DAY WeekEND+1

Saturday
Market day! Off to the Saturday market on the next block.....maybe need some vegys, bread, maybe some squid or octopus!

Next, cappuccinos of course, at our new favorite corner coffee shop, Moods (sorry, no weed). Actually coffee shops that sell marijuana are principally in central Amsterdam where all the tourists are. Here in Jordaan, as this neighborhood is called, are the "real" coffee shops and bars that cater to the locals. The owner of Moods is from Romania. He came to Amsterdam for the freedom and opportunity, which I guess is in short supply in Romania.....

In the afternoon we hike out to Rembrandt Park, alas probably our final wandering around Amsterdam since tomorrow (Sunday) will be packing day, and its probably going to rain anyway.

Rembrandt Park reminds of us Central Park in NYC, and is yet another of the many exceptional parks in and around Amsterdam. 

 

Happy Birthday......

.....Ginny

Well this is embarrassing, but yet again I forgot by a wide margin (possibly a Beatty trait) my sister's birthday......happy birthday Ginny!

picture of clueless brother below....

App Rap

I have to admit that when I was at Winthrop I would routinely ridicule the students about their obsessive behavior with their cell phones. At the time I didn't know they had "smart phones". I just figured they were texting each other, or playing some weird online game. My typical comments might include, "how many channels do you get on that thing?" or "you know, the radiation from that phone can destroy your brain cells". I of course still had my clunky flip phone, phone calls only, none of that weird texting which wasn't meant for human fingers.

Fast forward to September 2013, Starkville, when we decide to look into a new phone provider. At the CSpire store, the magic word was "free" as in free iPhone 4S, along with a pretty decent plan. My fate was sealed........

Welcome to the wonderful world of apps, Dave. Shall I list a few? sure.......
Weather Underground (radar!), Statewide FCU, AlertFM, Pandora, iHeartRadio, DropBox, Mozilla FoxBrowser, Blogger, FlyDelta, and many more. The best app that I know of and have used extensively on this trip is Pocket Earth. The app made getting around in Paris a breeze. Need to see a subway line and where it is going? Click on a station near you and you get all the lines running thru that station. 

 
















Need a walking route and distance? Save 2 locations and map the route. Really cool. Download it and you can map your routes thru like St. Augustine, or Batavia, in case you get lost!

DAY WeekEND

Friday

"The great thing about Amsterdam is that there is always someone weirder than you" 
-bartender at Arendsnest-

A free weekend to unwind, sleep a little later, and take the dirty clothes down to the wasserette run by the wacky dude from Pakistan (drop your clothes off in the morning, pick them up at the end of the day, slightly folded). Then head to the Architectura+Natura bookstore- the best architecture bookstore in Europe!- and let them ship home all the books (15 kg/33 lbs) that you bought on the trip.


Reflecting on the cost of the books and the shipping cost, we head for the bar. This will be our 3rd trip to Arendsnest (thank you Taze for that tip), a small bar with no TV (yaaa) and, most important, 30 varieties of Dutch beer on tap. Had an excellent Porter and an actual IPA, among others. The place was quiet so we had a nice chat with the bartender. He quite enjoyed living and working in Amsterdam, and when asked about impact of tourists, he said that most people weren't bothered, and that "tourists are part of Amsterdam and make it what it is". 

The subject naturally switched to marijuana, which in his view is not any kind of issue. He expounded some on the weed.........most marijuana is consumed by tourists in "coffee shops" (no surprise). The locals smoke some but most people still drink wine and beer. Marijuana in Amsterdam is not actually "legal". Locals can grow up to 5 plants for personal consumption and coffee houses can "sell" marijuana to consumers. Paradoxically the coffee houses don't "buy" the marijuana that they sell. They just sort of have it on hand, in the back with the bags of coffee I suppose. The Police are pretty much hands off unless somebody gets really crazy. Sounds like a great system. It could work in Starkville, right?

After Arendsnest, we wander down some canals (you always wander down canals), are surprised by a self-powered limo with drunk/stoned tourists,

check out an old gatehouse, one of the main gates in Amsterdam's medieval city wall, 

visit the Friday book mart in Spui Square (No More Books!), grab a cappuccino, head back to the apartment picking up the laundry on the way. A good Friday......

DAY WednesDAYthursDAY

Losing ground on the Posts again; could beer be a factor? 

This will be the final post for the Landscape Architecture Tour de Force.......stay tuned for final final words this weekend. We leave Monday for home. Fun fact: we leave Amsterdam at 11am Monday and arrive Boston at 1pm Monday.....a 2 hour flight! go Delta!

Wednesday was modern or post-modern [take your pick] urban development day. Met up with the students at the Bulldog hostel and hiked 2 miles to the Eastern Docklands (a good name for a novel or film), a sprawling development on former industrial/dockland "islands" with names like Sumatra and Borneo. We came in thru the Purple and mostly hung out in the Green which I believe is Borneo (see map below).


[from good ole' Wikipedia] "The Eastern Docklands (Oostelijk Havengebied) is a neighborhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands, located between the IJ and the Amsterdam–Rhine Canal. The harbor area was constructed in the late nineteenth century to allow for increasing trade with the Dutch East Indies; The area, about 2/3 water and 1/3 land, consists of an extension of the Oostelijke Handelskade, east of the center of town, and four artificial "islands" (peninsulas), all of which were former industrial and harbor locations. In the 1980s, the city decided to change the by now derelict area into space for residences, and even proposed to fill in the harbors. In the end, the harbors and islands remained intact, to create relatively quiet enclaves of residential neighborhoods^. In the early 2000s, after a large-scale reorganization, the Eastern Docklands was home to some 17,000 people living in some the highest population densities in the Netherlands."

..

On Thursday we took a short train ride down to Alphen aan dem Rijn, a small city known for its planning including Ecolonia, a sustainable community started in the 1990's.

The sustainable town planning project at Alphen aan den Rijn was commissioned by the Dutch national Environmental Agency in order to gain experience in the field of ecological town planning as well as in the area of ecological architecture. The project at Ecolonia developed several areas of sustainability including rainwater utilization; use of passive and active solar energy; reduction of water consumption; special attention to the aspects of healthy living, etc.

This was a well planned and relatively peaceful place. We met a couple out admiring the swans and they really liked living in the new development. They had returned to Alphen a/d Rijn after living in Germany.

DAY TuesDAY

aaaaaacccckkkk. It can't be Tuesday; its Wednesday! Tuesday's destinations were the Cuyp Market, and later Vondelpark. 

Open air markets in Amsterdam are common. One street over from our apartment is the Saturday market, which has everything- complete meat departments on wheels; nuts, a lot of nuts; fabrics; all kinds of clothing; shoes (a lot more than nuts); computer and smart phone accessories; miniature Walgreen's; fruits and vegetables (huge selection); herbs, of course; pet food and supplies. Don't need no grocery stores, go to the Saturday market.

Cuyp Market is sort of like that except it has become more or less permanent in that it is open 6 days a week (no Sunday!). We zip thru there, no time for souvenirs. We need details! We need architectural space! We need urban environment! We need FRIES!

Later a nearby park is discovered just 2 blocks from the market....and we haven't even made it to Vondelpark yet.
Next up is indeed Vondelpark, a medium sort of park, only 1 mile in length! Lots of interesting spaces here plus some sort of art

Amsterdam has such a variety of great parks.......perhaps another blog

DAY TuesDAY [Moscow]

It's now Tuesday [if] I am in Moscow (GMT + 4:00). 

It's still Monday here in Amsterdam (10:20pm, 4:20 pm your time)- the home team beat Chile 2-0, and are now undefeated in the World Cup. Its interesting that a soccer team can have such widespread popularity. Everywhere in Amsterdam people are wearing the orange. In Starkville, people are wearing the "maroon".....pretty much says it all.

DAY MonDAY

Back in Amsterdam. I must confess that I haven't seen one single prostitute. We must be in the wrong neighborhood. Some of the students inform me that yes, there are prostitutes. The students are living in the right neighborhood, at the hostel called- I am not kidding- the Bulldog (most definitely not associated with Mississippi State Univ).

Note: I don't really want to run into a prostitute, because then what? "hello, can I get your autograph for my friend Tom?"

Anyway, we are back to the Landscape Architecture field trip schedule. Today we visited the National Museum of the Netherlands (Rijks Museum), saw some nice Vermeer paintings and such......

 ....and then just down the street, went to the Van Gogh Museum (just kidding, that's not the Van Gogh museum)

Lots of nice art to look at but you know after about 2 hours in a gallery- and Leslie will confirm this- you start to get nauseous due to museum lighting and very intense staring. The brain has trouble with intense staring apparently.


Wasn't much else going on today.................oh, yeah, Netherlands beat Chile in the World Cup, everybody is going nuts!

Who is this guy?

Haarlem, ND, pop. 150,000

Saw this guy yesterday when we were at the market in the vicinity of the cathedral, then saw him again later in the afternoon when we were exploring the triangly park area. He was in an animated conversation with a younger man. Then, saw him yet again this morning as we were making our way to the train station to go to Zandvoort. 

He appears to be an immigrant type and my only conclusion is that he is some kind of wizard or shaman or shape shifter from the African continent.....I fully expect to encounter him somewhere in Amsterdam on Monday.....and no, I haven't been smoking anything.

DAY Now, Vandvoort- Sunday June 22nd, 2014

da Sea, da Sea! where is da plane? Actually saw some on approach to the Amsterdam airport

Its the North Sea, looking toward Norway I think. A nice sunny but cool day, not many people about, certainly not any naked ones (sorry). We had a cappuccino, now our standard coffee order and gazed at the sea...

or worked on our blogs.

















what the heck is going on with Che Guevara at Vandvoort by da Zee?

back to Amsterdam....


da train