Amsterdam and the Windmills

We have a few days off, so at the last minute we decide to go to Amsterdam. We book everything online with last minute and spend € 330 each including flight + hotel for 5 days. We leave on 04/12/08 from Linate with KLM and land at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, which is outside the city. We take a train that gets us to the centre in about 20 minutes for a cost of € 6.40 return. We buy a Strippenkaart for the bus with 15 rides (€ 6.90), more than enough; the centre is easy to explore on foot. In Amsterdam it was snowing…. But only this afternoon, luckily; the rest of the days will be fine. We arrive at the Rembrandt Centrum hotel, which is right in a central position and which I warmly recommend to everyone, clean and very spacious rooms at a more than reasonable price. We drop off our luggage and we're ready for our first stroll on Dutch soil.

Following the advice of our friend "Lonely Planet", we head straight to eat a slice of apple and cinnamon cake at Villa Zeezicht, truly truly delicious!!! Then, stuffed, we leave that bar and head for our first shopping session in the Magna Plaza and De Bijenkorf shopping centres, where in the latter you can find the big designer names. We then continue along Damrak, Euwendijk and Kaverstraat. On 05/12/08 we visit Dam Square, the beating heart of Amsterdam, and then head to the red-light district where there are the famous women in the windows and it's exactly like that…..it's crazy! Then we visit the city's second square, Nieuwmarkt, and the Jordan district, famous for its many bridges and picturesque little streets with ivy on the walls. In this district stands the Anne Frank House museum. We can't resist and out of curiosity we go in.

I was fascinated by this museum, where you can see Anne Frank's secret house, which you enter through a revolving bookcase built into the wall. The house has no windows and here the Frank family spent their days in absolute silence. "We are always so afraid that the neighbours will hear or see us" Anne Frank 11/07/42. It's truly moving to see how they were forced to live; I was struck by Anne's room, where pictures are still pasted on the wall to make the room cosier. The house has no furniture because the Germans emptied it and Anne's father, on returning from the concentration camp, decided it should remain empty forever. They were betrayed and deported to Auschwitz, where they all died except Anne's father. Anne died of typhus a few months before the liberation…… I recommend everyone visit this museum.

We continue our tour and arrive at the Westerkerk church, which stands out for its beautiful bell tower topped by a blue crown. We pass Rembrandt's house, at no. 184 of the street…I can't remember, where he died. Finally we have dinner at the De Zagerij restaurant with meat and cheese fondue. On 06/12/08 we visit the old bridge and the flower market (Bloemenmarkt), where we buy tulip bulbs. The market is very beautiful and colourful and besides flowers you can buy souvenirs at good prices. Then we go to see the wooden Begijnhof church…you enter by opening a door from the main street and going into another neighbourhood with well-kept houses and very green gardens…what a strange place! Another bell tower to see is the Munttoren. For the evening we decide to play romantic and book a dinner on a boat (Candlelight) at € 27.50.

Very beautiful; the illuminated canals of Amsterdam are wonderful. On 07/12 I decide that I absolutely must see some windmills, otherwise what did I come to Holland for? I do my research and discover there's a small town called Zaanse Schans reachable by train in about 15 minutes (€ 5.10 return). All that's left is to set off. It was the most beautiful day of all, it's a fairy-tale village. All the houses are green wood, built around a small canal over which they've built charming little bridges naturally green like the houses, and wooden. There are 6 windmills still in operation producing colours, flour, oils, etc. etc. You can visit them inside and it's a unique experience to wander among their old gears. In the village there's the clog factory and a dairy where they sell excellent cheeses. We return to the city and finish the day doing a bit more shopping.

We have dinner at Moeders, a famous restaurant in Amsterdam where you eat typical food and which is characterised by the fact that when it opened the owners asked customers to bring old plates, cutlery and photos of their mothers from home (Moeders, in fact, means mothers), and indeed it's set with mismatched things of every kind and hundreds of photos of mums hang on the walls; we ate very well. On 08/12/08 we set off back to Italy. What struck me about Amsterdam are the wonderful houses that rise above the canals, the city's many bridges and the bikes that seem to furnish Amsterdam. The liveliness and tolerance for the red-light districts and the coffee shops in a city so different from ours yet only 2 hours away by plane. Bye Amsterdam. Annalisa.