Cycling the Waterland in a Day

I suppose the easiest way to travel right now is through memory. As I do more cycling around my neighbourhood these summer days, I’ve been thinking of the cycling day trip my husband and I took in fall 2017. We took a ferry from downtown Amsterdam to Amsterdam-Noord where we rented bikes and explored the Waterland, the picturesque countryside east of the city that boasts traditional Dutch farms, separated bike paths built on dikes, and charming seaside towns.

Notice how flat it is to bike here—such a nice change from Vancouver! This excursion was an excellent and easy break from urban sightseeing.

In typical fashion, I try to pack too much into a day though (as my husband would readily attest to). Cycling from Amsterdam to Marken to have lunch, and then hopping on a ferry to Volendam, heading north to Edam and coming back through Broek in Waterland to have a bite to eat and being back at the bike shop by 6pm (and getting a bit lost on the way home too)? Yeah, we count our lucky stars we made it just before the owner was locking up. My legs were spinning like the windmills we passed.

Well, not this one. This one wasn’t spinning at all.

We saw a lot more of these modern ones, though the romantic in me was wondering where all the traditional windmills are? Are they a thing of the past?

The village in the photo above is Durgerdam, a town of about 430 inhabitants that we quickly passed through. Check out the cobblestone street (not the most bike friendly, but it certainly gives it character!)

Marken was our first stop. This small fishing village was originally an island until engineers connected it via a causeway in 1957.

The rows of green houses with triangular roofs were particularly striking.

There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing other peoples’ quotidian routines when you are far from yours. If there is an art to laundry hanging, I think this person’s got it down.

I tried some tasty kibbeling for lunch (the Dutch version of fish and chips). Marken used to be a fishing hamlet in danger of being abandoned but it’s been able to survive as a tourist destination.

The main reason we bit off more than we could chew regarding our ambitious cycling day was because we met some fellow tourists who told us you could take a ferry from Marken to Volendam. It would be quicker than backtracking to get up to Edam, and why not enjoy a ferry ride with new scenery? For those who know me well, spontaneity is not my strong suit (a friend joked with me many years ago that I had to “plan my spontaneity”). I laugh but it’s kind of true. Not so on this day!

The bikes were stored on the lower deck where there was also covered seating. I didn’t last long up here—the winds were something else! We said goodbye to Marken . . .

. . . and about 30 minutes later said hello to Volendam, of which I hardly have any pictures because we couldn’t linger long in order to reach Edam and all the way back to Amsterdam on time. And besides, Rick Steves called it “grotesquely touristy” and we believe everything he says, so that settled it.

Who am I kidding? Of course I took another photo, and I’m not sure Rick, this residential street looks rather lovely . . . maybe I’m just a sucker for canals, which reminds me, I have yet to post about Venice. Next post maybe.

Speaking of canals, Edam‘s were picture perfect. Here are our colourful bikes in the centre of town.

We took a peek into this cheese shop below—why we didn’t buy any, I don’t remember. I wished we had more time to explore this quaint town. Edam is famous for its cheese of the same name covered in yellow or red wax. Too bad we weren’t there in the summer on market day where local farmers bring their cheese into town by boat to get it weighed and measured.

Just your regular fowl hanging out by the side of the road:

Instead of hugging the water, we took a faster inland route back to Amsterdam that led us through the beautiful town of Broek in Waterland as the sun was setting. This is the town’s lake that, in the winter, becomes an ice rink.

The town is known for its extreme cleanliness. Not much was open by the time we got there but thankfully this restaurant was so we could have some sustenance for the last leg of our journey.

And then we were back in the big city to witness night cast its spell.

What places have you been revisiting in photos, dreams, memories?

Lessons Learned from Loving Vincent

Amsterdam was a great place to finish our month-long European vacation of fall 2017. It was friendly, walkable, and people spoke English—three important factors when you’re running out of travel steam.

My husband and I spent our last night in Europe at the Van Gogh Museum. It felt like a fitting ending to our beginning in Paris where we saw his works at the Musée d’Orsay and snapped a picture of the dried sunflowers hanging from the shutters three stories up above the blue door of this apartment building in Montmartre. The flowers mark the spot where Vincent lived for a while with his brother Theo. You have to look very closely to spot the sunflowers.

Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait,1889, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

27 days later with approximately 3000 photos on my camera, I decided to spend our last European night simply enjoying the artwork in the Van Gogh Museum without a lens in front of my face.

It was an interesting time to be in Amsterdam because the hand-painted film revisiting the cause of Vincent’s death called Loving Vincent had just released and there were advertisements for it everywhere, including this one just outside our Hotel Museumzicht.

We contemplated going to see it in Amsterdam (how cool would that have been?) but alas, we ran out of time. We saw it when we returned to Vancouver. That same fall, I read The Letters of Vincent van Gogh that I purchased at the Van Gogh Museum. I’ve been meaning to read them ever since I heard Matthew Perryman Jones’s song Dear Theo several years ago that I link to here.

The letters are a work of literature in their own right, let alone a fascinating journey into the struggles of one of the greatest modern painters. I loved seeing his sketches for what would become his iconic paintings and reading his intentions behind them. Take his Bedroom in Arles, for example:

This time it’s simply my bedroom. Only here everything depends on the colour, and by simplifying it I am lending it more style, creating an overall impression of rest or sleep. In fact, a look at the picture ought to rest the mind, or rather the imagination.

16 October 1888, Letter to Theo

Vincent Van Gogh, Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, 1889, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

All of this Vincent immersion led me to reevaluate what I thought about him. I wrote the article “Lessons Learned from Loving Vincent” shortly after. It’s only now been published, but it’s published nonetheless and I’m thrilled to share it with you over at Still Point Arts Quarterly.

I’d love to hear what you think and what your relationship is to this much discussed artist. There’s definitely no shortage of art about him, which says something in itself. Beauty begets beauty. Next up on my Vincent journey: watching this film.

Places to Play

Kids don’t need an invitation to play. I have two nieces and a nephew who take any opportunity to transform their beds into trampolines, couches into jungle gyms, boxes into forts, living rooms into dance floors. 

Adults, on the other hand, need to be told to play. In a world where speed and efficiency are rewarded, play is underrated but oh so necessary. 

Westlake Park, Seattle

This temporary art installation by Downtown Seattle Association invites people to do just that: take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and play. Their website says they “offer a variety of daily games and activations – from ping pong to foosball.” When I was there the other weekend, I noticed a play area for kids, as well as portable library with books for kids and adults to enjoy.

In their other location, Occidental Square, they had a life-sized chess game. This square was really empty on a Monday morning at 9am, but I wonder how much traffic it gets other times. Do people respond to these efforts at interaction and creativity? Do you?

You can see the “PLAY” blocks in the far left corner of Occidental Square, Seattle

Seattle isn’t the only city encouraging its residents to play. I’ve encountered similar efforts in New York City and Amsterdam through public art, life-sized chess games, public pianos, and letters to climb.

Perhaps this sign is more popular with tourists (guilty), but fun nonetheless

Where there are life-sized letters, there are people wanting to climb them. Heck, there are people wanting to climb almost anything. These jellybeans that were in Vancouver’s Charleson Park are a prime example. I think some of the most effective public artworks are ones that can be touched. Humans are so hungry for contact. 

Love Your Bean by Cosimo Cavallaro in Charleston Park, Vancouver. This public artwork was a Vancouver Biennale project and has since been removed, sadly.

When I think of the word play, I think of a piano. Its presence in my various apartments over the years is akin to a good friend’s quiet constancy. For me, a piano is not just an instrument, but a physical space to unravel myself. I much prefer playing to my ears alone, but I appreciate the public pianos cropping up in virtually every city (or in Victoria’s case, along the beach where I played only to wave, wind, and husband). 

My favourite public piano so far, Victoria

Friends in Okotoks, AB

The above images all strike me as examples of placemaking, a word popular in urban planning spheres for the last few decades.

Project for Public Spaces, based in New York, has a concise article summarizing this hands-on approach to making neighbourhoods and cities more enjoyable places to live, work, and play.

With community-based participation at its center, an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, and it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and well being.

I’ll share one last example from Seattle that literally appeared like a hole in the wall. I don’t know if it was a community-driven initiative, but it felt like it fulfills the last part of the above quote. I was walking to King’s Street Station from Occidental Square to catch the bus back to Vancouver when a sign on a gate reminiscent of a high-security prison stopped me. 

Say what? How could something beautiful hide behind such ugly doors? But when I stepped inside, I kind of liked this incongruity between outside and inside, catching me unawares. 

Just as adults need places to play, we also need places to rest like this Waterfall Garden Park. An oasis of quiet and calm. I sat on one of these chairs and listened to the music of the waterfall, feeling like I had found a diamond in the rough.

Do you have any stories like this of surprise urban retreats? What’s one of your favourite places to play or rest that you’ve encountered in a city? I’d love to hear!

Aimless in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is extremely photogenic. If it’s not the onion-ring canals, it’s the assortment of gables on gingerbread houses, a delight for any architecture lover.

My neck was a little sore after three days, craning to look up from cobblestone streets.

From left, every other house: bell gable, neck gable, pointed gable

I can only imagine how steep the staircases inside must be. Hotel Museumzicht gave us a good indication. This lodging was a great spot to watch tourists come and go from the Rijksmuseum and play on the iconic I Amsterdam letters as we ate breakfast and planned our wanderings for the day.

 

We walked by poems waiting to be finished.

Old buildings with sun-kissed bricks.

Tulips like lipstick shades.

Bicycles everywhere: parked, ridden, dodged. Apparently there are about 600 000 bikes in Amsterdam on a given day. We didn’t dare bike in the city but we took a lovely excursion to the country which I’ll write about later.

The holy and the profane keep company mere steps from each other. We walked towards the Oude Kirk (city’s oldest church, built in 1213) in broad daylight to stumble upon women in windows scantily clad, a red light emanating above the glass. Hello Red Light District.

Oude Kirk

Whereas the Red Light District is easy to find, the Anne Frank House (turned into a museum) is remarkably camouflaged. The tour guide on our nighttime canal boat tour pointed it out and I would be hard pressed to find it again. No distinct gable or sign. The only giveaway is the often long line. Visiting the house is a sobering, moving experience well worth the wait. I had reread Anne’s diary upon arriving in Amsterdam and many of the quotes from it were projected on the walls. You get to walk behind the moveable bookcase into the cramped quarters of the Secret Annex where the Franks, along with four other Jews, hid for two years before being anonymously betrayed to the Nazis. I reflected in my journal afterwards that it was heavy but also hopeful. The haunting words of a thirteen-year-old girl have left their mark on the world.

Anne Frank’s House is the one right in the middle with the straight roof and tree in front.

Right around the corner, near the Westerkerk (West Church) is a sight with a very different mood. Irreverent Dutch humour at its best.

Frites stand parodying Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel

Amsterdam closed out our trip to Europe, and it was a great place to end. People were friendly, food was delicious, art was incredible, and the city was easily walkable. I’m obviously not featuring the cities we visited in order because Nice and Venice are still to come, but hopefully you enjoyed some snapshots of the fascinating place that is Amsterdam.