Story and photos by Bo Zaunders

The first thing I noticed was bicycles, thousands upon thousands of them, parked along the sidewalks in amazing numbers, or navigated through streets teeming with trams, pedestrians and, to a lesser extent, cars. Apparently, Holland boasts the highest bike density in the world (my guess would have been Denmark). Just in Amsterdam there must be about a million of them.

As on an earlier visit to the Dutch capital, I became engrossed with the architecture: rows of tall, skinny 17^th century buildings built around rings of canals, and an abundance of decorative gables. Some of the houses leaned sideways as a result of deteriorating foundations.

But, by design they also tilted forward - an architectural practice allowing goods too bulky to be squeezed through narrow stairways to clear windows and walls when hauled by hoists to a higher floor. Many of the hoists remain - a reminder that these houses, once the residences of wealthy merchants, were also used for business.

The canals were lined with houseboats, one cozier-looking than the other, and little cafés, at least one of which consisted of no more than four tables on a small pier sticking out over the water.  A sense of tranquility prevailed, broken only when a tour boat floated by. Typically, the railing of every bridge was lined, wheel-to-wheel, with, what else, bicycles, often with baskets crammed with flowers.

Could this be true? Walking into the Rembrandt Room at the restaurant d’Vijff Vliegen (the Five Flies), we saw what appeared to be four original etchings by the great Dutch master. They were indeed, and this, obviously, was no ordinary restaurant. To begin with, it occupied five adjoining 17^th century houses, and, as Roxie, my wife, and I got to know it better, its story became even more fascinating.

It all began with Nicolaus Kroese, an Amsterdammer born in 1905, who, incidentally, claimed he was born in 1627 and forgot to die. Originally an art and antique dealer, Kroese started the restaurant in 1939, and soon became known not only for his story-telling skills but also for his relentless and highly unorthodox methods of self-promotion.

Thus, in 1946, he appeared on Broadway with an iron cage containing five copper flies. Later he was the guest on the Ed Sullivan show, and throughout the fifties and sixties, until his death in 1971, large numbers of celebrities from both Europe and the US beat a path to his restaurant.

Leafing through the guest books, which now occupy an entire wall in one of the restaurant’s nine dining rooms, is quite a treat, and reads like a list of every singer and movie star you ever heard of - John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Gary Cooper, Danny Kaye, Esther Williams, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Springsteen, and so on. Add such notables as Churchill, Roosevelt (both Franklin and Eleanor), and Gorbachev, and you get the idea. In 1950, Walt Disney visited, leaving a full spread of illustrations from “Alice in Wonderland.”

In portraits of Kroese, you see a man of considerable girth, his pants hitched to just inches below his chin. Apparently, he was a great storyteller, with highly unusual ideas of how to solve the problems of the world. To deal with the hunger crisis, he said, the solution lay in putting a plastic foil over the entire Asia so that fruit and vegetables could grow two, three times their normal size. Another idea of his was to melt all the gold in Fort Knox, and make a golden thread that would connect all the churches in the US, thus creating a magic field that would make the country immune to all kinds of sicknesses.

Most of this we heard from Albert Veerman, the present manager, who briefly joined us at our table, and whose admiration for Kroese bordered on the surreal. “I would have given a decade of my life,” he said, “for the opportunity to have worked with him for just one year.”

Though the dining rooms had all the ambience of history, each featuring different styles and periods, the menu took pride in being altogether contemporary. I ate a perfectly prepared duck, ringed with a string of fresh peas. Subsequently, I visited the kitchen, where chef Jeroen Groot, was busy overseeing the preparation of a most promising-looking dessert.

The next day I visited the Rembrandt House Museum, where the great painter lived and worked between 1639 and 1660, and which has now been reconstructed to show what his living quarters and workshop might have looked like. The museum also featured a collection of more than 250 prints. Particularly poignant, I thought, was the neatly arranged paraphernalia of his rather cramped studio – palette and brushes on a small wooden table next to an easel and a tiny footstool.

From the Rembrandthuis it was just a short walk to De Waag, the “weigh house,” a medieval building that originally was part of the old city walls.  As it happened, it was here that Rembrandt, at age 26, got his first major commission: a group painting for the Surgeons Guild, whose headquarters at that time, along with three other guilds, were in the building. The result: “Anatomy Lesson,” an all-time classic. Historically significant, de Waag now houses what appears to be a very popular restaurant. A cup of coffee, and I was ready to meet Roxie at the Van Gogh Museum for a look at the works of yet another great Dutch painter, and one of Roxie’s absolute favorites.

Amsterdam, of course, is well known for its museums, the three most popular of which are the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum. But that’s just scratching the surface, considering that there’re over fifty such institutions, reflecting the diversity of the city and ranging from a Sex, a Hash, and a Torture museum, to a Bible museum.  Some are more indigenous in nature than others. Where else would you find a tulip or a houseboat museum, or one called the Heineken Experience? On one of my wanderings I ran into the Anne Frank House, a heartrending reminder of the Jewish girl who went into hiding during the Nazi occupation, was captured, and later died in a concentration camp.

Here on display, is now the original diary that made her world-famous.

Throughout our two-day stay, I often had a sense of seamlessly shifting back and forth between the 17^th and 21^st centuries, a form of time travel that seemed to be part of the Amsterdam experience.

Look up, and you saw a richly decorated stepped gable just waiting for the next ship loaded with goods from the East Indies. Walk through a door, and you are in the home of some rich merchant from the Dutch Golden Age.

Living in Manhattan, I recently read “The Island at the Center of the World” by Russell Shorto, the story of how New York began as New Amsterdam.  Especially interesting, I thought, was Shorto’s assertion of the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today. Melting pot, entrepreneurial spirit, ethnic diversity: all the familiar characteristics of New York City, it seems, were established by the Dutch back in the 1600s.

Small wonder I felt right at home.

USEFUL LINKS:

Where to stay:

 NH Amsterdam Centre. Stadhouderskade 7, 1054ES Amsterdam. Tel. +31.20.6851611  Email: nhamsterdamcentre@nh-hotels.com

We were extremely comfortable at NH Amsterdam Centre, the location of which proved perfect - down the street from Leidse Square, on a main tramline, and just a few minutes walk to the museum square, home to, among several others, the Van Gogh Museum.

http://www.nh-hotels.com/nh/en/hotels/the-netherlands/amsterdam/nh-amsterdam-centre.html

Restaurants:

Restaurant d’Vijff Vlieghen  Spuistraat 294-302 1012 VX Amsterdam
Tel: +31 (0)20 53 04 060  Email: vijffvlieghen@nh-hotels.com

The Five Flies  www.thefiveflies.com

Restaurant Haesje Claes Spuistraat 273-2751012 VR Amsterdam
Tel.0031.20-6249998
Email: info@haesjeclaes.nl

A busy, convivial restaurant in the very heart of the city, which, like The Five Flies exudes the flavors of historic Amsterdam.

http://www.haesjeclaes.nl 

© October 2011 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.