Amsterdam - Science, Animals and a taste of Brasil

A wet, foggy and miserable day, but we decided we would take our bikes into town and were joined by our daughter who had taken the day off work.

First stop the Zoo - Artis - surrounded by canals on all sides, it's located almost in the city centre in the Plantage district. 
The entry fee of 19,95 Euros is quite steep, but it was free for holders of the City card. You can buy a map of the zoo for a few extra euro.

I'm not a great fan of zoos, as I feel sorry for some of the bigger animals who don't seem to have enough space to roam around. Here for example I thought the elephants, giraffes and even the ostriches displayed behaviours of caged animals and their enclosures were too small and bare. They had a lot of smaller type monkeys which I had never seen.

Mountain goats

The cheeky monkeys eat fruit upside-down

The elephant enclosure

The huge Pelicans

The camels

The huge turtles


The lion enclosure

This coin operated kids cart was quite interesting

There was a tropical enclosure, with butterflies that was quite amazing. 
The butterflies flitted around quite quickly and it was quite difficult to capture them in a picture. 
There were other pavilions with an Aquarium, Bird house, Aviary, an even a Planetarium. 

The tropical enclosure and butterfly garden

Fruit for the butterflies

Next to the Zoo, you can also visit - Micropia - a museum of microbes, which opened in October last year, but by the time we finished with the zoo, we were hungry and decided to rather go and have lunch across the road.

On our bikes again, we rode to the Science Center - Nemo - housed in a futuristic building in the harbour district of Oosterdok, this science and technology interactive museum over 5 levels will keep kids occupied for a few hours! 
There is a roof terrace from where you can get a great view over the city, but it was closed as a restaurant is being built up there.

Nemo Science Museum

Entry costs 15 euros, once again free for City card holders, and is open from 10am to 5,30pm, and closed on Mondays except during school holidays and from May to August.

Being school holidays it was packed to the roof with kids and their parents, but we still enjoyed trying out some of the experiments.  

I was amazed at the Cloakroom which every museum seems to have, but this one was huge and had at least 3 or 4 people working there! 

From this cloak room you can see the number of visitors....

Next was an in and out visit to the National Maritime Museum, just a short ride from Nemo, as they were about to close, and I just wanted to photograph the replica of the "Amsterdam", the Dutch East India Company vessel which sank in a storm in 1749 off the English channel, on the way to Batavia (now Indonesia).  Entry is also 15 euros, free for City Card holders.
This ship is also quite popular with kids.

The Maritime museum seen from Nemo Science Museum

The entrance hall of the Maritime Museum with the glass ceiling

Nemo Science Museum seen from the Maritime Museum

                  



On the way home we went past the shop from where we hired our bicycles to hand them in, but the shop was closed on Thursdays, so we had to return the next morning.

At night we went by tram to the De Pijp district, just south of the city, to a Brazilian restaurant near the Albert Cuyp street market which we planned to visit the following day.

Samba Kitchen, was modern but homely. They had a rodizio (all you can eat meat buffet), salads, etc. for 27,50 euros which included a Caipirinha to start with, but not the wines.

The caipirinhas were prepared right in front of us which made for an interesting display, the staff were friendly and when we told them we were Portuguese they came over and chatted to us. (Forgot to take photos of the whole procedure and the meats...)

Kiwi and Strawberry Caipirinha (photo from net)

Here you can see a Youtube video about Samba restaurant. If you a a meat fan this is the ideal restaurant, for me it's a bit of a waste as I'm not such a great meat eater...

Thursday, 26 February 2015