Amsterdam, take 2

We arrive back to Amsterdam in full tulip season. We are going to meet up with Julia and her Mum Ewa for a weekend here to take in spring.

The downtown area and the old town are truely packed with tourists. We still manage to circumnavigate the place and get to see the Amsterdam red light district. Quite interesting…..

We learn that the houses here are built on wooden stilts sunk into the canals and this explains why there is so much leaning and slanting in the buildings. There is also an interesting statistic about the number of bicycles used to get about in Amsterdam, which is ~ 880 000 and a large number of those end up in the canals as roads are narrow and people travel at great speeds, an unbelievable 20 000 or so a year!

Julia arrives and we have a lot to catch up on. The apartment we are staying in is a little out of town and  has a wonderful floor to ceiling wall across all the rooms made of glass, that looks out onto a canal and a park. We are on the 7th floor and as a treat we notice there is a duck nest at eye level, currently being spring it is occupied with Mum and Dad taking turns in the nest:)

The day is spent exploring the city and finished of with a really nice Syrian meal in a restaurant on one of the major canals. They seem to be so busy that our car is going to run out of meter time and André heads out to its rescue. We manage to get a nice take away for him and reunite by the car which is squeezed into a parking spot by the canal only com’s front and back. Our knight in shining armour gets it extricated spot and does not contribute to the statistics of cars in canals:)

Next morning we head out to find the tulip fields. The weather is a little dodgy with patchy rain. We still manage to get amazing colours planted in long strips.

Apart from long rows of tulips it is also the time of hyacinth planting. So there are rows and rows of different colored hyacinths and the fragrance is stunning.

These fields are not planted to be visually appealing to tourists, it’s a huge industry of worldwide bulb export and distribution. We just happen to be lucky enough to be here when they are all blossoming.

We finish the day with a journey to Rotterdam and Julia goes back home. Rotterdam looks very futuristic in its architecture and I feel there will be a Jetsons hovercraft coming around the corner.