Anyway, time to start again – and this time I grab my raincoat before we head out. Rachel sees us at the door and asks us whether we got things sorted. She mentions that the staff at the tourist information centre are notoriously bad, and she wouldn’t recommend going there! Frankly I think they should employ Rachel instead. She tells us that iAmsterdam cards are also sold at the Rembrandthuis, which is only 10 minutes’ walk away, so that’s where we choose for our next destination. Fortunately the rain has stopped now and it’s nicely warm.
As we cross over the bridge to the opposite side of our canal, we notice a shop selling Piper’s Crisps – an expensive UK brand, which were also in our hotel room. Obviously they are popular here.
Walking through the quiet streets, we notice a lot of English writing everywhere. For instance, this place seems to have taken a Tripadvisor rating as a badge of honour.
We also notice that there’s an awful lot of Nutella everywhere. Whole shop windows seem to be full of huge jars of the stuff. One waffle house even has buckets of it in the window. Interestingly, they have a notice up saying they’re looking for ‘female staff’, and I’d say they probably won’t have to wait very long…
We soon find ourselves at the Rembrandthuis, where the friendly guy at the counter is happy to sell us iAmsterdam cards and activate the ‘attractions’ chip to let us in. There’s a separate chip for transport, which will be activated the first time we get on a tram or bus.
Rembrandthuis is a house which the artist Rembrandt lived in for part of his life. It’s a typical Amsterdam house, narrow and tall! We begin in the basement where there are lockers for your belongings if you want to leave them, and also free handsets for self-guided audio tours.
We work our way through the different rooms a floor at a time, listening to the audio guide. There’s a good mix of information, not just about the paintings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries, but also about the house, and how people lived at the time. For instance, the box beds are so short because people usually slept sitting up!
The house has been furnished pretty much as it would have been at the time, using information from a detailed inventory of the furnishings which was made when Rembrandt went bankrupt. Amazing how such a sad event for him at the time has resulted in such a well-researched museum so many years later.
We also learn much about Rembrandt’s personal life. Sadly his wife Saskia died after childbirth when she was only 23, and we are very touched by a beautiful etching he made showing four portraits of Saskia and one of ‘an older woman’. We can’t help wondering if the older woman is how he imagined she would have looked in later life.
We also see his mirror – which is something few people would have owned at the time. He spent a lot of time practising different expressions in the mirror and then drawing them (you do wonder what he would have made of the infamous selfie stick…) and his ‘surprised face’ is the emblem of the museum. Is it just me who thinks he looks a bit like Tom Baker in this?
After climbing all the way up the many stairs to the top of the house and seeing all we want to see, we take the lift (ooh, a lift!) downstairs to drop off our audio tour handsets, collect our coats and move on. We’re very pleased with the first use of our card – the Rembrandthuis is definitely worth a look, whether or not you’re interested in art.
Spotting a café nearby, we get ourselves a couple of cokes and sit by the nearest canal for a while. They’re 2.50 Euros each so we take our time! Moving on, we pass a branch of the Hema supermarket, and recall a handy Dibb tip to try the hot dogs, so we pop in and grab ourselves two hot dog and drink deals for 3 Euros each. The hot dogs are encased in a bread roll, with a mustard sauce inside, and very nice indeed. We stroll along enjoying them as a late lunch.
We wander along rather aimlessly, not sure what to do next, and eventually we come across a tram with ‘Centraal Station’ written on the front. We know that several of the canal cruises go from near the station, and our card is valid for one cruise. So we jump on the next tram – or at least we try to. There’s a guy in front of us with a folding bike, trying to get on, and he eventually manages to squeeze past the barriers, but when we try, they won’t give, and people make signs for us to get off and go to the front instead. Oops. We walk to the front of the tram, where the driver gives us a stern look and explains that you need to get on at the front or the back ‘and that boy with the bike also’! We activate our tickets and take our seats, rather embarrassed but sure we aren’t the first clueless tourists to have done the same thing.
The tram goes through Dam Square and up to the station, which turns out to be only a few stops away. We jump off, and then spend a frustrating few minutes wandering up and down trying to find where we get a cruise from. There are plenty of clearly signed places to buy the tickets (or in our case, show our cards and get tickets given to us) but it takes a little while to find where we actually get on. We end up going with a company called Lovers, and our skipper is the wonderful Captain Louie. As we board he asks us all where we come from, and then he gives his commentary not only in Dutch, but also English, German, French and even a few words in Chinese! We’re seriously impressed. Not only is the cruise a great way to see the sights in comfort, it also means we can escape the rain, which has come back for the afternoon. And Captain Louie’s commentary, which is interspersed with pre-recorded information, is very funny at times. He shows us a floating Chinese restaurant which is apparently based on a famous one in Hong Kong. He says it was built to seat 1000 people, but when it opened they discovered it only held 700 Dutch people because they were bigger – and then with a knowing chuckle he quips ‘or 350 Americans!’ He also tells us about the hooks which used to be placed on the tops of houses, so that furniture could be winched up on a rope and brought in through the windows – and claims that sometimes disobedient wives were hoisted out there too, although we’re not sure we believe him. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable ride round the city, although I’m not sure we know our way any better afterwards, as all the canals tend to blur into one after a while.