We arrived at the Schipol after an overnight flight from Atlanta, Georgia, of course not well rested but excited nevertheless. We are (oh it hurts to say this) a middle aged couple (south of 50) travelling with our fourteen year old daughter and her best friend, a wonderful girl named Nina. I've never read an interesting trip account where the facts of the travelling company did not contribute to the enjoyment of any experience. I'll just say that it is wonderful for our only daughter to have a friend, otherwise she would simply drive us nuts and vice versa. My husband and I are easy travelling companions; we like the same amount of down time and enjoy being in a place without doing all of the tourist activities. Our fourteen year old, on the other hand, considers Disneyland the epitome of a good time, so introducing her to Europe is a treat if not a bit of a challenge.

The first challenge of getting into Amsterdam was so easy, it presented no challenge whatsoever. These people have public transportation down. A central station which functions as the hub of all modes is fantastic. We have nothing like this where I come from. We have cars, end of story. Now I've been to New York and taken the subway and seen a city function well with public transportation but Amsterdam surpasses all expectations. The cars and trucks are a minority here in the city center. Bikes rule!

Nothing could prepare me for the quantity of bikes; no statistics could explain the density of people crossing paths with inches to spare, flying along helmetless, ladies in high heels and men in suits, kids on the way to school and little boxes on the front of bikes full of babies which must be a pre-school in transit, your grandmother whipping by, no obvious traffic signs but the whole thing working so well without signage or traffic signals...people who had been here warned me before we came that you've got to watch out for the bikes, but unless you're here you'd think that would be easy. There are, generally speaking, no curbs, so the sidewalks and the streets are basically a mesh of bricks, but the sidewalks are truly narrow and the street is often demarked by small verticle iron columns every six feet or so. I can't help but notice their penile shape (circumcised), but what one must really notice is that if step beyond this line, you're in the bikepath. And they're counting on you to be paying attention, which is hard when you're appreciating the canal views or the charming architecture or taking a photo, but it's almost like stepping onto the freeway in the US except bikes are coming from both directions with an occaissional scooter or car or truck thrown in and these lanes are busy so TOURIST BEWARE.

They see you, but they're also counting on you to get out of the way so you've got to learn fast. My husband thinks Amsterdamers have eyes int he back of the heads, but our little Nina has already been struck twice and cursed out once, so we try to keep her very close and do all crossings together. But what I really want to say is that their commitment to bikes is worth studying, it may even be the key to reducing global warming, and it certainly makes for a trimmer bodies. Plus I love two aspects that Americans do not get; it's not about the bike, as Lance says. These are mostly English style cruisers with hand brakes in basic black, and not one rider is wearing a helmet. Sometimes I see babies, when their seat is in the front, behind a mini windscreen like a motorcycle might have, and they're probably stapped in their seats, but I think in general these people are not having accidents. We have heard and seen exactly one ambulance in the four days we have been here. I'd like to know about their head injury rate; where I come from, Tucson AZ, the majority of bikers (who are actually a great minority) are the racing type with expensive funny clothes and expensive bikes and all wearing hemlets, which seems like a good thing because a certain small number are sacrificed (killed) every year due to close encounters with motorists. I don't know why it works here and why it can't work there...our roads are five times wider than theirs, and believe me they are sharing with cars, and on the busier streets, fast moving trams and buses as well. I guess it goes back to tradition; I don't think they just took up biking. Our guide book shows an Amsterdam poster from the 1890's encouraging biking for good health. Maybe it's like democracy, and they've been practicing so long they're just really good at it. But every American should see this, and maybe people smarter than me can figure out how to import it. When I do go home, I'm going to ride my bike more, is all I have to say.

But I did intend to anchor this story here in the Hotel Weichman. I found this place on line, where there was scant information, but a few photos showed authentic antiques and spacious room, but I could not have imagined how truly lovely it could be. The lobby is cozy and the desk clerks very friendly. When you pause there you can notice wooden ice skates hanging off the fireplace or the old tiny black canon, which looks real, next to the fireplace. The owner has large German shepard who sprawls wherever he pleases and gives the whole place that homey feel, since he is home. We walk up one flight of stairs to a large room with creaky wooden floors and thick persian rugs, and best of all tall windows overlooking the canal. These windows are at least eight feet tall and they curve out, all three of them, and they open, wide and easily, so you could hang out them to talk to the people in the street below. The girls have their own adjoining room, which can be closed off with large sliding wooden doors with stained glass panels. They can lie in there and talk to each other for hours, and they too have large windows that open onto a little garden patio. When one exhausts oneself in an exciting city, visiting the requisite museums, it is glorious to come back to a room like this. The windows all have sheer curtains and heavy floral drapes so that we can have any amount of privacy or light as we want. Maybe all of the hotels in Amsterdam are so wonderful, but I don't even want to leave to find out...

When we go down to our self serve breakfast in the morning we are doubly rewarded, because the breakfast selection is fresh and tasty toast and jam and juice, or coddled eggs and sliced meats and cheeses, or my favorite, the muescli (granola with milk), and the endless cups of deliciously strong coffee. And in addition to the culinary delights the room itself, with it's lovely antiques and delftware and sunflowered table clothes under glass, are the enormous glass windows that reveal an intersection of a bridge crossing the canal, the street that runs along the canal and a street that runs into the Jordaan neighborhood behind us. This is prime real estate for watching the convergence of hundreds of hundreds of people, walking, driving but mostly biking on their way to work or school in the morning. Before we've had our second cup we've seen people crossing lanes with inches to spare but no accidents and few people seem to ever actually stop, unless, say, a diminutivegarbage truck is backing up straight at them. They go with their wet hair from morning showers pedalling like everyday wherever they go. And we, from the car culture across the water, watch in absolute amazement and adoration and awe. It'll take another cup of coffee for me to go out and dive in.

We dove way in two days ago when we were walking back from the Waterloopein and Mommy decided to check out a coffee shop. Smoking a little pot is something I do regularly back where the stuff is illegal, so imbibing a little in Amsterdam was expected by all my my friends back home so I thought of it as something I simply had to do. So my husband, who really doesn't like smoking, accompanied me like the good sport he is into the coffee shop. There was almost all guys in there and we looked at the book of choices and right away we picked the Skunk (which I remember one of my friends telling me after trying all the various higher grades he discovered the cheap stuff preferred by locals was the best), which was the least expensive, and my husband specifially told the girl "no tobacco" mixed in which as a nonsmoker he really hates. So this girl with kaliedescope eyes handed me this extra long skunk week joint for five euros with it's own built in paper filter and my husband and I proceeded to pass it back and forth and without further ado we got high. Did I mention the girls were out shopping on the same street with us? Well I longed to go back out into the world and just sit and ended up on a black marble bench facing De Waag, which I found out later was built into the wall that surrounded Amsterdam in the 1400's. From my very stoned viewpoint I could tell it was REALLY OLD and it was looking exactly like a castle. My husband shuttled back and forth between the girls and the stores and me on the bench and finally we decided that I should get up and we should go into De Waag for at least a seltzer water and immediately I had to use the restroom which was down a very small stairway in kind of a carvern and European bathroom stalls are much smaller than there American counterparts anyway and this was sort of hewn rock and really small and I had a little bit of a panic attack down there and came back up thinking I've got to get out of here, which my nice husband hastily agreed to help me do, but back out on the steet the sum effect of the narrow streets and the houses built with their fronts leaning forward (which I later read was to accomodate the big hooks on the top when you wanted to haul something to the third floor and not bang it against the building) was all a little too much for this stoned Mama and we decided I should go back to our sanctuary, Hotel Weichman, although it did occur to me that what I really needed was an emergency flight back to Arizona where there are no very old buildings to freak me out. One hundred years I can handle, but 500 years seems like an overcrowding of ghosts or something, at least when I'm stoned, so I raced back to the hotel and threw up which made me feel much better fast and also later served as a good anti-drug warning to the girls, ("Don't smoke drugs, you'll freak out and puke") who were about to have an excellent time walking back through the red light district with Daddy, who was feeling the full weight of responsiblity for this magical mystery tour.

later

Sitting in my second story hotel room in Hotel De Plataan in the city of Delft.  In front of me is one of these huge green trees with bark like suede, big maple like leaves and fuzzy green balls that turn brown and drop off.  The tree towers above the second story and the square below.  After Utrecht and Rotterdam all I can say is Delft is sweet and mellow.The pace is slower, there's kids in the street, and we even feel safe enough for our kids to rent bikes and tool around.  There's hardly any cars in the city center, so sharing the road seems much easier.  After days of clouds and showers the sun is out this morning, and while everyday has been beautiful, this one is even more so because it is our last.  Tonight we will fo to Amsterdam and tomorrow we will leave early, back to Atlanta and then Tucson.  It's funny how you forget all about home while travelling... the animals that need me, the business, the bills.  I'm sure life here has changed immensely over the centuries but they are living in the same homes, the same streets as generations before them, the butcher shops and the pharmacies sometimes unchanged...crossing squares that people have been crossing for 600 years... civilization in a continum, all the outdoor cafes?  Is it as calm and steady as it seems?  In a way, I don't want to go back to car world, the world of buildings thrown up carelessly on the long strips, no walking world.  I liked this.  Thank you, Delft.  Thank you, Holland.


MAB