Parents Visit: Day One - Lost in Amsterdam

My parents love to travel and they are visiting me in Holland at the moment. They have come over quite often in the five years that I have been here. It’s good because it gives me the opportunity to see them and visit parts of Holland I normally would not. All though both my parents are avid gardeners and love to visit the flower market there are only so many times anyone can explore Amsterdam and the surrounding areas before they want to see something new. So when ever they come over now my mum searches the internet for new places we can go to. One of the things my mum found this time as she explored the web was a nature reserve in the out skirts of Amsterdam.

The idea of a nature reserve in Amsterdam sounded a little strange but she had brought the map with her. However, the map itself was not very useful. It was sketchy at best and had no street names on it. However the print out did have a list of directions so we started a process of elimination by finding out where the location was not. In other words we got lost. After checking a few tram stop maps (and hiding from the rain that suddenly started) we managed to get back on track.

The directions were getting easier to follow as we got closer or maybe they were getting easier to follow because they were all left turns. By the third left turn my dad started joking that we would end up where we started. By the fourth left turn it turned out that he was right. We found ourselves looking down a street that we had been at the other end of 10 minutes earlier. This time I spotted something none of us saw when we had passed it previously; a one way street sign. We then realized the map we had been following was for cars. During our walk we had taken into account the one way road system with out even realizing. Although we had finally found the right road (Slauinenweg) there was no sign of the nature reserve. It didn’t even seem like the kind of place a nature reserve would be. So we gave up and caught a tram back, spending the rest of the day looking around Amsterdam.

However if we had not gotten lost we would have never have seen this huge Heron suddenly land right next to us on a car in the middle of the street.


Another highlight of the day happened when my dad coursed a small panic at the half built Amsterdam Arena metro station. Some gardening accessories he had bought fell out of his bag and clanged on the floor. Several worried looking commuters suddenly looked up at the leaking ceiling as if they thought bits of it were falling off.

My parents are still here for a few more days so I’ll have more of our misadventures to write about. If anyone has any suggestions on were I could take them while they are here please feel free to leave them in the comments.