THU MAR 16 (day 5)
Bike Day #1. First lesson: you can really zip around town on a bicycle here! We overshot our first destination by half a mile, thinking, "We couldn't have gotten so far so fast".
The Horticultural Gardens were not on our borrowed Museumkaarts, so we opted for Micropia instead. This museum was devoted to microbes. It appeared brand new, impressive considering the hoards of school kids that must go through the place. Entering, we were ushered into big, freight-sized elevator. It had a welcome/intro video on the ceiling. There were lots of Zeiss microscopes hooked up to joysticks and video screens. It was all very fun and interactive, and extremely well done. You stamped a card at various displays and “collected: microbes. Fun!
Lunched at Plantage (same name as the neighborhood) right on the Micropia/Zoo grounds. Big, outdoor-ish setting in sort of a greenhouse. Got blasted by the sun - sunglasses were a necessity. Yet another great, reasonably-priced lunch.
Biked around the Eastern Dockland islands. All reclaimed land, fairly recently. Modern architecture, mostly apartment buildings. Many interesting bridges between both little and big canals. Little ones had cool sculpted iron foot/bike bridges. Took lots off photos of the larger Anaconda snake bridge.
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| Anaconda bridge, with bike |
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| Anaconda bridge, with boat |
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| Anaconda footbridge, showing the funky lights |
Had a beer at the windmill Brewery on the IJ.
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| Windmill, brewery, and, of course, bikes. |
Stopped by a local bike shop to get Betsy’s seat adjusted. You can buy a big, black, upright, step-through Dutch city bike for around 300 Euros. Plus racks, of course.
In the evening we went to the opening of the William Eggleston “Los Alamos” photography exhibit at the FOAM (Photography Museum), which is in a converted canal house across from the van Loon Museum. Very cool - he printed with an older Kodak dye absorption process to carefully control color saturation. Lots of crusty Americana!
Dinns later at an Ethiopian restaurant. They give you a huge, soft flatbread which you tear pieces off of and use them to pinch off bits of your food. No silverware. Chicken, beef bits, spices. Small place - 5 tables or so.
Stopped by the local “big” grocery on the way home. Stocked top on greek yogurt, cheese, crackers, and chocolate.
Bob stayed up WAY too late doing laundry and chatting with our BNB host Paul.
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| Old Citroen ambulance |
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