No coffee for you… the end.

 

Travel info meter set to 100%   Sunday/Monday  June 11-12   Our last few hours in Italy were spent walking to the tram, tram to train, and train to airport, for our final leg of the journey to Amsterdam. Being Sunday, our coffee shop was closed, no more smiles, no more sweets to start the day…. arghhhh

 

We said ” Ciao bella Italy” as Rome was left behind from our view out the window. Away from the hot, sunny south and back to a latitude more like our own.

It had been an uneventful escape as we had become more accomplished at mastering schedules and finding the locations to catch the various transportation methods that were now integral to getting around.

Same for the flight, no drama, just Carol by the window and me in the middle beside an Aussie farmer who liked to talk… perfect.

Aussie George as I’ll call him was a compact man, booming voice, which in a plane isn’t always an attribute,  and his skin freckled from so much time in the sun that it looked like painted on camouflage.  Of course he had the requisite outback hat and an accent that would make Crocodile Dundee sound like Winston Churchill.

I, taking my cue, led him through his work-related duties, does he like cars (one of my standard inquiries), how big are Australian Road Trains really, typical weather stuff, Trump (everybody mentions him when they find out you’re Canadian/American), and of course what was his opinion on the  Large Hadron Collider (he had no opinion, that one stumps most people). He asked me nothing (par for the course, I am only here to serve).

After a half hour of mentally translating his accent and with ears ringing from his volume I called the conversation finished. He retired to some reading material, promptly fell asleep with his mouth open, and I acknowledged that Carol was still beside me and I gave her a few minutes of my attention.

Twenty-four hours a day for over 5 weeks, we didn’t need words to communicate any more. We could tell by body language,  how rumpled our clothes were and by odor,  what the other was thinking. Sometimes it was an eyebrow lift, a nod of the head that it was time to go, and lots of handholding  (usually to keep the other from tripping over uneven cobblestones,  or being creamed by a scooter, or falling over a railing (or usually a lack of railing). We were that “oh, that’s so cute” couple now.

We landed , collected our gear, and followed the explicit directions our next host had left for us through the Airbnb website as all are required to do. Just take this train from the airport,  then this metro, then exit left (no, not that left, the other left) walk down the bike path (what bike path?), through the park, past the garden , past  signs that had more vowels than Jimmy Carter has teeth, and you’re there (except you have to call the neighbour because the host is at work or playing tennis or teaching yoga)… you can’t miss it. An hour and a half into our 25 minute trip we were there.

The room was unusual. It was a ground floor bedroom with lots of windows but they all had privacy glass because the walkway to the complex was right beside us. There were pictures on the walls,  a table with 2 chairs, dresser, bookcase with dishes, kettle and the usual fare. But it had an industrial feel to it, an efficiency that screamed Dutch. Stone floors, as almost every stay has had, no baseboard or trim, whitish walls, twin chandeliers  (nice touch), and Ikea-style lamps. No more 10 foot ceilings, warm colors,  birds singing outside,  and reassuring traffic and pedestrian noises that we had become accustomed to.

The neighbour, Nicolene, showed us the ropes on how the keys worked, a list of sites to check out, and how the toilet flushed. Then off into the not-so-wild blue yonder we tramped.  Back through the park, past the garden, etc., etc. and onto the Metro into town.

When you exit Centraal Station you are pummeled by the tourist strip along with 1,000s of others just like you, except they aren’t just like you because Amsterdam collects oddities from around the world probably because of their open lifestyle and attitudes. So what you wear is less important than the previous countries we traveled through, and the romanticism is more subdued, but still on display if you look a little harder.

It’s cheese and waffles and beer vs. pasta, sweets, and wine that we had become used to. Some things stayed the same, like Amsterdam, because it is sliced and diced with canals and 240 bridges is a perfect storm for those that orient themselves by the seat of their pants or a paper map. I won’t get specific, but we circled back over our routes a quadrillion times (“whaaat! I can’t believe it! NOT AGAIN! was a common refrain). Seriously,  we check the map at every intersection, but the names are insanely complicated and you can’t sound them out because the vowels are tripping over themselves and my tongue only understands Canadian.

Despite our usual clumsiness it is a great city to get lost in and we had no Eiffel Tower, Colloseum, or Sagrada Familia to chase down, just the Dutch architecture that was everywhere.

There was interesting people watching from the cafes and bars that we stopped in, and great food. Sausage, mustards, kiwi jam, tapanade, and sauerkraut all hit the spot.

Andrea, our host, had spent some time with us the first evening pointing out districts that had specific meaning and we concentrated our movements primarily in those areas.

The bike lanes are unbelievable!  They have total priority over everything and everyone else. Nobody slows down at all and it is a veritable ballet at intersections and a nightmare for aging North American tourists. Plus scooters, and even motorcycles used them and they would be careening past within 12-18” of you as you walked along narrow walks with window wells to watch out for, and low awnings, and no boulevards to act as a cushion. It was exhilarating actually and I much prefer it to the nanny state back home where nobody is liable for their actions, and rules and regulations denude any outside-the-box thinking and by doing so thwart any attempt at building a culture that spawns artistic flair and impedes individual thinking that could lead us to some exciting new place in our lives (that my friends is the second longest sentence of my life, but I meant every word).

It’s now Tuesday morning and yesterday was a lovely day with a picnic in Vandelpark, capped off by a canal cruise.

It’s time to close the book on this trip and make ready for the homeward journey. You can tell it has made a profound mark on both of our lives but home is still home and there are responsibilities to attend to and loved ones to hug. Thanks for spending some time with us and see you all soon.

Love, Dennis and Carol