Weekend Walks

I love walking around Amsterdam. There’s always a street you haven’t been down, and even if you have, there’s always something new to see.

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This young lady is obviously taking her Frisian cow for a walk in its clogs. What else would you do with your cow? Perfectly normal!

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The houseboats have their own gardens. They are often bigger than mine!

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How can you not love going for a walk when you’re surrounded by this?

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We had a purpose to our wandering this week, and hence were walking up the northern end of town up on Haarlemmerstraat.

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We were heading for the Spanish food specialty shop Hollandaluz so Himself could make one of his world famous paellas for dinner that night!

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Of course being such a busy strip there are lots and lots of shops up there, both specialty and kitschy. We found this in a home wares store. No, we didn’t buy it.

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But I do want a Nijntje (Miffy) night light!

Of course the scenery never stops being spectacular and photo-worthy.

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There’s always good sport in searching for all the different types of wall tablets too. Before adopting street numbers these tablets, along with the differing gable shapes, were how different homes were identified. They often told the profession of the inhabitants.

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Of course, having been surrounded by all these specialty stores all afternoon, we weren’t immune to the calls of their contents. We may have succumbed to one store, and brought home a variety of samples for later consumption!

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I can tell you now with authority that there is a reason the Dutch are known for their chocolate. These were rich, creamy, heaven!

Amsterdam Museum, Freezing Canals, National Radio, Australia Day

It has been a huge week out here on the canals Ladies and Gentlemen! A HUGE week!

We managed to have the plumber here a total of four times before the sink in the kitchen was finally draining, we’ve been to see a legal aid about a previous landlord, there’s been knit nights, language lessons, and homework! None of which got photographed!

What I did take photos of was Amsterdams Historic Museum when I went.

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It was a wonderful glimpse into the history of a great city, and all it has contributed to the global village.

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Of course, dead things in jars never go astray either.

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As promised, they have stopped water traffic on the Herrengracht in order to facilitate it icing over. We may yet get to skate on a canal!

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Though, to be fair, you can already skate on the pond in VondelPark! I love the swirls that have been captured in the ice flow!

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I was invited to go and see AWOLNATION performing a live gig at the National Radio Station. Which was an awesome experience!

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We all sat around in a studio that was set up like a bar, had a few beers, and watched the show being recorded to playback on Saturday. Good band too! I need to look up more of their work.

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The canals around home have been taking on their own stark beauty. I could sit and watch the ice flowing for hours if I were sufficiently rugged up!

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Australia day dawned overcast and grey. There was snow at one point, topping up the fall we’d had a week earlier, and we’d been invited to a BBQ. There were snags, there was cricket on the TV,

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and our gracious hosts just got engaged!

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There was much to celebrate.

For those of you in Australia, I hope you’re staying out of the heat, away from the fires, and if you’re in Queensland, on high ground and out of the flood waters. Stay safe!

We’ve got a warm week ahead of us with rain and highs of 8C. Perfect conditions to create us some black ice! I think I’ll buy cleats for my shoes …

The continuing story …

In today’s exciting episode, we find our Heros under a mound of boxes and ex-packing material. In order to make this post a little more interesting, we will bring you instead some photos from around Amsterdam.

The first in our selection is a vivid depiction of just how they retrieve the masses of bicycles stolen every day, from the bottom of the canals. It’s a spectator sport.

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In an era when property tax was based on how much street frontage you had, everyone wanted the narrowest property possible! I think I’ve found a contender for narrowest house! Yes, that door in the middle has it’s own street number, it isn’t a part of the properties on either side.

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Amsterdam has some of the most wonderful street art I’ve seen, and I am hoping to fill an entire post for you. In the mean time, here’s one I spotted as I was giving a friend the grand tour of our fair city last week.

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As I stated above, we have been unpacking and settling in. For us this includes the purchase of a new cat post for the fur-kids to enjoy. They have really been missing this in the past few months. We got a new one in the post last week and then spent a fun hour putting it up.

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It was obvious that they’d missed having something to climb, as they were all over it and “helping” us build it, as the post was being put together!

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We have had a few backyards since moving over here, but now I’d like to show you where we’ve settled. A good mix of town and country!

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Being us, we are still in the process of identifying which of the local cafes has the best coffee and service. The one we were in today is a top contender! Their Croque Monsieur was delicious!

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Hopefully by next post I’ll be set up enough to have gone on an adventure which I can tell you all about! See you all soon!

Ready. Fire. AIM!

Otherwise titled: How to have an Adventure.

I once had a Little Book of Chaos where it advised that you should rip random odd pages out of your street directory in order to make life more interesting.

We may have heeded this advice a little too closely over the weekend.

I’d seen a poster for a medieval fair.

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Being us we thought this looked AWESOME! And being in the nearby woods area, we decided to head on over after waking up on Sunday (during the heatwave).

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Not being entirely sure where it was being held, we just walked and figured we’d come across it eventually. How could you miss it, we thought?

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It seemed like an awful lot of our local community was out and about in the woods, walking in the shade in an attempt to escape the heat. Or swimming in the murky lake.

The light dappled the path through the green canopy, and when we got near the camping grounds, we found a few of these structures which appear to have been built by the bored kids over Summer.

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There were some beautiful flowers all blooming in abundance in the sun and heat.

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I have decided that I love thistles! They’re so pretty!

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It was wonderful seeing new life sprouting from a felled tree.

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And given all the canals, there is a predominance of water birds all over!

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Have you noticed yet, that there are no pictures of the fair? Yeah. We discovered the hard way that the local woods are massive. We spent several hours walking in the heat, and only traversed the bottom third of the woods. It dawned on me then that I had the web address for the fair, and given that we live in the future with the internet on our phones …

We never made it to the fair. It was up the other end of the woods. Several kilometers away.

Oh well. Next year?

Molen van Sloten

It’s amazing what you learn when you pay attention to the advertising screens on trams! I recently read about Molen van Sloten on just such a screen, and resolved that at the next chance we got, that’s where we’d go! I’d had no idea that there was a working windmill so close to Amsterdam!

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As directed, we took the tram and got off at the last stop, and just followed the signs from there. And a remarkably picturesque walk it was too!

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Can you believe these are the back of peoples back yards? I’m so jealous!

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This was the best sign so far, and had me giggling.

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It directed us to walk through Sloten, a thousand year old village which only got annexed to Amsterdam in 1921. It’s so tiny and quaint!

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I love the atmosphere of this village. If it was further away I‘d want a Summer house here. But it’s so close that I can visit whenever I want!

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Out of a tree shaded walkway we then saw the sight that had drawn us here.

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The massive rotating sails of the mill. This particular mill is a water mill that, by use of an Archimedes Screw, keeps the polder of Sloten above water level, if not sea level.

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This is the only public mill in Amsterdam and being able to go up inside it as it was turning was such an amazing experience! We both had huge grins on our faces!

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Being us, on the way home we stopped off in Leidseplein and sampled a few more of the delicious cocktails off the menu at the Bar Americain.

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Pretty good way to end the day if you ask me! I hope your weekends were both productive and educational too!