Can You Count to 43?

DS shares a June 14 birthday with my lovely grandmother, who at just over twice his age, turned ninety six days ago.

DS celebrated his birthday solo in NYC this week. BUT, he flew in last weekend for a whirlwind of activities, not the least of which included our going-away party, Reese's (early) 7th birthday party, and some grab-and-go birthday moments of his own.

A private bike tour of Amsterdam has been on my bucket list for a while now, and I really hoped if I found the right tour guide, someone who understood we'd been here for three years and wanted to dive a little deeper, it could be a fun birthday present for DS. So, I gave it a shot.

Turns out, we hit the jackpot with an amazing guide, a late twenty-something named Jasper, who started his own bike company, WE BIKE AMSTERDAM, just for this kind of thing, and we enjoyed a fab afternoon on a reluctant sunny day biking around Amsterdam.

We're standing in front of the 17th-century headquarters of the Dutch West India Company. It's obvious, but the famous Dutch East India Company went east, and the West Indies company went west. One of the latter's famous investors was Mr. Henry Hudson, who gobbled up land where???? New York. 

Hello, "Hudson" River. 

The statue is Peter Stuyvessant, governor of New York from 1647-1664 (until it was basically ceded to England). Unbelievably, he was the seventh Director-General of New Amsterdam, and he started his new job in 1647. Jeez.

And he was a pretty important dude in the early history of New York, working hard to expand the Dutch settlement beyond the tip of Manhattan Island. He is credited with "Wall Street,' which at the time was an actual wall to protect the city (and from where we get the now totally unrelated name of U.S. stock market), with the canal that became Broad Street, and with Broadway.

I've been wanting to explore examples of the Amsterdam School, an architectural style that emerged between 1910-1930 as a response to the blockish, "harsh" architecture that preceded it. The architects of this school focused on workers housing and government buildings, and the style is characterized by:

"Buildings of the Amsterdam School are characterized by brick construction with complicated masonry with a rounded or organic appearance, relatively traditional massing, and the integration of an elaborate scheme of building elements inside and out: decorative masonry, art glass, wrought ironwork, spires or "ladder" windows (with horizontal bars), and integrated architectural sculpture. The aim was to create a total architectural experience, interior and exterior."

This is a must-see example of the Amsterdam School: Het Schip (The Ship). For the very reason that from a distance it looks like a ship, in addition to many ship-like details.

Always a bit of art deco in the Amsterdam School . . . check out the address numbers.

It was such an awesome day.

We capped it off with Dutch gin at one of the oldest "brown cafes" in Amsterdam, Cafe Papeneiland (Pope Island Cafe), which was a place of secret worship for Catholics when the Protestants pushed the Spanish out and took over the city. There's even a secret tunnel that supposedly went under the canal so people could get to clandestine places of worship (I could go on and on about all of the secret churches in Amsterdam). This bar is literally right out of the Golden Age.

While I'm at it, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to our favorite guy. We love you. We miss you.

For Whom the Bell Dings

Shopping for new bicycle bells.

I ❤️ Amsterdam. 

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a lot like Amsterdam, but (dare I say) not as awesome.

But still very cool.

The two cities are similar insomuch as both have canals. And lots of reclaimed land from the sea.  And a cultural obsession with high design and ingenuity.  And with open-faced sandwiches.  And above all, the Dutch and the Danish share a love of bicycles.

Pictured below is the recognizable heritage district:  Nyhaven (New Harbor).  Swedish prisoners of war dug the canal in the 1660's, and today, while a bit touristy, it's still striking to see the colorful, iconic, seventeenth-century houses lining the harbor.  It was bustling.

Ah, yes, this was the home of Hans Christian Anderson, the king of fairy tales.  You can't escape that fact on a visit to Copenhagen.  He wrote "Princess and the Pea," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Little Mermaid" while residing at Nyhaven No. 20 (red house below).

Can't forget the national beverage!

Of course it's to be expected that there are a number of bio-dome experiments going on in the city--this is a city focused on design after all.  And the Danish happen to be the premier leaders in renewable energy solutions.

Just one week before we arrived, Denmark succeeded in running the entire country on wind energy for a whole day, with enough left over to help out other European countries.  Pretty awesome.

Little did we know about the amazing Tivoli Gardens, because we found ourselves in yet another amusement park.  Probably could have skipped Legoland!  Tivoli Gardens sits right in the middle of city and still has the feel of a grand, nineteenth-century strolling park.

It was a fine way to spend a Saturday night in the summertime.

There was a ballet:

An orchestral performance:

Oodles of restaurants:

And lots of rides!  I loved this element of the park.  There are so many layers of trees and flowers--the landscaping is so well done.  All the rides are tucked away in these landscaped niches and layered on top of each other, almost as if to mimic the gardens and green areas.

We also toured the underground ruins located underneath this castle, which were unearthed at the turn of the 20th century.  The ruins are the remains of the very first royal castle to be built on this site, dating back to the 1100's.  It really is a fascinating and worthwhile walk through the history of Denmark amid the underground rubble of medieval buildings. 

They weren't bored AT ALL:

 Skipping all the way up modern times, water sports are huge in Copenhagen.  The city has created beaches, pools, diving boards, "cliff" jumps, and even wake boarding courses on the canals.  Kayaking seemed to be as popular as biking, and kayaks are everywhere.

That's my kind of town.
 
The water must be that much cleaner than in Amsterdam because it's rare to witness anyone voluntarily jump into a canal here.

Even their boardwalks are high design--no 1950's Jersey Shore vibe going on here.

They are playing some sort of kayak handball down there:

 I cannot get over this kayak slide. Seriously.  It's a kayak slide.

There's my crew!

And even though I'm still partial to Amsterdam, check out this video and you'll see why Copenhagen is pretty darn cool.

36 Hours in Copenhagen