5/14/2017 – Mother’s Day

Our weekend in Amsterdam was spent at the old standby camping – Gaasperplas. It must be our 4th stay at this camping, the convenience to Amsterdam can hardly be beat. A Metro stop is 100 meters from the entrance to the campground, which is on the grounds of a lovely park with a large lake that we never explored (until we got bikes) because we used the camping specifically to get into Amsterdam.
Our Amsterdam time was very brief this visit: only one day which we spent reacquainting ourselves with the city. We wandered around the inner city for about 5 hours, but having left our map at the camping, we did so without a specific plan. We got to the Dam – the most important square in the city and the original location of the damming of the Amstel river. (The city’s name – Amsterdam – is is the result of this dam). We saw the floating flower market which was selling a gazillion tulip bulbs and wooden tulips. We found Rembrandtplein, a square dedicated to the city’s homeboy, with bronze statues of all the characters in his masterpiece “The Night Watch.”

We walked the Red Light District and were surprised to see it was almost as busy during the day as it is at night.

We finally visited the famous flea market at Waterlooplein, only to find it commercialized in greater excess than we expected.
As always we were delighted by the amazing architecture of the buildings along the ever present canals. Property owners were taxed in previous centuries by how much land they covered. In order to beat the taxman they built up instead of out, resulting in tall narrow buildings with ornate gables. It was common to see dates on these building circa early 1700s.

We came across De Waag; the remaining weighing house, once a city gate and the oldest non-religious building remaining in Amsterdam. It was built in the 1500s.
Our favorite lunch in Europe is doner kebabs, often made of lambs meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie and served in a pita-type bread with lettuce, tomato and a killer white sauce that varies from shop to shop. Our first doner of the trip was in Delft and our second was in Amsterdam. We keep saying we must broaden our palettes but Damn! we enjoy those kebabs!
According to our Vivofit we walked over 14000 steps (that translated to 5+ miles) around the city. We returned home in the late afternoon, realizing we must make more time for Amsterdam later in the year. This day was all about rain and hiding from it, we’d prefer more clement weather.

Sunday we woke to sunny skies and knew we were going on a bike ride. We haven’t spoken much about the bike lanes in the Netherlands; They are as complete – and perhaps even more complete – than car roads. They are two-laned and even have their own traffic lights. There are also specific rules for riding which we are learning.
We had some grocery shopping to do so we decided to combine pleasure with necessity. First we rode all through Gaasparpark and around a lake large enough to accommodate several sail boats. Since we don’t read Dutch we worried we would get lost in a park large enough to get lost in. Eventually we found our way out and began our ride to the Action store, 2.5km away. From there the plans was to ride to a Lidl store – one of our very favorite grocery stores (think Grocery Outlet). The ride to the Action store took us an hour and several more kilometers than necessary to arrive. I’m saying we got lost, however we also got a good jump on developing our biking muscles. Because we were way behind schedule, and there was a grocery store by the Action store, and rain was threatening. we dropped the Lidl store run. Our return to the camping was a lot quicker, making us realize exactly how lost we got. We no sooner arrived home than the skies opened up with a horrendous downpour.
We spent the remaining daylight hours tinkering with Willie, making him more comfortable.
Tomorrow (Monday) we return to Utrecht to rebuild our exterior door lock. From there – who knows?