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Amsterdam

Amsterdam tour-Far from the madding crowd-
Hajenius, Kalverstraat, Historisch Museum (part 2)

Kroller Muller Museum

Back to Amsterdam far from crowd contents

Amsterdam and Jews

Restaurants recommendation

On Rokin in Amsterdam, HAJENIUS is an institution! An institution for smokers, lovers of tobacco, cigars, pipes, everything related to it. Even non-smokers should hop in to have a look. It's in 1826 that Pantaleon Gerhard Coenraad Hajenius opened a cigar shop that would become very soon the court provider of all smoke material of kings and other great people on this earth. In 1915, the house settled down on Rokin in a unique Art Deco interior. Now you can buy his own brands, but also the most famous foreign ones, Cubans in particular. You can ask a half hour lasting cigar or a very special pipe, or make your own mixture of pipe tobacco. The supreme trend and chique is to have your own locker where they conserve your cigar stock in the optimal conditions of temperature and humidity. If you are lazy and don't want to leave home, just a phone call and a special delivery brings them home
And now the KALVERSTRAAT. I remember when I was a child, I played, like all children in the word at the time that POC didn't exist, the game of Monopoly. Do you remember or are you all that youngJ. Well, in the Dutch version I played, the Kalverstraat was the most expensive and prestigious street on the game and also in reality. Used to be a street with classy shops for elegant people: today a hotchpotch of all possible international chain sores like H&M, C&A, P&C, and more of this highly impersonal giants. It's a lot of effort and trouble to imagine that it was not so long ago the orphans of the "Burgerweeshuis" walked to pray every day in their chapel. All wearing red and black clothes. Girls had golden or silver earrings with pretty and coquettish hats of fine silk, shoulder rags, aprons and more. Boys had caps or high hats. They entered the Orphanage (Burgerweeshuis), which became today the splendid AMSTERDAM HISTORISCH MUSEUM. 
The portal is at the end of a small alley where there used to stand a collecting-box. A story is attached to that box. People offered some cents to be able too use the big shortcut it was to get from the Kalverstraat to the Begijnhof or Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, passing through the Orphanage. It was worth a few cents!! Every penny was welcome of course!
When you pass the portal you are in the only place in the world where 17th century paintings are just simply hanging on the street. You can see them in an easy accessible Schuttersgalerij, a now covered museum street connecting the inner courtyard of the museum and the medieval Begijnhof. The eye catches the big canvas with corporate archers, whose eyes follow you when you pass along them. Even works of Rembrandt and his pupils are to find here. Don't pass or miss in any case the most convivial and wayward museum of Amsterdam. The building complex of the 16th and 17th century was originally a cloister, confiscated in 1578 by the Calvinists. Now you can relive the atmosphere of old Amsterdam on the inner courtyards and passages. In the museum's restaurant a giant Goliath stands next to a tiny David. Goliath has a build-in mechanism that allows him to pound the soil with its lance. 
Next we walk to the BEGIJNENSTEEG, but that's for next article.