![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I've returned from a week away in Amsterdam, which I visited with my mum. The two of us were last there together in the winter of 2005 (although I've been back since, mainly to change trains en route to Matthias's family in Germany), and it was great to revisit the same places in the sunshine — and discover the city, much changed.
I kept a haphazard paper journal throughout the week, and will transcribe it behind the cut.
6th June
Rolling anxiety and difficulty sleeping. I have such terrible trauma around border crossings and identity documents that I'd preemptively worked myself up into a debilitating state of stress. Eurostar border control was of course uneventful, and the train journey was, as always, delightful — zipping across flat fields with my phone pinging me every time we crossed a national border. Four countries in 3.5 hours, and we were disgorged into the usual tumult of Amsterdam Centraal. Our hotel was a little boutique jewel, tucked in a canal bisecting Herengracht and Keizersgracht. Everything was familiar but strange — I've only ever visited Amsterdam in winter, so it was disorienting to see the same places carpeted in a riot of blooming roses, wisteria, jasmine, and container gardens. Cute shops — stationery, florists, cakes, chocolatiers, and a winding walk to get our bearings, passing through a Saturday market fragrant with wheels of cheese and mountains of fresh vegetables. The canals were alive with boat tours of hen parties. We had an early dinner at a fantastic Indonesian restaurant, and an otherwise chilled out evening unwinding in the hotel room. A great start to the trip.
7th June
Another terrible night's sleep, again due to anxiety, but the day dawned, and we went out to explore it. Today was mainly spent on a circular walk along the Amstel river, along one side, then crossing over a busy dual carriageway (which went all the way to Utrecht), and walking back along the other. I find these loop walks along urban bodies of water so illuminating — my feet introduce me to the cities, and their slow changes and contrasts. The first half was all in the historic centre: canals and narrow Golden Age houses, city parks, and cute cafes, before giving way to larger suburban parks. After we crossed over it was bucolic, with distant houseboats (I heard a rooster crowing), then a wasteland of construction sites, and finally a series of new apartment blocks erupting into the space. The whole way through we were alongside a Sunday race, with joggers and cyclists cheered on by spectators in a celebratory mood.
Sunday was sleepier than the party town of Saturday, which was a great relief. I met cats, wandered through backstreets, and admired trailing vines of roses and wisteria, and how much care people took to adorn their neighbourhood with green and growing things. Early to bed — and hopefully some proper sleep at last.
8th June
A fairly limited day in terms of activities. We swam some laps in a crowded sports centre down the road — a rather chaotic experience. It rained for most of the afternoon. I enjoyed wandering around the canals, without much forethought or purpose. Dinner was in a Spanish restaurant in a street filled with flowers and cats. The sound of the rain on the roof next door is the most peaceful feeling.
9th June
Lots of art galleries: the Rijksmuseum in the morning and Van Gogh in the afternoon. Light and shadows, colours and patterns, a riot of flowers and sky. I overheard an older Australian man, enraptured, exclaim to his wife that 'some of these paintings are so beautiful they almost bring tears to my eyes.' As with all major tourist destinations, everything is too crowded, but there's no escaping that, and I've come to expect it in these types of places.
Our restaurant dinner tonight was presided over by a splendid marmalade cat, king of all he surveyed. He started the evening asleep in an empty table, and progressed to a diner's lap some hours later, before roaming the street outside — clearly at ease in all environments.
10th June
A day of walking — Mum identified a fantastic park to the south of the city. It was home to a training lake for rowing, plus a massive forest of trees so dense that they blocked the sun when we were beneath them. We ended up walking for over 17km, against an incongruous soundtrack of planes taking off and landing, as Schiphol airport was right beside us. Peaceful, but strange.
11th June
Today started with a wake-me-up swim, and continued with much walking up and down along the canals. On the basis of a 21-year-old photo of me, taken in the window of our hostel in 2005, we were able to identify its exact location (via sleuthing the shapes of the window frames and doorway on the buildings opposite). The tree in the photo has been cut down, the place is no longer a hostel, but the exact same houseboats are still there on both sides of the canal! We also went to KattenKabinet and communed with cats both live and in art and illustrations. Cats are very much the leitmotif of this trip.
12th June
This was our final full day, and tomorrow is all travel. We did a canal boat tour (in a covered boat), the same on Matthias and I attended a year ago. As these things go, I thought it was top notch (hence taking Mum back on it): a different view of the city, covering loads of ground — or I guess loads of water! After a morning spent sitting, we spent the afternoon walking around Vondelpark — a very typical nineteenth-century European city park, with artificial lake, fountains, elaborate pavilion, etc. All in all, a great trip — this is a lovely city in which to wander and serendipitously stumble. I want to come back for a long weekend with no plan: just being elsewhere, among the window-boxes, flowers and water.
I've put up two photosets over at![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
ronnidolorosa: a general Amsterdam batch, and a collection of cats.
The less said about the chaotic journey home the better (suffice it to say that I made it onto my Eurostar train in Brussels with twenty minutes to spare), but I returned to a fully stocked fridge (so many strawberries and tomatoes!), a bottle of pink sparkling wine, and an incredibly lush garden.
I'm only peripherally engaged with the men's World Cup, but I accidentally stumbled into a very Balkans corner of Instagram, and discovered the absolute banger that is the Bosnian team anthem (a thirteen-year-old song about the bittersweet experience of being an immigrant, reworked by the surprised and ecstatic fans into an anthem for their team). It's so catchy, and the video is gold!
Now to catch up with ten days' worth of Dreamwidth!
I kept a haphazard paper journal throughout the week, and will transcribe it behind the cut.
6th June
Rolling anxiety and difficulty sleeping. I have such terrible trauma around border crossings and identity documents that I'd preemptively worked myself up into a debilitating state of stress. Eurostar border control was of course uneventful, and the train journey was, as always, delightful — zipping across flat fields with my phone pinging me every time we crossed a national border. Four countries in 3.5 hours, and we were disgorged into the usual tumult of Amsterdam Centraal. Our hotel was a little boutique jewel, tucked in a canal bisecting Herengracht and Keizersgracht. Everything was familiar but strange — I've only ever visited Amsterdam in winter, so it was disorienting to see the same places carpeted in a riot of blooming roses, wisteria, jasmine, and container gardens. Cute shops — stationery, florists, cakes, chocolatiers, and a winding walk to get our bearings, passing through a Saturday market fragrant with wheels of cheese and mountains of fresh vegetables. The canals were alive with boat tours of hen parties. We had an early dinner at a fantastic Indonesian restaurant, and an otherwise chilled out evening unwinding in the hotel room. A great start to the trip.
7th June
Another terrible night's sleep, again due to anxiety, but the day dawned, and we went out to explore it. Today was mainly spent on a circular walk along the Amstel river, along one side, then crossing over a busy dual carriageway (which went all the way to Utrecht), and walking back along the other. I find these loop walks along urban bodies of water so illuminating — my feet introduce me to the cities, and their slow changes and contrasts. The first half was all in the historic centre: canals and narrow Golden Age houses, city parks, and cute cafes, before giving way to larger suburban parks. After we crossed over it was bucolic, with distant houseboats (I heard a rooster crowing), then a wasteland of construction sites, and finally a series of new apartment blocks erupting into the space. The whole way through we were alongside a Sunday race, with joggers and cyclists cheered on by spectators in a celebratory mood.
Sunday was sleepier than the party town of Saturday, which was a great relief. I met cats, wandered through backstreets, and admired trailing vines of roses and wisteria, and how much care people took to adorn their neighbourhood with green and growing things. Early to bed — and hopefully some proper sleep at last.
8th June
A fairly limited day in terms of activities. We swam some laps in a crowded sports centre down the road — a rather chaotic experience. It rained for most of the afternoon. I enjoyed wandering around the canals, without much forethought or purpose. Dinner was in a Spanish restaurant in a street filled with flowers and cats. The sound of the rain on the roof next door is the most peaceful feeling.
9th June
Lots of art galleries: the Rijksmuseum in the morning and Van Gogh in the afternoon. Light and shadows, colours and patterns, a riot of flowers and sky. I overheard an older Australian man, enraptured, exclaim to his wife that 'some of these paintings are so beautiful they almost bring tears to my eyes.' As with all major tourist destinations, everything is too crowded, but there's no escaping that, and I've come to expect it in these types of places.
Our restaurant dinner tonight was presided over by a splendid marmalade cat, king of all he surveyed. He started the evening asleep in an empty table, and progressed to a diner's lap some hours later, before roaming the street outside — clearly at ease in all environments.
10th June
A day of walking — Mum identified a fantastic park to the south of the city. It was home to a training lake for rowing, plus a massive forest of trees so dense that they blocked the sun when we were beneath them. We ended up walking for over 17km, against an incongruous soundtrack of planes taking off and landing, as Schiphol airport was right beside us. Peaceful, but strange.
11th June
Today started with a wake-me-up swim, and continued with much walking up and down along the canals. On the basis of a 21-year-old photo of me, taken in the window of our hostel in 2005, we were able to identify its exact location (via sleuthing the shapes of the window frames and doorway on the buildings opposite). The tree in the photo has been cut down, the place is no longer a hostel, but the exact same houseboats are still there on both sides of the canal! We also went to KattenKabinet and communed with cats both live and in art and illustrations. Cats are very much the leitmotif of this trip.
12th June
This was our final full day, and tomorrow is all travel. We did a canal boat tour (in a covered boat), the same on Matthias and I attended a year ago. As these things go, I thought it was top notch (hence taking Mum back on it): a different view of the city, covering loads of ground — or I guess loads of water! After a morning spent sitting, we spent the afternoon walking around Vondelpark — a very typical nineteenth-century European city park, with artificial lake, fountains, elaborate pavilion, etc. All in all, a great trip — this is a lovely city in which to wander and serendipitously stumble. I want to come back for a long weekend with no plan: just being elsewhere, among the window-boxes, flowers and water.
I've put up two photosets over at
ronnidolorosa: a general Amsterdam batch, and a collection of cats.The less said about the chaotic journey home the better (suffice it to say that I made it onto my Eurostar train in Brussels with twenty minutes to spare), but I returned to a fully stocked fridge (so many strawberries and tomatoes!), a bottle of pink sparkling wine, and an incredibly lush garden.
I'm only peripherally engaged with the men's World Cup, but I accidentally stumbled into a very Balkans corner of Instagram, and discovered the absolute banger that is the Bosnian team anthem (a thirteen-year-old song about the bittersweet experience of being an immigrant, reworked by the surprised and ecstatic fans into an anthem for their team). It's so catchy, and the video is gold!
Now to catch up with ten days' worth of Dreamwidth!
no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 12:36 pm (UTC)Glad you had such a lovely trip!
no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 01:09 pm (UTC)I've had some awful encounters with UK border control back when I was on a student visa (mild by comparison to some other people's experiences, but it's enough to provoke this trauma response). This time wasn't helped by the fact that my UK passport is due to expire at the end of this coming week. I was only using it to come out of and back into the UK (i.e. not showing it to the EU border control — I used my Australian passport there), but at Eurostar, you show your passport to UK border control first, then walk forward to another set of gates and show a passport to EU border control — i.e. they're just a few metres apart.
I always show the UK passport at the UK gate, and the Australian one at the EU gate (there's a convoluted personal reason for this based on my embarrassment to use a UK passport after Brexit), which is totally fine to do (my husband always shows his UK passport at the UK gate and his German ID card at the EU gate whenever going in and out of the Schengen zone; you only have to use a specific passport if it's the same nationality as the actual country you're entering/leaving), but I had worked myself up into a state of extreme stress that the UK border guard would look at my passport, see that it only had two weeks' validity remaining, and tell me that I wouldn't be able to enter the EU on a passport expiring so soon, and that the French border control would hear and wouldn't listen to me when I explained that I'd be using my Australian passport with nine years' validity remaining and assume I was trying to do something nefarious. Of course, none of this happened!
no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 01:40 pm (UTC)In conclusion, ugh, borders!
no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-14 09:09 pm (UTC)