Not Featured in the Brochure...

Although we love our apartment, there is one feature you won't find highlighted in the rental company's website: the stairways.

Prinsengracht 841 is a four-story canal house with the rental apartment situated on the top two floors. The house seems to be a bit wider than is typical -- about 15 feet from one-side of the house to the other. As with all houses of this style, it is two to three times deeper than it is wide. However, this still puts space at a premium, meaning homeowners try to give as little space to stairways as possible. At the same time, ceilings are of a generous height. The result is an approach to staircase design that would have presented a climbing challenge to Sir Edmund Hilliary.

There are actually three different staircases between the street entry and the bedroom level; each that rises at a vertical angle in the low 80's and two with severe twists and turns. Fortunately, we only had a few hundred pounds of oversized luggage with us. The expedition also inclueds a dutiful (if woefully underpaid) sherpa (me).

Rain on the Plein

Screenwriter William Goldman ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") once wrote that there were only three rules for success in Hollywoody. The first and most important was: "Nobody knows anything." I've come to the conclusion that the same is true of global weather services predicting weather for Amsterdam.

It's a beautiful day today, but only twelve hours or o ago there were all day "showers" predicted by weather.com. Now, since it has probably rained at least a little 17 of the 21 days we've been here, I've come up with a phrase I think the prognosticators could use to sum up for a "normal" day: "Amsterdamp."

Below photo is of the three of us in the relative dryness of a bicycle taxi.

Kings of the Road

The weather cleared up over the weekend and we finally rented bikes. I can't believe I've been to Amsterdam five times and this is the first time ever to rent a bike. My recommendation to all visitors is to rent a bike immediately -- even if you're only here for a few hours. Do a bit of homework regarding how to distinguish bike paths from car paths from pedestrian paths and you'll be ready to go. (Many of the locals make no such distinction and are hell bent on running down any tourist who dares step foot in a bike path, but that's their privilege as locals.) Even if you just have a few hours layover in Amsterdam, you can easily take a train from he airport to Central Station (about twenty minutes); there's a Mac Bike rental right at the station.

So, we had a couple of great days biking around Vondel Park (Amsterdam's version of Central Park). We also found a great playground there and Olivia made a new friend named Elfie. She speaks little English and Olivia speaks no Dutch, so there are no words to get in the way of the pure language of play.

The last couple of days, it's been raining pretty much all the time. When it's not raining, it treatens to rain. Still, whenever it clears and we venture out, it is sometimes as much as 50 degrees cooler than Las Vegas! It's very much like being on another planet. The photo of Diana and Olivia below was taken on one of the famous "Seven Bridges," a beautiful, linear run of small bridges not far from Rembrandtplein.

Rainbow Coalition

Finding Nemo

"The best museum I've ever been to. Let's go back tomorrow." - Olivia

Nemo is the name of Amsterdam's wonderful Science and Technology Museum. It's fun for everyone, but was designed specifically for children. Every one of the hundreds of exhibits is interactive in some way, shape or form.

It made for a great outing as we first had to figure out the tram system well enough to get there. Fortunately, this is not a difficult task as all roads (or at least all tram lines) pretty much lead to Central Station. From there, there is a long walkway running next to and over the waterfront that will take you right to the front door of the museum.

Below is a photo Olivia took of Diana and I on the foot bridge leading to the musuem. She has a great eye and tends towards a low angle perspective; perhaps it has something to do with being four feet tall?

Food worth Eating

It's a cliche that the food in Europe is exponetially better than in the US -- but like a lot of cliches -- it's completely true. How can it be that a simple pasta with a few basic ingridents, an unadorned piece of fish or a grilled vegetable can be so much better here? Obviously, it's the quality of the ingridents themselves.

One of the great surprises of Amsterdam for first time visitors is the huge diversity of food types: Italian, French and Spanish, of course, but also Argentine, Thai, Cambodian, Brazilian, Surmianese -- and I don't even know where that is! The second great surprise; it's all good.
Last night we ate at a neighborhood Italian place that can't be more than a few hundred yards from the apartment. Diana had pasta in a white sauce with calamari and loads of peas; I had fettucine with sweet red peppers. Both were better than anything you could get a five-star restaurant in Las Vegas.

Of course, now that I think about it, it may be that we've just been lucky so far. Knowing that my faithful reader (or maybe there's even more than one of you by now) relies heavily on these posts as a source of accurate information, I vow to test as many different food items as possible in the coming months. A lesser man (smaller stomache, greater willpower) might shrink away from this task, but it's something I feel I can readily grow into.

ANKLE UPDATE: Did a fair amount of walking today. Slow and painful, but well worth it just to get views like the one below -- the Keizersgracht around sunset. Tomorrow...a bike!

"Prisoner of Prinsengracht" - A Poem of Lameness

Pity not the Prisoner of Prinsengracht
The victim of a devil clock
That did at 4 am begin to squawk

Pity not the Prisoner of Prinsengracht
who to his ass was swiftly knocked
Who yells, “On slippery floors a pox!”

Pity not the Prisoner of Prinsengracht
The man whose lameness serves as lock
Upon the door that barrs him from a walk

Pity not the Prisoner of Prinsengracht
The man whom passers-by do subtly mock
By striding limpless round and round his block

Pity not the Prisoner of Prinsengracht
Ridiculously attired in one shoe, one sock
Pity him not in day or "nacht"
'cuz Heniken beats Rolling Rock
Especially with the view from 841 on Prinsengracht

After the Fall - July 2, 2007

Okay, so the medicine is helping. Made from an age-old Sicilian formula using nero d'avalo grapes, it's a hundred perecent natural (not to mention 26% proof). It's definitely taken the sting out of the (mostly) mental anguish of being a Prisoner of Prisengracht 841.

On the other hand, the incredible views from the kitchen window seem to be mocking me. In fact, if you zoom in on the side of the boat shown in the photo on the left, you'll notice the sarcastic promotional text scrawled on at the side: "Fun Hop On." Very funny! Apparently making fun of the infirm is a national pastime here in the Netherlands.

Here I sit, as confined to my kitchen chair as Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window -- except his had wheels! I can only pray that I'll soon spot some suspicious behavior through the window of a nefarious neighbor across the canal so I can keep myself occupied and my mind "clarity" sharp.

In the meantime, a constant stream of bikers, walkers, and boaters file past on Prisengracht-- all reminding me of my abject immobility. Of course, I was not the only one in the house impacted by the errant four am alarm -- as you can see from the photo below.

A Tale of "Whoa!" -- July 2, 2007

The alarm sounded at exactly four am.

Apparently this shriking, digital device of the devil had been left activated by the previous tenant who had had an early flight out the day before. (NOTE: There is now a contract out on this person's life; information as to his/her whereabouts will be richly rewarded.)

I leapt out of bed in a stupor, determined even in my hazy, jet-lagged, more-than-half-asleep state to throw the damn thing out the window before it could wake Olivia. Speed was of the essence as the alarm was growing louder and more shrill by the second. I’d taken one giant step from the bed when I crashed to the floor like a stoned englishmen at one of the local "coffee shops." My right leg, it turned out, was completely asleep. And the lack of any feeling from my thigh down combined with the typical fun-house slope of a 400 year old canal house and slippery wood floors caused my downfall – literally.

To make a long story marginally less long – Olivia was awakened by the *%$#@ alarm and never went back to sleep. I did manage to get back to sleep, but when I woke up, found my right ankle swollen and tender along the top and completely useless in supporting my weight.

So, here we are in one of the most beautiful “walk cities” in the world, and I’m unable to walk – at least for a couple of days. When Diana described the perfection of the cappuccinos served to the “dine here” patrons at the bakery shop around the corner, I nearly wept. I never thought being a “take-away” diner would make me feel like a second-class citizen, but there you have it; such is the sorry state of treatment we in the disabled minority have come to expect despite years of struggle.

Arrival -- July 1, 2007

The amber-tinted street lights glow softly in ripples of the Prinsengracht. The reflections, falling as they do at regular intervals, look like linear clusters of aquatic fireflies dancing just beneath the surface of the canal waters.

The surface continues to undulate gently even though the steady stream of Sunday afternoon and evening boaters has begun to subside. It’s Sunday, the first day of July, 2007. And although it’s a bit past 10:00 pm as I write this, the sky above Amsterdam still holds the soft light of a sun that simply refuses to yield to the night.

We’re told that it’s been raining for weeks, but the clouds cleared up this afternoon and spawned a beautiful afternoon – sunny and about 70 degrees. For three visitors coming straight from the 108 degree temperatures of Las Vegas, there’s only one word for it: heaven.