Noelle smiled. “I’ll have to think about that. Thank you for the invitation, Summer.”
“I’ll have lots of tortilla chips and salsa. Isn’t that the food you once said you missed the most?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’ve tasted a true Southwest tortilla chip or cilantro-laced salsa since I’ve lived here. Not like my mom used to serve.”
“What else do you miss about the U.S.?”
“Candy.”
I laughed. “Don’t you have candy here?”
“We have lots of candy. Very good candy, just like our Dutch chocolate is very good. But when the girls were little, I wanted to buy kiddy candy for them like we grew up on at home. Here, it’s not the same.”
“No candy necklaces?”
“No. My girls grew up with a salty sort of licorice called dropje. I don’t like it. Do you remember the pink bubblegum that came in little wrapped squares with cartoons folded up inside?”
“I loved that Bazooka bubblegum.”
“And Neccos. Is that what they were called? The round, thin, wafer candies that came in a wrapped cylinder. I used to buy those when we went to the movies and let them sit on my tongue until they melted. My goal was never to chew them but just let them dissolve, one after the other. Same with Junior Mints. Do they still make Junior Mints?”
“Yes. Can I lure you to my corner of the world if I promise an unending supply of fresh salsa, Junior Mints, Bazooka bubblegum, and Neccos?”
“Your powers of persuasion are impressive.”
The train rolled into a huge covered station. Noelle motioned that we should head for the front of our train car to exit now that the train had stopped. My powers of persuasion were apparently not impressive enough to convince her to continue the conversation.
As soon as we stepped off the train, I was awed by the enormity and detailed beauty of the station. Haarlem had seemed charming and Old-World. Amsterdam, starting with the train station, felt like an elaborate scene from an epic movie. I was only a walk-on character in the enchanting saga, but “walk” seemed to be the theme of the day, so on I walked.
Noelle had a map with her, which she pulled out as soon as we exited the train terminal. “My recommendation is that we start with the Van Gogh. Is that okay with you?”
“Sounds good. Lead the way.”
“We’re going to take bikes. My girls say the best place to rent is this way.” Noelle led me to an unassuming storefront. We entered, and there on the floor, stacked up on the walls, and hanging from the ceiling were bicycles. Every sort of bike imaginable was lined up, ready for rent. The orderly sections reminded me of the tulip fields, only without the color, fluidity, or grace. This field was a lot of metal, rubber, and spokes.
“Ready?” Noelle asked as soon as we had signed for our bikes and were on them. “Stay with me. We cannot get separated. If we do, ask anyone where the Rijksmuseum is, and go there.”
“Rikes,” I repeated. “‘Rikes’ like ‘bikes.’”
“Yes. That museum is near the Van Gogh Museum. Anyone in Amsterdam should be able to tell you how to get there.”
I had not been on a bicycle since… I couldn’t remember when. I soon discovered that the saying about never forgetting how to ride is only partly true. I still remembered how to ride a bike, and once I was on, the pedaling part was automatic. What didn’t come back naturally was remembering how to start. Do you sit down and balance yourself first before pedaling? Or do you stand to pedal?
My choice was to stay standing, just so I would have my feet ready to do the inevitable balancing. After two false starts, I was off. I’m not sure how. It seemed to be a combination of the standing, pushing off, then sitting and pedaling all at once that proved successful.
Noelle pedaled slowly. I appreciated that. We turned a corner, and suddenly we were engulfed in a torrent of bicyclists. I felt like a fish entering some sort of stream in the middle of a feeding frenzy. The grand swirl of bicyclists moved as one, turning another corner and picking up the pace.
We were apparently in rush-hour traffic in a lane on the main road that was designated for bikes only. What amazed me was how quiet it was for such a huge city. A tram packed with commuters glided along rails. Cheery bicycle bells rang as bicyclists alerted pedestrians of their impending turns. In bunches, cyclists would leave the pack and take off down side roads while a steady stream of new cyclists joined the pack.
I was exhilarated by the experience. Few people wore helmets or protective gear. The exception seemed to be the children in tow on the front or back of bikes steered by experienced parents. One man in a suit expertly balanced a young boy on the front of the bike and pedaled with a folding stroller strapped over his arm. I saw a striking blonde in a straight skirt and beautiful white blouse and fashionable sunglasses pedaling right along with a briefcase in a front basket and a helmet-wearing toddler in the seat behind.
I managed to stay beside Noelle in the swirl of morning movement. That in and of itself was miraculous, given the number of bicyclists that surrounded us.
“This way,” Noelle called out to me. “Edge your way to the right.”
I edged over. We turned down a wide street that soon became narrower. Another turn brought us upon one of the loveliest sights I had seen in any city anywhere.
We stopped and caught our breath, taking in the surroundings. A calm canal ran down the center of our view. Small boats floated in the canal, tethered to a variety of moorings. On either side of the canal ran a narrow space for parking. Every inch was taken by small vehicles jockeyed into position. Next to the parking was the narrow canal road, just wide enough for the likes of Bluebell to slide down. A sprinkling of bicyclists made their way up and down the canal road.
Beyond the road the houses rose proud and steady, like a gathering of inseparable sisters, attached at the hip, the ankle, the shoulder, the temple. Together they were immovable, and they were stunning with their rosy brick faces catching the morning light. They sat right on the road’s edge, their windows open to the world.
Many of the steady sister houses rose with a single window on each floor. I counted six floors in one of the houses, and she was shorter than her adjacent sister.
The trees were the other piece of art in this still-life scene. These were old trees. Their trunks were dark and haggard looking, with all kinds of bumps and warts. But their limbs stretched out nimbly over the canal on one side and the narrow road on the other. From their branches sprouted vibrant new green leaves. Several trees down the canal were dressed up in pale pink blossoms. Why welcome spring in expected green when you can frill yourself up with party pink?
“Nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s gorgeous, Noelle. I’d like to take a few pictures.”
“I thought you might. That’s why we took this detour. Lean this way. Can you see the bridge there down the canal?”
Feeling the artistic inspiration of the moment, I pulled out my camera and handed it to Noelle. “Can you get me with the bike and the bridge in the back?”
“Sure, let’s try.”
I walked the bike through the sliver of space between the parked car next to us and the determined tree. The idea was to take a shot of me, not on the bike, but just with the bike, standing there with all the wonders of the light and colors of the canal providing the impressionistic background to the photo.
Anchoring the kickstand, I asked again, “Can you get the bridge in the background?”
“I think so. If you move a little more to your left…” Noelle looked at me over the top of the camera. “I’m kidding, you know.”
Of course I knew. If I moved any more to the left, I would be on my way into the canal. “Very funny.”
“No, not very funny. I don’t think you would enjoy one bit going for a swim in that canal water.”
“I did my water aerobics in the North Sea yesterday.” I maintained my grinning expression. I leaned against the anchored bike, head tilted just right. “I’m ready. Can you get
the shot?”
“Yes. That’s perfect. Hold still. Ready? One, two…”
Before Noelle said “three,” a motor started up on a boat down the canal, startling me.
“Don’t move! You have to stay right where you are. One, two, three.” She took the shot.
I struck another pose and could hear the boat puttering in our direction.
Noelle lowered the camera and looked beyond me at the approaching boat. “Oh, Summer, you are not going to believe this! Don’t move!”
She took several quick snaps before looking up at me again. I could tell that the boat was right behind me.
“Look,” she said. “You would think I planned this.”
I turned to see a boat in the shape of a giant wooden shoe motoring down the canal.
The cheery captain of the larger-than-life-sized, painted, wooden-shoe boat tipped his cap.
“Ask him if we can take a picture inside his boat.”
Noelle gave me a skeptical look.
“I’m serious. Please ask him. I would love to have a picture of me sitting in that wooden shoe.”
Noelle called out to him in Dutch, and the two of them entered into a short conversation. The captain steered the shoe, or rather the boat, to an open mooring at the edge of the canal near where we stood.
“He agreed?”
“Yes. He said he goes to the main tourist spots on the canals and takes pictures of children inside his shoe boat. He doesn’t usually take adults, but this time he will make an exception. For a fee, of course.”
My smile widened. I didn’t care how much he charged. This was too perfect!
“I’ll pay.” I reached into my purse.
“Wait and pay after he takes the picture. We might be able to negotiate a lower price. Leave the bikes here. We’ll go down the steps over there. He will come up here and take a picture of us in the boat. Now, you’re sure you want to do this, because it’s not cheap.”
“Yes. I want to do this no matter what the price.”
“This way then.”
Our descent into the canal wasn’t difficult. My coordination skills were a little embarrassing, but we made the transfer. The boat was so cute. It was about the size of a large rowboat but appeared to be crafted out of wood, just like a wooden shoe. It was painted a sunny yellow with tulips in red and green painted all around the outside.
The good-humored captain took his time finding just the right position at the top of the canal. Noelle and I got our balance inside the small boat. We set up the pose with our arms around each other.
“Sisterchicks in a wooden shoe!” I called out, feeling positively giddy.
Noelle chuckled. “You really are enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Yes! I think it’s hilarious. Am I embarrassing you?”
“A little.”
“A little, but not too much, right?”
Noelle paused.
“Is it too much of a touristy thing for you?”
“Yes, but who cares? It doesn’t matter. You’re right. This is good fun.”
“Hey, if your husband and his cousins can sit around at an outdoor beach café, like you were telling me yesterday, and be loud and rowdy in public, then you and I can have some silliness in a wooden shoe on an Amsterdam canal.”
“You’re right.”
“Besides, aside from you or me, who will ever know we did this?”
Noelle gave a mischievous chuckle. “That all depends on whether the photo makes it to my refrigerator gallery.”
“Oh yes. I meant to comment on yesterday’s art selection.”
My echoing chuckle in the canal was followed by a strange and awful sound of metal falling on metal.
Noelle and I looked up just in time to see both of our bikes, untouched by human hands, falling one on the other and tumbling in an entwined, contorted swan dive into the canal.
“No!” we both screamed at the same moment.
The sound of the splash was disturbing on oh-so-many levels. The captain laughed erratically as he held up one of the cameras and shouted in English, “I took a photo!”
Stunned, I stepped back. As I did, my hip pressed against a button. I still don’t know what it was or how it happened, but somehow I had started the engine. The wooden shoe began putt-puttering down the canal.
The man yelled at us in Dutch. Noelle reached for a lever on the handcrafted control panel. She nipped it up, but the motor kept going, and so did we, straight toward our submerged bikes.
The man yelled louder. Noelle called back something in Dutch. He answered, and she tried another switch. The motor died, but we were now in the slow-moving current of the canal, drifting away from where we had entered.
“Weren’t we roped to anything?” I steadied myself and kept an eye on the bikes as they slowly glub-glub sank into the canal.
“Apparently not. He said to sit. The boat tips easily.”
I immediately sat. What I sat on, I’m not sure. Noelle sat on the boat’s edge, opposite me. The owner of the runaway wooden shoe trotted along the canal, between the trees and parked cars, calling out orders. Several people in the previously quiet neighborhood stepped out onto the canal road to see what was going on.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“He says to stay balanced, and when we come to the turn, the canal narrows. We should try to find a way to pull to the side.”
“How?”
“I have no idea.”
To our right we passed the barely visible handlebars of our bikes. Fortunately, we hadn’t left anything strapped to them. The unhappy rental bikes went to their watery grave alone.
“Keep a watch for any sort of rope or pole,” Noelle said.
No rescue devices were to be seen. We weren’t going fast. The problem was the tipsy nature of the unusually shaped craft and our inability to direct the way we were headed.
The closer we floated toward the more-populated area, the more attention we drew. The harried captain had disappeared since he couldn’t round the corner of the canal by running alongside. He appeared on the other side of the turn, yelling at us, apparently for not managing to grab hold of anything in the narrows.
We were in a more-open, exposed part of the canal now. People stopped to stare. Children pointed. I heard loud exclamations of how cute we were from a huddle of college-aged girls. They were bent over a map until one of them caught sight of us. All of them pulled out their cameras and took our picture. I waved.
“What are you doing?” Noelle’s words came out in a squawk.
“I’m waving.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I laughed. After yesterday’s encounter with the gulls at the North Sea and the way I had missed all the humor in the moment, I felt the best response to this out-of-control situation was to sit back and enjoy the ride.
My sit-back-and-wave reaction was so out of the ordinary for neurotic little me that all I could think about was how proud my husband would be of me at this moment. I was so deep in denial that I was having fun.
Noelle covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
We were floating through Amsterdam as if it were the Wooden Shoe Day Parade and she and I were the lead float, so to speak. Before this day was over, someone somewhere would be checking a friend’s blog to see how her visit to Amsterdam was going, and there would be a photo of Noelle and me, adrift in an oversized wooden shoe.
This was our fifteen seconds of fame.
I thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to me.
I waved again.
Just then, from overhead a long rope dropped down to us.
We were floating under an arched pedestrian walkway. The captain was yelling. Another man was with him, and they were holding fast to the other end of the rope.
I felt as if we were a pair of curious little monkeys and the man in the big yellow hat was trying to get us out of trouble.
Noelle sprang into action, reaching for the lowered rope.
She planted her feet as the boat wobbled. The captain continued his directions. Noelle held on bravely, as we were pulled to the side of the canal.
I waved to a young couple with a baby. They waved back. The father lifted the baby’s hand and had the baby wave back. I was having a lovely time.
The man with the rope hurried down the footbridge and somehow anchored the rope, then pulled us to shore with his brawny arms.
Our audience had swelled. We must have had close to a hundred people watch as Noelle and I tried to help each other scale a rickety metal ladder that was bolted into the brick side of the canal. My grip was so wobbly that kind and concerned Noelle had to give my behind a two-handed push of support to keep me moving up the ladder.
I tried hard not to laugh.
We managed to arrive unscathed atop the canal. One shop owner who stood in his doorway a few feet from us gave a friendly cheer. The rest of our audience stood and stared.
Seeing the gathered crowd, our skipper regained his merry disposition and called out to any and all takers, “Photos?”
At least twenty tourists congregated, holding out their cameras. Noelle and I sheepishly moved to the front of the line to retrieve our cameras. That is, if he hadn’t tossed them into the canal when he took off chasing us. He handed us our cameras, I paid him the agreed-upon amount, and we all shook hands.
Walking away, Noelle said, “I think we just launched him from the kiddy boat business to a slightly more daring clientele.”
“That was hilarious.” I was still smiling. “What do you want to do now, Gilligan?”
“Gilligan?”
“Don’t you remember Gilligan’s Island?” I sang the theme song from the sitcom for her.
“The professor and Mary Ann. I forgot all about Gilligan’s Island? Noelle still looked distracted. “As far as what we should do next, I don’t know. Maybe report the bikes to the rental company?”
“I forgot about the bikes.”
“You really did clock out of reality for a bit there, didn’t you?”
Noelle walked and I followed. We boarded the tram and stood in the crowded space for several blocks, retracing the path we had taken earlier on the bikes. I was still grinning.