Day 5 - Amsterdam, Netherlands to Paris, France

 

After a short night in Amsterdam we woke up quite early as we wanted to still see Amsterdam by day before embarking in our trip to Paris passing Belgium on the way.

Amsterdam is a very different city by day, still beautiful though. It is easy to understand why it is called the Venice of the North as everywhere you go canals criss-cross the city.

The night before I had asked what time breakfast was and the lady at the desk responded that tomorrow being a weekend it would close at 11am and then it hit me, for the first time in a long time I had lost total track of time and for me everyday felt like a weekend. I commented this with her and she looked at me with a longing that clearly indicated she had not felt that for a while. I have always loved weekends. For me they are an opportunity to stop for a bit in our busy lives and take time to rest and leisure.

As it was Saturday, Amsterdam was quite full of tourists and as we had not bought our flag yet we still had to find a place to buy one. Paula also wanted to go to the Anne Frank museum but as riding motorbikes and museum visiting are not very compatible in the same day, after some discussion we agreed to use the time to see Amsterdam from a motorbike and not take any extra time to visit museums. We were able to take some good pictures and also ride in a city where bicycles rule and come at you from all directions. I wished I would have 360 degree vision, but as that is not available had to be contented with plenty of mirror checking and Paula's additional help.

 

 

Eventually after riding around for a while we spotted a shop that had flags, went onto the pavement and stopped the bike, got off and I went on a flag buying mission. When I came back to the bike, Paula was somewhat emotional (tears were flowing down her face) and I asked what was going on. She pointed me to a small statue just close (not more than 3 meters of so) to the place where we were. Getting close to the statue I saw the name Anne Frank (1929-1945) and I got it. Somehow we had stopped exactly in the place she wanted to visit. Unfortunately lines were very long and we did not have the time to go into the museum but were able to see the house and also take some pictures by the statue. In anne Frank's memory here are some words ...


In June 1999 Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings."

I believe that it is essential for our and future generations to remember the Holocaust in order to prevent future genocides, it is our duty to discuss this with our children and our children's children to ensure it never happens again.

 

We left Amsterdam and made our way into Paris. There are many options to get there and many different cities we could visit on the way. We wanted to have lunch in a city in Belgium and as we had been in Brussels before, we opted to go through Antwerpen.

Antwerpen is actually the largest municipality in Flanders and Belgium and it's inhabitants are nicknamed Sinjoren, after the Spanish honorific señor. It refers to the leading Spanish noblemen who ruled the city during the 17th century. Go figure ...

It has one of the largest seaports in Europe and we again thoroughly enjoyed stopping at the city centre and have lunch and just see people walk by. Being a Saturday the city centre was full, music abounded and restaurants were in strong business.

 

The Belgians also passed our test of honesty. We did this in various cities (not on purpose mind you), where we left something behind and in all cases people would come after us and tell us we had left it behind or just bring it to us. In Antwerpen, I was preparing to get back on the bike when a Belgian that was sitting next to us delivered a package we had left on the table. That got them a very strong thank you (dank u wel in Flemish), a bow and a strong wave of the Belgian flag (which we now had). They liked that.

One interesting observation was how different Coke tasted in Antwerpen. Coke which is made from concentrate and then added water usually tastes different around the world due to way water (and it's type) is added but usually these differences and not major. In this case it was quite different. Somewhat sweeter and a very small taste of lemon. Later on as I did research would find out coke is actually bottled in Antwerpen where there was one of the largest recalls Coke has ever done in its history. Without any of this knowledge, for me it just tasted differently ... better actually.

While in Antwerpen got a text message of a colleague of mine, Damien who asked whether we would still be in Paris today as it seemed we were quite far away. He had a point, it was past 5 in the afternoon and we still had over 350Km to go. Oh well, dial in BMW GSA, aim south and here we go.

 

We made excellent time as French highways although expensive are a pleasure to ride on as there is not much traffic and not a lot of radars. We had to stop twice on the way, one to exchange flags and put up the Drapeau Tricolore (the French flag) and once to fill with gas.

 

Eventually we made it to Paris still with sunlight and immediately came into contact with one of the most aggressive cities to ride in. It was a shock after coming from the very well organized and law abiding Nordic countries, Germany and Netherlands to meet Parisian drivers, specially the very annoying scooters.

We went directly to our apartment in the Montmartre part of town, where we met Valerie. She had very nicely arranged parking for the 3 days as well as that part of town is very difficult to find parking. The apartment is in a very nice building with great neighbors and it is very well furnitured. A number of books about Paris lay around the apartment and told us we had finally arrived in the city of lights. We left all our luggage in the apartment and went back to get the bike ... we really wanted to ride the Champs Élysées and get a staged picture of the bike by the Arc du Triomphe. And that we did and so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

We had dinner at the Alsace restaurant in the Champs Élysées. The seafood was delicious and the profiteroles were to die for. All around there were thousands of people. Later on as we came south we would feel the deep economic woes of Europe but that evening in Paris one felt everything but that Europe is in such a bad economic state. We have never seen as many tourists in one place as in Paris during our visit. so it was not a surprise when I looked up the most touristic cities by number of international tourists that Paris just beat London in 2011, by 15.6M vs 15.2M and they are both in a category of their own. The #3 city is Antalya in Turkey with 10.2M which is nearly 50% lower. First US city, in #4, is New York City with 10.3M. By the way, France also is #1 country in front of US, 79.5M vs 62.3M. I am assuming this year London with the 2012 Olympics will be the most visited city.

 

After dinner, we got back onto bike and went to see the Eiffel Tower at night. We had heard it was a beautiful sight as the tower is all illuminated and wanted to get a staged picture of bike. It was a very beautiful sight and do recommend to see the tower both during the day and at night when you are in Paris.

It was getting late so we made our way back to apartment. It had been another amazing and full day. We had touched soil in 3 different countries and seen 3 of the most well known cities in Europe and all of that in one day. We deserved the rest.

 

Tomorrow (or actually later today) we were looking forward to walking the Montmartre streets, feel the real Parisian life, have lunch in a typical restaurant, see the Louvre and much more.

Click HERE for all the pictures of Day 5

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