A Six Hour Walk

A six hour walk - A three hour tour - I suddenly have the Gilligan's Island theme song running through my mind...........

We walked and walked and walked today! We started off walking through the streets of the Jordaan. We went past the Anne Frank house and at 9am (when it opens), and the line to get in was already forming the whole way around the corner of the building!

The Jordaan district was absolutely beautiful! The streets were quiet and peaceful. It was sunny, low 70's with a light breeze. There were not many people out and about, as is the case on most Sunday mornings, but there were a number of boats sailing through the canals.

Jagger was enthralled with the duck family we saw - a momma duck with 8-10 little babies. A man on the balcony of an apartment threw some bread into the canal and we were able to watch them eat. When they were finished we were able to walk along the canal as they swam along beside us.

We looked at the different houses and picked out what we would like to buy if we had an extra E500,000.

We ended up waaay on the other side of Amsterdam on Nassau Kade. There was a cute little park there so Jagger played on the playground a bit. Grassy spaces are few here, so it was nice to find a little park (that wasn't full of dog crap!) with a bench to sit and enjoy the weather. We do plan to go to VondelPark later in the week.

Then we headed over toward Spui Square (pronounced "Spou" and rhymes with "cow"). We grabbed lunch at a little sandwhich shop called Broodjies and Kootjies. Jagger and I used the bathroom and saw that Mary Kate Olsen (or at least someone who writes graffiti on bathroom walls and wants to be her) had been there!

Next, we stopped in at the "Green Bakery". It's the Turkish bakery that I wrote about before. It's actually called "Turkish Bakerij", but since the sign was green, the kids gave it a name to distinguish it from the "Red Bakery" that had hand made stroopwaffles. The Turkish man had just opened the bakery right before we arrived last time. He is right across the street from where we stayed last time and we visited his store daily. When we walked in today he came out from behind the counter and shook Jeff's hand. We have a hard time talking with him because he speaks mostly Turkish and a little Dutch. He was happy to see us and asked about the other "kinderen" (kids). Jeff told him they were back in the US and he grabbed a package of chocolate cookies and threw them in the bag and said "Da Kinderen". (So Justice and Journey - we will bring you back the chocolate cookies from the bakery guy!)

I panicked when I didn't see any Turkish Baklava at the bakery! I came all the way from the US to get some! The guy's wife makes it and it so do delicious! It is made of crispy pieces of phyllo dough, pine nuts, and a sweet clear syrup. I asked him about it and he pulled out a little tray with the last 4 pieces. Of course he threw that in the bag for free too! He said something about having more on March 1st.....I didn't realize until we were out the door and down the street that he was saying "Mondaag First"....Mondaag means "monday" in Dutch and I think he thought "First" meant "more" or something. So I guess we'll have to walk all the way to the other side of town again tomorrow!

Our next stop was the Amsterdam Historich Museum. We went there in March, but Jeff wanted to go back again. We went through it pretty quickly last time (it's a pretty long museum) and he wanted to be able to actually read the history of the city and descriptions of the paintings. Jagger enjoyed it because there were lots of buttons to push and things to touch. He loves to look at maps and likes to look at replicas of the Queen's Palace. I was able to look at the parts dedicated to WWII, since we missed those last time when the kids were tired.

The Historich Museum used to be a building that housed the city's orphans. It is next door to a nunnery (still in use). When the plague and other diseases hit Amsterdam, many children were orphaned. The children in rich families went to live with relatives, but the poor children were sent to the orphanage. One of the most intersting pieces in the museum is a beautiful old wooden chest or trunk. They believed that the chest had some sort of miraculous power, as a number of different terminally ill children had sat on it and it had cured them. The chest was hidden in an attic for a number of years before it was brought to the museum.

After spending a couple of hours walking through the museum we went to the shopping area to look for a cord to connect my camera to the laptop so I can upload pictures. I was frustrated that I forgot it and wouldn't be able to include photos with the blog. And then I realized that I WILL run out of disk storage space if I can't upload photos! Unfortunately the computer store and the photo store neither one had a cord. But I did realize that I can stick my disk into one of their instant photo machines and have the photos printed on CD. That way I will be able to put them on the blog and have permanent copies of them! Now all I need to do is get my bottom back there to get some CD's made!

Our last stop was the bookstore (again!). I bought a book called "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom. The story takes place in Haarlem, the Netherlands and is the other side of the Anne Frank story. Corrie's family hid Jews in their home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The book chronicles the hardships and risks that the family endured during that time. We plan to go back to Haarlem in a few days to visit the Grote Kerk (Great Church) again, so maybe we will stop by the Corrie ten Boom house for a tour too!

Jagger fell asleep in his stroller after we were finished at the museum (around 2pm) and is still sleeping now at slightly after 6pm. So it looks like he will do the same thing as yesterday - sleep all afternoon, wake up in the evening to eat dinner and play and then go back to sleep again, only to wake in the wee hours of the morning!