Beautiful Day Photography’s Weblog

Robert and I decided to go to Amsterdam to visit his Dutch side of his family, because we did SO much while in London in two days (and not to mention the pound is SO expensive that two cups of coffee are like $15 in London), that we decided to see a new place I had never been to and to see his cousins that he hadn’t seen in almost 10 years!…how time flies. I figured that we would be spending the rest of our trip with my sisters in Portugal so why not? Amsterdam was awesome. They refer to it as the Venice of the North, because the entire city is on canals and most people get around by water taxi or boat and lining ALL of the canals are houseboats that are permanently parked there. Apparently these boats go for like 500,000 Euro’s and are considered prime real estate. It was TRULY bizarre, because they had mailboxes and some had yards on top of their boats that they actually mowed! and people would just be hanging out on their floating back porch, doing laundry and what not….SO crazy!

What I truly loved about Amsterdam right off was the amazing buildings. Below is an old palace right near the Van Gogh Museum that we went to (AMAZING) and I had this “vision” in my head to get a black and white shot of this building with all of these pigeons flying in front of it. So I recruited Rob to run through and scare the pigeons. These birds were SO stubborn and would not move that I had to make him run over and over and over, to the point that a policeman nearby yelled at him in Dutch and made him stop because he was annoying people…LOL… I got a shot, but not quite what I wanted. Pathetic actually, I think only 1 bird actually got scared by Rob’s antics

While we were in Amsterdam, we stayed in the nearby countryside with his Aunt Henny and Uncle Keven. They lived right on the canals, but in the countryside, so they were clean and had fish and birds. They also lived nearby Rob’s mom’s OTHER sister Ellie and er husband Bob and their children and grandchildren…so LOTS of cousins to visit. Most of them spoke decent English (THANK GOD, because Dutch is the HARDEST language to try to speak!) Dutch is easy to read if you know English you can figure out a lot, but forget trying to speak it I actually have a clip here if a futile attempt to try to say the word “razorblade” in Dutch. His little 11-year old second cousin, Silke, was SO patient trying to teach me words in Dutch as we were strolling around Amsterdam

After walking around ALL of Amsterdam, I took this funny photo of Silke while sitting at a cafe, which was the catalyst for a RIDICULOUS photoshoot that we did in the middle of the street in Amsterdam…She TRULY will be a performer one day, but it was funny to see the before and after or progression of our shoot…Rob made me jump in and I feel SO uncomfortable in front of the camera sometimes, but I took the opportunity to show off the sunflower ring that Rob bought me at the Van Gogh museum….Yep, we go to Europe and he buys me a ring! Not quite what the relatives hoped for though LOL

Later on when we didn’t have his 11 year-old cousin with us, we decided to roam through the famous Red Light District. I LOVE this photo of Rob, he looks so disturbed while standing next to the Prostitute Information Center. I want to point out the highlights through these photos…

This is the Cathedral from the 1500’s that is in the Center of the Red Light Prostitute district…SO bizarre to walk into the amazing cathedral and then walk out and see all of the sketchy people and business dealing going on around you. Women (who some were like my grandmother’s age) were half naked pressed up against the windows at like 2pm selling themselves. I didn’t know you couldn’t take photos and I learned the hard way…they FLIPPED out when I tried to take a photo. They will come out and take your camera if you try. Inside of the Cathedral was SO cool. Rembrandt’s wife Saskia was buried there and they had all of this construction going on inside, because while trying to repair the floor they discovered underneath an ENTIRE other older church…so they had all of these archaeologists come in to uncover the older church…Pretty amazing! The other bizarre photo of the distorted wood face is an example of these weird reliefs that are found underneath each seat of the choir section. They are all different and each tell a tale of woe to learn from. This one translates into: Two drunk men living under one roof. Each are bad and it doesn’t make what they do good”…or what we know as today as “Two wrongs don’t make a right”

Here is an old man that could be my Grandpa trying to buy a hooker in the middle of the day…UNBELIEVABLE

This is the famous BULLDOG Cafe where people are just smoking Marijuana everywhere (I had an apple pie and coffee NO LIE), but it was a very unique underground, funky cafe. They recently, like in LA, banned smoking cigarettes indoors in Amsterdam, BUT NOT WEED. How crazy is that? There were actual signs that said, “You can’t smoke cigarettes here, but we DO sell alternatives upstairs”…Mind you we are STILL in the Red Light district where they have these CRAZY narrow alleys and passageways like a maze through prostitute land

Rob and all of his cousins/family

Another weird thing…Kentucky Fried Chicken was EVERYWHERE here. More so than Mc Donald’s. The Dutch LOVE their Fried Chicken!!

Some of the crazy people that dress in costume in front of the palace for tourists..trying to earn a buck. It was interesting, because I didn’t see ONE homeless person, but a lot of people were playing music or just street performing for money all over the city, young and old. It made it more interesting when you were walking around.

Dinner at the cousin’s place with Rob’s mom’s two sister’s and their husbands. I felt like a midget yet again ( I think I was standing on a chair to take this shot!) Freakin Dutch Tall people!