A Couple of Fancy Canal Houses

 

Goden Dag,

I meant to give myself an easier day. I am old, and I get tired, but I still ended up walking 12K steps. I get hungry, too, and I'm scarfing up more fish and frites from a new place. I'm washing it down with cheap, but actually really good, Sauvignon Blanc from Chile.  This being Europe there are automatic check out machines. I don't like them, but I can use them. Fortunately, I observed a fellow customer scan her receipt to open the exit gate, so I was able to follow suit.

Pil, what is up with you and all the fish and frites? You did't even have fish and chips that often in London.

Uh. It's the mayonnaise on the frites. I confess. I am an addict. I'm also an addict of bike races, so I have stage three of the Tour on. Only two stages complete, and it's already been a great race.

I booked my visits to the canal houses on line. One required a time. The other just a day. I used my Amsterdam Card to get in free. It has not paid for itself, but if I had had it at the Van Gogh Museum, I would have come close. In my younger days, I really made these cards pay.

I began with a trip to the grocery store. I love these groceries in foreign lands. Apparently our guests at the World Cup found U.S. groceries just as fascinating.

The Canal Houses were easy to find and certainly worth a visit. The Dutch Republic and later Kingdom of the Netherlands created a fantastically wealthy merchant class. Most of their houses have been converted into multi star hotels. The place I'm staying used to be weavers' quarters.

My first stop was the Willet-Holthuysen House where a very informative audio guide is included in the admission. In the mid Nineteenth Century an incredibly wealthy heiress married a rich man with a mania for collecting art. She largely shared this interest and ended up willing their house and its contents to the City.  They were Francophiles with taste for the Louis XVI style. Not my favorite style, but I'd move in. 

Here's the formal dinning room. Most dinning would be very formal.

A view of the garden--from the Garden Room. This is where I would sit with you to have tea.

Next came the Van Loon Museum. It belonged to an old Amsterdam merchant clan, and was also decorated in Nineteenth Century fashion. This time we got to go into the garden--not a lot of space to spare in the heart of the city. There's no audio guide, but informative placards will tell you about the rooms and their furnishings.

The rooms are beautiful. I liked them better than the ones at Willet Holthuysen. One of the owners was a Lady in Waiting to Queen Wilhelmina and had to take on Amsterdam based royal obligations, but the rooms are Dutch Style Grand--in other words a smaller, and more regular human scale.

We were allowed to walk in the garden. The building opposite holds a cafe.

The ornate master bedroom.

I tried the fish and frites place nearby. I had to order by computer and paid extra for mayonnaise, but the fish chunks and frites were freshly fried. They were good, but on the expensive side for what I got.

Tot Ziens