A Park for Rembrandt

May 2

Everywhere you go here you see something interesting or unusual, a canal. old crooked houses, a drawbridge. 

Today I went farther west than I’ve wandered before.

The route took me from Centrum out to some newer suburbs—fewer townhouses and more apartment buildings. My destination was Rembrandt Park, not for any particular reason except curiosity.

I stopped on the way out at a vishandel. It’s a fish store. “Handel” means shop or business. A related word has come back into English slang, probably from Yiddish. I’ve seen it spelled “hondl” and it usually means to bargain. 

So I got a smoked mackerel sandwich with a bottle of water on the side (you can tell I’m still under the weather) and ate it at the handel.

The store was in a commercial strip, possibly on Jan Evertsenstraat or Admiral de Ruijterweg. The admiral is a legendary Dutch hero of the 17th century wars against the English. It was one of his subordinate admirals whose tomb we saw at Utrecht.

The big thing I see advertised right now is “nieuwe haring.” The store had that but I wasn’t sure if it was smoked and ready to eat, or needed to be taken home and cooked. So I wimped out and had mackerel. 

Rembrandt Park is fairly large and has lawns and ponds, live ponies and statues of dogs.

One side of it borders a canal lined with weeping willows. 

The park was fairly empty, which isn’t surprising considering it was a Thursday afternoon, so I coasted up and down the bike lanes for a while. In my black clothes, I was playing Mafioso on a bicycle.

I got off the bottom of the map for a little while and watched a drawbridge open for a cabin cruiser. 

Then I was on Koninginneweg (which I later learned is Queen’s Way) which ran into Willemsparkweg.

I pedaled for a few minutes when I saw the towers of the Central Station. Wow, that was quick. But as I got closer it became clear that this was something else—the Rijksmuseum, in fact. They may have been designed by the same architect because they look alike.

 Still OK, though, because I know how to get to the hotel from the Museumplein.

This is the neighborhood were we were going to have dinner later.

My ass not punished enough by the bicycle seat, I decided to explore some more. I followed the Singelgracht in a wide loop before I entered Centrum or Jordaan by one crossing or another. I was sort of vectoring rather than following a route.

I came back across the Golden Age grachts to the hotel, where I decided a nap was in order.

I met Larry at Barney’s Uptown at 7. Fortified by an espresso and a Hartog Jan, I was ready for the ride back to the Museumplein to Sama Sebo, a packed Indonesian restaurant that serves rijsttafel. That translates as “rice table.” 

It is a Dutch invention. The colonialists used to serve this to their guests in south Asia, and maybe in Suriname too. It kind of shows off what the cook can do.

The restaurant serves the food family style, an array of Indonesian dishes and go-withs—coconut, fried bananas, various spicy vegetables, beef, chicken, and pork. There were so many serving dishes, the waiter had to balance some on the edges of others. 

I tried a little of this and of that, along with a Heineken, and it put me over the edge. After dinner, I was done in. I pedaled back to the hotel and hit the sack. It was 10 p.m. and I didn’t even know where my children were. But I had a trusty feeling they were OK.