The Group Lesson
Wednesday November 14, 2000

We had just arrived in Amsterdam for a 2 day unplanned visit. It was our first time in Holland. After a long drive from Germany, we found our hotel in the Museum district. It was getting rather late and we were hungary from the long trip. We decided to take a walk and look for a restaurant which would still be open. Having been in the car all day and arrived in a very large city, we were beginning to show signs of horse withdrawal. Little did we know that we would find just the thing to alleviate the effects of the city.

The sidewalk was torn up from construction and it was a rather cold night, with a breeze blowing from the North Sea. Not far from our hotel, and over many temporarily covered contruction pits, we spotted a strange site- it looked to be a horse stable smack in the middle of the city, behind some tractors and temporary construction barriers. We decided to sneak a closer look. As it happened, it was a stable full of horses with a sign reading "Dutch Riding School."

You might expect a horse person to know where to find the Dutch Riding School if on a trip for the first time to Amsterdam. Not so for us. We had decided at the last minute to make the detour into Holland and had not even considered the possibility of finding horses within walking distance.
We entered and proceeded to wander around. It was suprising to see so many people here at this late hour, in the stables and taking lessons in one of two rings. The grand indoor ring is shown here in the video. There was another more modern ring that also had a sizeable group lesson taking place. The stable was enclosed with apartments on three sides which overlooked the very small courtyard. These apartments were the typical older canal houses which really had quite a nice view for being in the heart of the city.