The announcement that Dutch immigration officials had cleared Celebrity Silhouette and that those who wanted to head ashore could do so came a little earlier than we were expecting which was nice. There was no rush to get off the ship as we would be docked overnight and simply had to be back aboard by 09:30 the following morning but we knew that there would be a mad scramble to hit Amsterdam anyway so we decided to let the queue die down before getting off. But then we got impatient and headed down anyway. That is so us. The queue was long but I will say this for Celebrity and the staff at Amsterdam cruise port terminal, it all moved swiftly and smoothly and was a shining example of efficiency. If anyone from Japanese immigration is reading this post then I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.
We didn’t have any excursions booked in Amsterdam as we’d been to the Netherlands on Azura a few years earlier and made great use of a city card to take in a lot of sights and experiences already. But we’re not generally fans of just playing things by ear, especially after a cruise at the end of last year where we did that a little too much and came away feeling we’d spent far too much of our time wandering when we could have been learning, so we did have a rough plan for the day’s activities.
Our day and night in the Dutch capital city was taking place on Liberation Day which meant there was a music festival taking place on the outskirts. We don’t do music festivals at home because they tend to go hand-in-hand with tents and we really don’t do tents. But a free festival in a foreign country is something for the experience checklist so that would be where we would end up and that will be covered in the next post. Ahead of that, though, we had an afternoon and early evening to hit Amsterdam and find some things to interest us. We’d done the canals, numerous museums, and even the zoo on our previous visit but there were always more museums to take a nose at and we had our eyes set on two in particular: something sexy and something violent.
Dam Square
Finding your way around Amsterdam is very easy as the city is effectively a series of concentric semi-circular canals centred on the train station with roads that more-or-less run horizontally and vertically through them. I tend to navigate through landmarks after taking a look at a map and planning an approximate route coupled with my pretty decent natural sense of direction. The less said about how my wife navigates, the better. Neither of us really use phones that much; it’s often only brought out to confirm that we’ve not missed what we were roughly aiming for or to confirm that we have and it was ages ago. Our first target was Dam Square, a large, open space at the southern end of the older, central section of Amsterdam and also a mutterance I’m trying to make popular with the kids. “I was hoping my eyebrows was going to be all on fleek but nah, it’s Dam Square.”
Coming out of the cruise terminal we headed right which took us towards the Centraal train station, then followed the main road as it swung left over tram tracks and under a bridge for the trains, then straight over a wide canal before angling right again onto Prins Hendrikkade.
This brought us outside the Basilica of Saint Nicholas and facing the facade of the Centraal train station across the canal.
We then followed Damrak to the south knowing that it would bring us to the square in short order.
The square is a wide open space intersected by many tram lines and with the clear landmarks of Madame Tussaud’s to the south, the National Monument to the west, and the Royal Palace to the east.
The National Monument is a concrete pillar, 22 metres in height, covered in white stone. It was erected as a permanent replacement for a “liberty pole” that had been raised in the same location to celebrate the end of World War II. With this being the weekend of the celebration of the Netherlands’ Liberty Day it was bedecked with wreaths and attracted a large crowd of attendees paying their respects.
One place we really need to put on our list of places to visit for the next time we hit Amsterdam is the Royal Palace. Originally built in the mid-17th century as the town hall it became the palace early in the 19th century at around the end of Napoleon’s reign over that part of Europe and the restoration of the monarchy to the country.
The square was pretty crowded and the largest group we were attracted to seemed to be formed around a small number of people with microphones. Our first guess was that this was something specific to Liberty Day again as we’d heard that there were often talks commemorating the war dead on this day but we soon realised this was another one of those “Watch us do some tricksy dances and jumps then grab some people from around for some audience participation then ask for money” things. We didn’t stay long as it started to rain quite persistently at this point.
“Raining,” I said to my wife, pulling my hoodie up and trying to protect my camera from the worst of the inclement weather. “Dam Square.”
“Nobody is going to start using that phrase,” she replied as we left the location. “Just stop it.”
We headed south along Rokin past an interesting-looking sculpture and didn’t stop until we reached the first of the museums that we were interested in and the one that would satisfy our search for violence in Amsterdam.
The Torture Museum
Amsterdam’s Torture Museum isn’t the first museum dedicated to the history of torture through the ages that we’ve visited. In fact, it’s precisely because we’d found our trip to the Torture Museum in Bruges so interesting that we wanted to compare it with the Dutch take on the same topic. Plus, as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a dedicated misanthrope and atheist and anything that reinforces my conclusions about the barbarity of humans in general and organised religions in particular is fine by me.
Trying to be very fair here with the torture museum comparisons there are certain things that each country’s exploration of one of the darker chapters of mankind’s search for truth does better than the other. The Belgian museum certainly had the more detailed information so if you really want to learn why torture was used and how it both spread and faded from use then Bruges is where you want to go. On the other hand if you like your experience of torture equipment to be in a narrow, squeaky-floored building with red and blue lighting that plays absolute havoc with your attempts to take any pictures then it’s hard to fault Amsterdam. In each of the museums, though, you’ll look at some of the equipment and the descriptions next to them and you’ll wince and clench your buttocks tightly as you shuffle past so they both do equally well there.
American Beer
We’d chosen to visit the Torture Museum first as it was the farthest point from the cruise ship we’d wanted to reach. Heading back towards the centre of Amsterdam for the second of our museums of the day we stopped en route at the Beer Temple because torture makes you thirsty.
Generally, we favour local ales when we’re travelling but we’d been to Amsterdam before and satisfied that desire so we were more open to alternative drinking establishments. This place, specialising in American craft beer and with 35 on draught plus a couple of hundred others available in cans and bottles, was on the way and an easy side-journey to take.
We parked ourselves at the bar and had a very nice couple of drinks each. The staff were friendly and there was some great music being played. When Joe Walsh’s In The City started up and I nodded appreciatively at the barman, remarking it was the end music to The Warriors, this led to the pair of us re-enacting that scene from the film. As you know, that’s a global law when anyone mentions that movie and I’m no lawbreaker.
The Erotic Museum
The Erotic Museum on Oudezijds Achterburgwal, close to the heart of the city’s red light district, was where we headed next. This naturally took us past Oude Kerk, the presence of which in that part of the city still amuses us.
Set in a typically Dutch, narrow, multistorey building, the ground floor was a shop for any of your erotic needs while a staircase – once you’d paid the entrance fee, of course – led upstairs to the floors housing all sorts of erotic memorabilia in roughly-themed collections. I was quite surprised and very pleased to be told that photography was allowed, something I’d not been expecting. The collections covered such broad areas as erotic sculptures or fertility symbols, pornographic photography, erotic artwork, dolls, movies, bondage, etc. It was a little light on information – you won’t find the reason that people have decided to make salt and pepper shakers in the form of penises, for instance – but there was a large amount to look at – such as salt and pepper shakers in the form of penises, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you – and it was all organised well. The presence of sketches by John Lennon was a welcome addition to what some might see as otherwise frivolous and titillating.
If you’ve reached this part of this post and have been at all shocked at any of the pictures here, blushing brightly and maybe even mouthing “Dam Square” under your breath as you scroll quickly past, then may I humbly recommend you read the title of things you’re looking at on the internet in the future?
Dutch Ales
We’d originally had no firm plans beyond this point of our general idea for how to occupy ourselves during our day in Amsterdam other than head west towards the park where the Liberation Day music festival was taking place and see if there was somewhere to stop for a drink on the way. However, our stop at the Beer Temple had alerted us to another location run by the same group of people called Proeflokaal Arendsnest. Instead of American imports this bar only served Dutch ales, fifty on draught and over a hundred bottled. And it was roughly in the right direction for us too. We headed there, passing the usual array of attractive examples of architecture and very photographable canals in the city.
The bar itself was also attractive but somewhat lacking in seating space for the large number of people present. Obviously, a good sign as to the quality of the ales on offer. There was a nice view out to one of Amsterdam’s canals and some outside seating was available but only those with a nicotine fix to address or who laughed in the face of bitter northerly winds braved them.
In the next post of this series covering our short cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette to Amsterdam I’ll cover our experience of the Liberation Day music festival and, yes, there may just be a little more drinking involved.