Amsterdam Flower Market

Our best fare on our way back from Norway involved a 24-hour layover in Amsterdam. Since what we saved would be more than the hotel room, we thought, why not? We'd get to see one more Western European city (a little of it, anyway), and break up our marathon flight.


Amsterdam is charming. It's built over canals, like Venice (one of its nicknames is "Venice of the North"--do you think they call Venice "Amsterdam of the South"?), but the canals are more narrow. Our hotel was near the Singel canal, which is the oldest canal in the city.







Amsterdam is a medieval city, but most of the buildings in the part of town we stayed in date from the 16th and 17th centuries. It's a small city, but heavily populated--I took most of these pictures in the morning, before the crowds came out onto the streets.







Still, someone was up--I've tagged this next one "Got Milk?"





But the coolest thing about the Singel canal--to me, anyway--was that it leads to the Amsterdam Flower Market, which is several blocks long and built out over the canal. This is the back side, from across the canal--with the front side painted on.





Notice the tops of the tall buildings (probably former warehouses)--I'll talk more about those in a minute.

The flower market was gardener's paradise--cut flowers, potted flowers, bulbs, seeds--it was hard to be satisfied with pictures. Here's one of my favorites, black dahlias:

Some gorgeous sunflowers:

Lilies, lilies, lilies:

Crocosmia and chocolate cosmos:

I very carefully took a picture of the bulb package next to this plant--but I didn't get the species name in the frame, so I don't know what it is! I assume it's some kind of lily--the cultivar is called "Gloriosa Rothschildiana":

Carniverous plants were very popular, especially pitcher plants:

And bulbs everywhere:

There are very strict regulations about which bulbs may be brought back into the U.S., and they're not the most interesting ones. And that's all I have to say about that.

We did see a few sites beyond the flower market. Here's one of those buildings I mentioned earlier--see the decorative gismo at the top?

Here's a close-up. It's a little crane--when these were warehouses (they seem to be apartments now), barges would come down the canals, moor next to the building, and the cranes would haul the goods up into the warehouse. Salix could be a tour guide.

We saw other sites--and sights! This is a statue of Multatuli, pen name of Eduard Dekker, a famous satirist and critic of Dutch colonialism in the East Indies (Indonesia):

This gorgeous building is now a shopping mall:

This is the Westerkirk, where Rembrandt is reputedly buried:

We didn't see nearly as much of the city as we would have liked, because we were there for only an afternoon and evening and because I spent so much time in the Flower Market. We missed some of the things for which the city is famous, like Anne Frank's house and the Van Gogh museum. But we did get some sense that Amsterdam is a bit of a party town (the beer for two euro was SUCH a deal after the $12 beers in Norway!):

We couldn't figure out what this building was--we think apartments--maybe the tenants frequent the coffee shops? (more on those in a minute)

Salix at the Torture Museum (actually, the real torture museum for him was probably the third hour in the Flower Market--but he's got quite a high threshold, Salix does)--

Anyway, to make up for all the time spent smelling the flowers, I took him to the famous red light district--BEFORE the red lights came on:

Of course, Amsterdam is also famous for its coffeeshops, where you can in fact get coffee (they can't sell alcohol in them anymore). But that's not the main attraction (and the cafes are a, umm, less edgy place to get your cappucino). I loved the names of the coffeehouses, like Amnesia. Or Grey Area. Or this one, the Grasshopper:

Or "Homegrown Fantasy":

And just in case you think the "homegrown" might be false advertising, back to the Flower Market for a moment:

The "Starter Kit" comes with a "User Manual" (hmm)--and yes, the label in this next shot does say "Canned Cannabis."

So Amsterdam has a whole other kind of flower power going on.

It's taken me a month to post a day's worth of photographs--in part because I'm spending every spare, precious, cool early fall moment in the garden. My next post won't be so exotic (or probably interesting)--but back to my back yard for awhile. Still, Europe is wonderful and I can't wait to get back!