This morning, I wandered around the canals, taking pictures of the quaint bikes and looking for pofferjus for breakfast - little flat dutch pancakes with butter and powdered sugar (they're not as easy to find as you'd think in the mornings in the Jordaan neighborhood). I spotted a giant grey heron perched on someone's handrail along the canal, and tiny shops that were barely awake themselves.
I stopped into the Westkerk (West Church, where Rembrandt was buried) but they were closed. They had blocked off the street shortly afterwards to carry a huge painted panel from a truck through the doors (it was probably returning from restoration).
I found a Delft shop for new and antique pottery. Delft is a town in the Netherlands known for manufacturing a blue and white hand-painted pottery which they learned from the Chinese. The shop was small, but packed to the gills with plates, vases, and ornaments. Everything was very expensive, but I finally settled on two Christmas ornaments, discounted for having past year's etched in their sides, but gave up trying to buy them after I stood behind a group of women trying to work out an exchange with the shop keeper, which was slow going and painful, given neither of them spoke the other's language, and neither group had mastered English, the language chosen for the negotiations.
At 11 am, we moved out of our sketchy Airbnb apartment on Spuistraat to a sweet little room near Dam Square - a place called Boogaard B&B. Derek met me and we walked our things to the new site, and when we entered our room, we were so excited to find it clean, airy and welcoming, complete with a SHOWER! (The last place we were didn't have one onsite - you had to bike 9 minutes away and go during certain hours to shower, so we hadn't been truly clean since we left the US). Derek went back to the Vaccine conference, and I wandered the streets.
I found what Rick Steves had referred to in his walking guide that we had tried to follow the day before, and got hopelessly off track from - the Bloemenmarkt (Flower Market). Stall after stall were filled with boxes of tulip bulbs, dried flowers, little printed faux delft souvenirs, and battery-operated buzzing bees and fluttering butterflies that circled the flowers and plants (complete with Do Not Touch signs). Near to the market was the Munttoren, or Mint Tower. The guard house on the side of the tower was used to mint coin in the 17th Century, until it was replaced by a new building in 1885. The tower has a Carillon on top which chimes every fifteen minutes, and it's 38 bells are a beautiful sound to hear.
Right below the tower is the Delft Blue shop. I learned from asking the shop owner how to differentiate the cheap tourist delft items from the real deal, and found some items that were discounted (I love a good sale). Down the street, I found the restaurant my friend, who lives locally, recommended - Cafe de Jaren (Jaren means "Years"). I got a small table on the balcony overlooking the canals. The food is amazing and the view was incredible - so much so that I got Derek and we returned here for dinner too!
I needed to round out my meal, so I went in search of the famous Van Stapele cookie. The tiny shop, located in a small alleyway in a bustling shopping area, serves just one kind of cookie. The dark chocolate cookie has a soft white chocolate center, and they bake them all day long, sealing your purchase in a wax bag with a gold seal sticker. I was especially excited to find this on my own since several tours offer to take you to these special cookies but won't tell you the name of the shop (you have to do the tour to find out). Thank goodness for my friend Ashton and her infinite wisdom!
I had been debating whether I should spend time trying to get into the Anne Frank house. When we had tried to purchase tickets online in advance, they were sold out for months, and I had heard the line could reach epic proportions, the likes of which would make parents at Disney World cry. But, at 2:45, there wasn't anything else pressing on my agenda, so I decided to give it a try. I sat on the curb behind several hundred people, a whole 45 minutes before they'd even open. I spent the time chatting with a mother and daughter from Denmark and the time went quickly - it took about an hour and 15 min to get in.
The museum is well laid out. It didn't feel rushed or crowded, and each display moved you along without too much pause. Anne's room affected me the most. The pictures she had stuck on the wall to make the cold, dark, small room more "cheerful" made me very sad. She had a picture of strawberries that reminded me that she never could go outside, and that the photo of the plant was the closest she would get to the outdoors in the two years she was there. The original bookcase was still there, blocking the entrance to the hiding space - it was neat, and tragic, to experience going into the very empty rooms. Imagining 8 people living here, keeping quiet all day long, with curtains closed tight and their very lives dependent on it all staying a secret was sobering. At the end, in a temporary exhibit, they had her 3rd grade class' school picture. Of the 30 students, 15 were Jewish, and 9 didn't survive the war. Looking at the numbered labels for such tiny, innocent people, knowing that they'd be killed for something that had nothing to do with them at all, was so depressing, even more so that it still happens today. This wasn't a history lesson - it was a mirror, reflecting our choices today, and how policy and governments and economics affect real people. It was worth the entry fee and the wait.
On our walk back for Cafe de Jaren that night, we found a castle that had been turned into a restaurant, and I pulled Derek into dark alleyways to track down the steeple of a church that was under construction. Then, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the red light district. We might have had a clue when a woman in a bikini behind a glass door was lit by the red lamp light above her, and another half dozen others followed. Then, we hit the main canal road, and my goodness - it's hard to describe. Immediately I had concerns about seeing this area with my parents, who planned on visiting it with us when they join us in a few days. Not sure I'm in love with that idea....
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