Netherlands And Amsterdam
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Română
On the fifth day we continued on our way to Amsterdam. The day before, in Germany, we were saying that everything looks “funny” just because we didn’t want to recognise that we really didn’t like what we saw. Now that we arrived in the Netherlands we were able to enjoy absolutely gorgeous landscapes. Their houses compete for the “best ginger bread house” prize, together with the Swedish ones. The fact that the dutch people have so special care to the little plants around their houses makes them look spectacular and covered with love.
Putting the architecture on a side, from the roads perspective, the Netherlands is well establish, with some of the best traffic signs (as Sweden and Denmark). I can say that this country wins the traffic prize.
We fall irremediable in love with their “country side” roads (I put the “country side” into quotation marks because being Romanian, the roads in the country side are usually very bad). During our Eurotrip we have tried to avoid the highways for two reasons: firstly because we wanted to see the countries from the perspective of smaller places, not only the capitals or the fields around the big roads, and secondly because our drive speed was around 100 km/h and the GPS was more accurate in terms of time when we took the side roads.
On our way towards Amsterdam we took a special dutch road, Afsluitdijk, a 30 km road made basically on the see, between Den Oever and Zurich. We’ve been fascinated by their engineering work in building this road. Still it was a very strange feeling driving on it and having the sea on both sides while not being on a bridge. At some point we saw an excavator that simply looked like it was floating on the water, with just a small pice of ground under it, waiting to do its job on building an extension of the road. It was fascinating!
Amsterdam was a total disappointment. Maybe it was like this because we had so many expectations visiting the most famous place of the Netherlands. We’ve planned to take 3 days at the camping and see the entire city, on our list being the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt House Museum and eventually Madame Tussaud. Luckily for us, the campsites were fully booked (of course they were since it was Friday afternoon). Without any accommodation, we still decided to park our car somewhere and enjoy a bit of the city centre. Being in the bicycle paradise we took our kick scooters, but unfortunately it wasn’t the most inspired choice because all the bike roads were super busy and we were amateurs.
We arrived in centrum after we passed the river using a little ferry. It was a really nice experience to be in the middle of the city on the boat, free, for 5 minutes. This transport was extremely busy, with a lot of hurried people and a big risk of accident because of the high speed.
Visiting the centrum I had for the first time on this trip a strong feeling of insecurity, continuously wondering if someone will steal something from us. I am sure that if we have visited this city in any another time of the year the things would go more smooth. Now, everything that we have seen on the streets was squalor and high tourists who didn’t really understood what was going on. Even if it is legal to smoke in the whole country, all the tourists choose to go to Amsterdam, which has become a major problem for the locals.
We left the city fast, going towards quieter places, thus during the night we have visited the wind mills from Kinderdijk, the place were we also camped. It was so quite and pleasant. We even took some night photos with a splendid full moon which lighted up the entire field of wind mills.
The sixth day will come together with other beauties of dutch locals.
On the fifth day we continued on our way to Amsterdam. The day before, in Germany, we were saying that everything looks “funny” just because we didn’t want to recognise that we really didn’t like what we saw. Now that we arrived in the Netherlands we were able to enjoy absolutely gorgeous landscapes. Their houses compete for the “best ginger bread house” prize, together with the Swedish ones. The fact that the dutch people have so special care to the little plants around their houses makes them look spectacular and covered with love.
Putting the architecture on a side, from the roads perspective, the Netherlands is well establish, with some of the best traffic signs (as Sweden and Denmark). I can say that this country wins the traffic prize.
We fall irremediable in love with their “country side” roads (I put the “country side” into quotation marks because being Romanian, the roads in the country side are usually very bad). During our Eurotrip we have tried to avoid the highways for two reasons: firstly because we wanted to see the countries from the perspective of smaller places, not only the capitals or the fields around the big roads, and secondly because our drive speed was around 100 km/h and the GPS was more accurate in terms of time when we took the side roads.
On our way towards Amsterdam we took a special dutch road, Afsluitdijk, a 30 km road made basically on the see, between Den Oever and Zurich. We’ve been fascinated by their engineering work in building this road. Still it was a very strange feeling driving on it and having the sea on both sides while not being on a bridge. At some point we saw an excavator that simply looked like it was floating on the water, with just a small pice of ground under it, waiting to do its job on building an extension of the road. It was fascinating!
Amsterdam was a total disappointment. Maybe it was like this because we had so many expectations visiting the most famous place of the Netherlands. We’ve planned to take 3 days at the camping and see the entire city, on our list being the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt House Museum and eventually Madame Tussaud. Luckily for us, the campsites were fully booked (of course they were since it was Friday afternoon). Without any accommodation, we still decided to park our car somewhere and enjoy a bit of the city centre. Being in the bicycle paradise we took our kick scooters, but unfortunately it wasn’t the most inspired choice because all the bike roads were super busy and we were amateurs.
We arrived in centrum after we passed the river using a little ferry. It was a really nice experience to be in the middle of the city on the boat, free, for 5 minutes. This transport was extremely busy, with a lot of hurried people and a big risk of accident because of the high speed.
Visiting the centrum I had for the first time on this trip a strong feeling of insecurity, continuously wondering if someone will steal something from us. I am sure that if we have visited this city in any another time of the year the things would go more smooth. Now, everything that we have seen on the streets was squalor and high tourists who didn’t really understood what was going on. Even if it is legal to smoke in the whole country, all the tourists choose to go to Amsterdam, which has become a major problem for the locals.
We left the city fast, going towards quieter places, thus during the night we have visited the wind mills from Kinderdijk, the place were we also camped. It was so quite and pleasant. We even took some night photos with a splendid full moon which lighted up the entire field of wind mills.
The sixth day will come together with other beauties of dutch locals.
