On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Everybody, please send in your holiday photos! I have one set from Albatrossity for Monday, but we typically do the holiday pics for the 2 weeks before Christmas, so there are 9 more slots to fill. If you have just one or two holiday photos, you can either submit them as an OTR post, or you can send email attachments with an email message. Otherwise submitting the photos using the form is the way to go.
Asking for holiday pics from when you were little, or holiday lights and decorations from he past or the current day!
When I were little, we used to go to downtown Chicago to see all the stores and the city decorations. It was magical.
Captain C
The next three sets are all from the Maritime Museum (Scheepvaartmuseum), perhaps my favorite in Amsterdam. This set covers my arrival and the first part of the photos from the replica of the Amsterdam.
The Scheepvaartmuseum, with the Amsterdam replica on the left.
The courtyard of the museum, which one walks through to get to the exhibits on three sides, and beyond to the Amsterdam.. The museum is located in a naval storehouse which dates back to 1656. The museum moved in in 1973.
The Amsterdam, a several-decades old replica of an ill-fated Dutch East India Company (VoC) trading ship which never made it past Beachy Head (the wreck can still be seen there).
Crew sleeping and cannon space belowdecks. The ship carried about 330 or so people on it’s ill-fated maiden voyage, including five passengers per Wiki.
From what IIRC was the gunnery and repair room to the rear of the hammocks in the previous picture. I imagine in the days of muzzle-loaders it was prudent to have powder ready in pre-measured doses.
A work table at the rear of the ship.
One of the masts of the ship.
The captain’s office/ready room. As you can see from the actual human being, the ceiling was pretty damn low (though IIRC, there was some signage which indicated that the original Amsterdam may have had a bit more headroom on this level at the expense of the one below.
montanareddog
That last photo makes one laugh when one thinks about how tall the Dutch are. A modern cloggy would have to limbo dance through that doorway!
Reminds me of an old joke: Why are the Dutch so tall? Darwinian natural selection – the country is an average of 1.8 metres below sea-level and when the dikes burst…
OzarkHillbilly
Interesting stuff, thanx. That last pic makes my head hurt.
Betty
The age of the naval storehouse reminded me of the many Americans I encountered as a student in France who marveled at how old everything was. Those old ships were works of art.
MelissaM
That ship is pretty cool! Do you have a food post? Poffertjes with loads of butter and sugar? Pancakes filled with cheese and ham?
mvr
@MelissaM: My dad always spoke lovingly and longingly of the poffertjes of his youth. I have actually never had them myself.
mvr
Thanks for the photos! This is interesting to see, especially for me the workbench.
Do you know the vintage of the ship of which this is a replica?
I gather that post vises as seen on the workbench go back to the 1600s. But this one is installed oddly. The screw is not in the main body and the post does not go down to the floor, which is the normal method of installation since that way you can pound on what you put in it and have the energy absorbed by the floor rather than having the vise move.
Captain C
@mvr: The original ship was built in the late 1740s, and made it’s one ill-fated voyage in 1749. I suspect that the builders of the replica may have found it easier to just make the vises they way they did, rather than make a more authentic replica. But that’s only my speculation.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
That first picture puts me in mind of the game Spiritfarer where you shepherd souls to the afterlife; mainly by hugging, sheltering, and feeding them.
Captain C
@MelissaM: Unfortunately I’m not good about taking food pictures (though I think there’s at least one of broodje haring in a later post). I did manage to have some poffertjes, including a nice lunch of such with my Uncle at the Carrousel which is not far from the Rijksmuseum, and also near where my Opa and his brothers lived when they were little; they were apparently rambunctious enough to be known as the beasts of the street. Also some good patat frites (oorlog) from Vlaams Friteshuis Vlemincks near Spui.
StringOnAStick
I love all these photos, thanks. I think the old ships are so fascinating, how people who often didn’t even know how to swim climbed aboard and sailed away from any view of land. It is just stunning to think of doing that.
way2blue
@Captain C: Ah. The patat frites. Visiting Europe at 19, I was traveling on a shoestring, but lived on frites while in Amsterdam. The best!
Bart Simpson
So what do sheepvarts smell like?
KSinMA
Thanks for the photos. Amsterdam is on my bucket list!
Ruckus
@StringOnAStick:
The number of people I served with in the Navy who didn’t know how to swim surprised me. At least they taught them how to put on a lifejacket. But the reality is that if you are on a ship, then or now and it goes down, you likely are not going to survive even if you are an Olympic swimmer. Not many people can swim in 40-60 deg water for say 100 miles. Let alone 300 miles. I’ve crossed the Atlantic ocean 6 times, both in summer and winter and I knew that the likely hood of survival was extremely rare for more than one or two days at most if you were in the water. You run out of heat and energy unless picked up very quickly. And you are very hard to see in the water from a moving ship. I’ve crossed in mostly calm water and in wave after wave of 45 foot swells and every condition inbetween. That’s in a ship with engines and huge propellers. A sailing ship is at the mercy of the winds, the seas, and the skills of the crew. And that crew had to climb masts to manage the sails, it is nothing like a modern day sailboat.
Ruckus
@KSinMA:
I haven’t been there in years but it was amazing and beautiful then, I doubt it’s much different today. All of northern Europe I saw was amazing, and yes, the Mediterranean countries and cities were also very nice and a lot of fun as well.