The city doesn't seem to sleep. Our travels around Amsterdam are not over but thanks to our location in the Overtoomse Sluis neighborhood in West Amsterdam, we are spitting distance from amazing places to visit, wander, and observe the natives in their natural habitat. We are along a main tram line and within a ten minute bike ride of Amsterdam Centraal and a billion more places to spend time shopping, canal-hopping, or hanging out with a Heineken and people-watching along the Red Light District. Ok, we pretty much bolted through Amsterdam's famous sex-hued streets as the kids were only slightly entertained but mostly embarrassed that we'd even trek that direction with them in tow.:)
We opted on our second day to journey on foot so Izzy could spend time taking photos in Vondelpark and we could slow our pace after our exhilarating bike ride throug Amsterdam's Nine Streets and all the areas in between.
As far as biking in Amsterdam, it's not a matter of whether you are brave enough to fall into order--or chaos- with bike freeways that run alongside the many canals. You have to do it. When I asked Izzy what she thought of biking here, she smiled and laughed hysterically-it made both kids happy to ride through Amsterdam.
It's the easiest way to get around the city. The bike rules and everyone knows it so the few drivers on the road go slowly and the scooters are trying to figure out whether they are bikes or vehicles. The chaos is acceptable in this city where multimodal transportation options are the norm-Denver is still learning and growing to be a terrific biking city. Bikeways are separated from pedestrian sidewalks and from the vehicles on busier straats then softly combined onto the smaller cobbled pathways that everyone shares. Once you are sitting atop your upright city cruiser (we have four of them graciously offered by our Air BB hosts as transportation) you start pedaling and immediate fall into the pleasantry of the simple journey through the cobbled neighborhood to the Overtoomse, the busy east-west street that bisects our quiet residential high density townhome neighborhood from Vondelpark. The park is a favorite place already, full of yoga-goers, bootcampers, pot smokers (no we don't need any of that since its legal in our state:)) and families often lying down staring into the partly cloudy skies or looking off into the many lakes and water sprays through high tree canopies that shape the park's multiple pathways.
We wandered though the park and right into a fascinating survey of Henri Matisse at the modern art Stedelijk Museum. While I would never fancy myself a lover of fine art or the stuffiness of wandering an art exhibit to grasp meaning in each piece, I've found the art exhibitions in Europe do a really lovely job of teaching viewers about the foundations of the artist's early works to the more mature pieces that become familiar in elementary art class education.
Art class for the day: Matisse fell ill later in his career, preventing him from standing to paint on the canvas as much. Instead, he adapted cubism, pointillism, and fauvism forms to create his unique chosen forms of paper cutout art-the Matisse you might know with bright vivid colors, somewhat abstract shapes resulted from the work of his asistants who would paste up the cut forms and poise them at his directive to create works like Oceania. It was then Matisse's eye for brilliant original colors that finished the pieces to create happy, fun and accessible pieces that even made Andy Warhol exclaim he "wanted to be Matisse." While I know I enjoyed the exhibit more than my family, they never howled once and let me enjoy that moment-another victory in family vacation.
We continued to cruise via canal taxibus, another way to traverse Amsterdam along its beautiful flower lined canals.
We hopped on and off following a cruise around the Eye where the Amstel River flows out to the sea and where architecturally speaking, Amsterdam turns into an entirely different landscape of modernist forms and water industry.
Amsterdam is really the most lovely city to explore in depth. There is so much to see! Tomorrow, it's off to Sherlocked!-an escape room adventure that will truly test our ability to function as a family of four-Weeeeee!!!! If we make it out alive, we will head out for a day trip to Belgium.:)
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