Canals, Museums, and Starbucks (Day 2)

After telling Monique, our hostess at Inn on the Lake, that we are early risers and would certainly be to breakfast by 8, we slept past the dawn and climbed out of bed at 8:45.  For Mom, that meant a whole 12 hours of sleep at one stretch!   She was amazed when she realized it and insisted that it was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. 

Coddled eggs, a basket of hot rolls, fresh-squeezed orange juice, tropical fruits, and (again) tiny cups of coffee greeted us at our table overlooking the lake.  

Any leftover rolls were tossed to a yard full of waiting ducks, quacking and squawking in a frenzy of excitement.   After breakfast we took Mom to see the Gereformerde Kerk  across the street, and again marveled at the history and beauty of the church, with its massive white columns down the central aisle, the barrel-wood painted ceilings and magnificent 1600s stained glass window. 

We then hopped onto a bus that took us to Amsterdam Central Station in a mere 12 minutes.  The outer structure of the Central Station itself is a marvel.  

We walked through the bustling, busy hallways to the riverside offices of the canal boats.  We decided on the museum line, which allowed us to get off at the Anne Frank House and the Rijksmuseum, the two places we thought we could do in the time we were there.  

Mom was great, stepping from the quay to the gently rocking boat, then climbing down stairs into the roomy cabin below, then climbing back up again at every stop.  We trundled her walker along with us wherever we went—it rolled proudly ahead of Mom down all the sidewalks and streets, looking just as elegant and accomplished as she did.  What a woman!

It was eye-opening to us to realize that Amsterdam is a network of canals, a ringwork of waterways on which passes a constant procession of every kind of small watercraft.  In the very center of Amsterdam, the canals are lined with skinny 16^th and 17^th-century three-story houses with tall windows that crowd against each other, rich with history from the lives of artists, merchants, refugee Jews, seafarers, and bankers who made Amsterdam their home.   

You can get to almost any part of the old city by boat.  Often sides of the canals are lined with houseboats of all kinds:  elegant, seedy, dilapidated, cheery, new, old.   And everywhere you look, thousands of bikes...

We got out of our tour boat at the Anne Frank House, but when we saw the long lines, we decided that seeing the outside of the house was good enough.  

We walked the next block to the Westerhuis Church, at one time the largest Protestant church in Europe.  We stopped at a charming café for lunch (pea soup and garlic bread) and enjoyed the resident cat as well.  

But lunch took too long—we missed the free organ concert at the church, where a very stern Dutch man turned us away from the door.  “It makes too much noise if I let you in,” he said.  The Dutch are a bit precise, irritable, and condescending, we noticed.  A subtly different attitude from that of the States, and Gayle proclaimed that it made her feel very good to be living there instead of here!

Our next stop on the canal cruise was the Rijksmuseum, where we enjoyed some glorious Rembrandt paintings. 

Then, footsore and weary, we had had enough.  We climbed back into the canal boat, sailed back to the main harbor, and found the Starbucks at Amsterdam’s Central Station. 

Then we headed back to calm, quaint little Broek-in-Waterland and a quiet dinner at the Pannakoeken Huis, where Gayle got daring and ordered a spinach, feta cheese, and nut pancake for dinner.  A full day, in which Mom was a trooper—always cheerful, always interested, always happy.  What a great traveling companion!