morning. Orange is the national color (the color of the Royal Family, The House of Orange) so everyone wears orange.

There is a giant, city wide free flea market.  Anyone can set out a table and sell what ever they would like and the main streets are blocked off from traffic. We headed to the sale at 8:00 and lasted to about  noon when we decided to take a break and rest.

In the afternoon there was a canal boat parade with 100's of boats. All sorts of boats filled with people traveled around the canals. Music blasting and beers in hand as they partied in the boats. 

Around 3:00 in the afternoon we headed home as the streets were filled with people and it was beginning to get harder to keep track of each other and push our way through the crowd.

Exhausted, but we had a great time walking around the city and enjoying the day's happenings. 

Home to our little house in North Amsterdam, to enjoy a glass of wine, listen to the birds, and savor the smell of the flowers, apple tree and liliacs that are in bloom.

Adults and children work together to sell their items.

Every available space was used for selling.

Anything that floated carried a group of celebrating people.

We supported the children street musicians with a donation. She was a 6 year old drummer.

An upcoming rock star and her brother on the drums.

Most people stood up in the boats, as most boats were working boats and didn't have seats.

Holland Annual Flower Parade & Train Ride

Today was a learning lesson for us on how to use the OV-chipkaart and travel by train. We  headed to Lisse to watch the famous Holland Flower parade.  The parade route starts in Noordwijk and travels about 40 km to Haarlem. The parade is famous for the floats being made with flowers.

When we got on the train headed to our destination the train ticket taker checked our OV-chipkaart to make sure we had checked in. Of course, we had done that. Well, it seems we only had 13.50 Euros on our cards.  She told  us that we needed to have at least 20 Euros on our card to travel on the trains. We  got off the train and when we added money to the OV-chipkaart we were each fined 20 Euros for not having enough money to ride the train. We were advised to use the OV-chipkaart for the busses, metro and trams and when traveling by train to buy a ticket. This piece of education cost us 40 Euros!! but we now know how to use the OV-chipkaart. 

Holland Flower Parade pictures. The main flowers used in the floats were hyacinths. The smell was incredible as the floats passed you.

The parade was about an hour long and then we headed back to the train station to go back home. This was another adventure which involved having to return home by another train route, due to an accident on the rail line, meeting a magician, viewing the flower fields as we wizzed past them and the final arrival at Amsterdam Central station to be part of the thousands of people who have come to Amsterdam to celebrate King's Day on April 27th.

One of  the many flower fields along the train route.

Rijksmuseum

We took our first ride on the tram system to get to the Rijksmuseum. The trams connect all the areas in  and around Amsterdam. They are cheap to ride and easy to use. (Once you figure out what you are doing!)

Rijksmuseum 

The Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands National Museum. "The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. The museum also has a small Asian collection which is on display in the Asian pavilion.^{[3]" (WikiTravel)} 

We spent four hours walking around the museum and did not make it to the special Rembrant
Collection. When you hear the phrase "Dutch Masters", their work is all here. Besides all the famous paintings that you hear about we came across smaller works of art by these same painters like Vermeer, Rembrandt, Frans Hal, Van Gogh and many other famous Dutch painters. The paintings are
beautiful. The detail and color so vivid even after being painted in the 1600's -1800's.

Vincent Van Gogh

The Milkmaid - Johannes Vermeer 1658

Night Watchman- Rembrandt 1642

The top floor of the museum was dedicated to the years 1900-2000.

FK 23 Bantam 1919

Yves Saint Laurent- 1965 was inspired by the painting of Piet Mondrian for his clothing line.

Piet Mondrian- 1872-1944

Amsterdam Sites

One window wide house.

Coffee House on one of the side streets.

Someone's home on the canal.

Even cars can ride the ferry. This is the ferry we take to cross the Eye River from our little house.

Stores on the bottom floor and apartments on the upper floors.

Amsterdam Arrival

We are settled into Amsterdam and our new home. We've found both the local and high end grocery stores, purchased the Museumkaart (free entrance to most of the museums in the Netherlands), the ov-chipkaart (transportation card) and located the ATM machines.

We have spent the last two days just walking around Amsterdam, enjoying the city sites and keeping out of the way of the bicycles.

Our home- One bedroom older trailer.

Living room/kitchen/dining room

Garden area

The trailer sits in the garden of the houseboat owner. The flowers and trees are in bloom and there is a picnic table and chairs in the middle of all this lush greenery.