Boatgirl #4: The Art of Amsterdam – Amsterdam, Netherlands

3: The Art of Amsterdam

Darin, Kirsty and Dick at the Supper Club in Amsterdam.

February 22, 2002
Amsterdam is fantastic, so far. We arrived into the smell of burnt cheese and cigarettes, and very efficient public transportation. We took the train from Schiphol Airport into Station Centraal, and found Hotel Winston, conveniently located in the Red Light District. It’s an “art hotel”, with every room designed by a different artist, which basically makes it feel and smell like a dorm at an art college, with rooms about the same size.

However, I am a firm believer in spending money on entertainment, rather than where you’re just going to sleep. I picked up a city guide in the hotel lobby that mentioned “The Supper Club”, a restaurant that sounded too tempting to pass up. We called up and got the last available table for that evening, because Darin promised to bring her flowers (which he did).

After searching tiny alleyways, we finally found the source of fabulous! It’s a wide-open, all-white, loft-like space with a long platform bed down each side and along catwalks above those, where our “tray” was located. We followed our lovely post-op hostess up the world’s narrowest stairs, and walked along the bed to our area, basically a silver tray with a candle on it. We took off our shoes and crawled onto the white bed and reclined against white cushions, squeezed in between other patrons, all dressed trendily in black. There’s a DJ that spins in the center of the room, a light display and a huge wall of video projection, and the kitchen is completely open to view. Apparently, the theme and decor changes constantly.

The dinner lasts from 9 to midnight, with diversions such as a singer performing disco classics and a masseuse that comes to your table. The menu was set, five courses, the only choice whether you wanted to eat meat or not. I was ready to forgive any sort of food in deference to the atmosphere, and Dutch food is not famous for being particularly good. It was one of the memorable meals of my life, made even more exciting by watching everything being prepared, trying to guess what it was. A great night.

Kirsty kicks back in the loft at the Supper Club – see the crowds below?

Today, Darin went to work and I went to the museums. Unless you have a passion for Dutch painting or old furniture, I’d give the Rijksmuseum a miss. Although, their temporary exhibition of colonial photography was interesting, if slightly disturbing.

The Van Gogh Museum is great, even though it’s crowded. They had a special exhibit on his collaboration and friendship with Paul Gauguin, comparing their paintings and the effects they had on each other. In 1898, Gauguin came to stay with Van Gogh in Arles, France, and they painted many of the same people and landscapes. The show hung some of these paintings next to each other, so you could see the difference. Van Gogh believed in painting only what he could see, but Gauguin painted from memory and imagination sometimes. They also had painting from a series hung together; for instance Van Gogh painted many versions of “Sunflowers”. Usually one hangs in Tokyo, one in Amsterdam and one in New York, so it was fascinating to see them all next to each other. They also had an exhibit of other artists from the same time period, but I ran out of time.

Amsterdam is full of bicycles. For the 700,000 residents, there are about 500,000 bicycles. They have special bike lanes, separate from the traffic, and a huge bike lot at the Station Centraal that holds 3,000 bikes. There’s a big problem with bike theft, so they’re all rusted and old-looking. If your bike gets stolen, you just go buy another one from a junkie. Amsterdammers joke that after this happens about 10 times, you’ll probably get your original bike back.

I know you all want to know about the whole marijuana thing, right? Well, in Amsterdam, there are coffee bars, coffee houses and coffee shops. All very different. A coffee bar is basically a bar. A coffee house serves coffee, tea and pastries etc. A coffee shop is where you go to smoke pot. They’re also the handiest internet connections in town, cheap or even free with a purchase. We went to Abraxas, because it was across the street from the Supper Club, and I thought it looked cool. Had to check it out… and read my e-mail, of course.

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