Doin’ the Haarlem Shuffle

For our final day in the Netherlands we decided to do a short trip to Haarlem. We slept in until about 8:00 a.m., which is late for us. After a little breakfast downstairs, we loaded up the daypack and headed to the train station.

Haarlem is about 20 minutes from Amsterdam on the train, and we got there around 10 o’clock when things were just getting going on a sleepy Sunday morning. Booksellers were setting up all over the market square for a big book fair. Vicki found one book she liked—Aunt Louisa’s Illustrated Book of Bible Stories. It was given as a gift in 1887 and had beautiful color wood block print illustrations. We decided that we wanted to think it over before spending € 50. But when we got back after lunch it had already sold.

Vicki:  I would have gotten the book first thing, but we have so many books.  Just so many books.  I really didn’t want to carry it back.  Since it was gone when we dropped back by, I figured it was okay.
Vicki:  We also walked by Corrie ten Boom’s house which is just around the corner from the main square in the oldest part of town.  We took some pictures.  There is a jewelry story in the 1st floor front where the watch shop used to be.  In case you might wondering who Corrie ten Boom is, I highly recommend reading The Hiding Place.  The rest of the house is a museum.  However, it isn’t open on Sundays.  The jewelry store wasn’t open either in spite of the fact that all the other stores around it were.  I wonder if it’s still in the family.

Anyhow we walked around the old town and took a canal boat ride and saw a lot of the old city. After a lunch beside the Spaare River we strolled around for a while longer before getting the train back to Amsterdam.

You've probably heard that that bikes are common in the Netherlands. Lots of people commute by bicycle, and it's common to see people out doing their shopping on bikes. I've included a couple of photos below to show something of the bicycle prominence here. One is bikes parked on the sidewalk outside the train station. The other is a 2,500 space bike parking garage beside the train station. It's full and plans are underway to expand to 21,500 spaces around Centraal Station by 2030.

After recovering in our room for a little while we went out for a final walk and a light supper. We went to La Place, a sort of cafeteria associated with V&D, a big Netherlands department store. After some pasta we took a walk down the Kalverstraat—a pedestrian shopping street. In the 500 meters (550 yards) between a street called Rokin and Dam Square we saw no less than 4 H&M stores.

We’re now back at our hotel (step count 13,548) with bags packed (or more accurately stuffed) for the trip home with our clothes for tomorrow hanging up ready to put on in the morning. The plan is to get up around six and get to the train station in time to catch a train between 7:00 and 7:30 to get us to Schiphol in plenty of time for our 10:45 departure for Philadelphia. If all goes well, we should get to Nashville around 4:30 tomorrow (Monday).

It’s been a great trip. We saw most of what we wanted to see and despite full days we’re not worn out or overly tired (don’t know if that will be true tomorrow afternoon).

Marken, Volendam, & Edam

Today we took another trip north to visit the three former fishing villages of Marken, Volendam, and Edam. We walked to Centraal Station—that’s getting to be a habit—and caught the regional bus. A € 10 ticket let us ride all day through the area known as Waterland. We first went to Marken. Marken used to be an island, but now there is a dike/causeway connecting it to the mainland. Early in is history monks built dikes and windmills to pump water off to create polders that allowed the local people to farm, but the king drove the monks off, and the dikes deteriorated and Marken turned into a fishing village. It’s now a picturesque little tourist town of about 1,800 people.  

We got there pretty early and had a coffee while sitting by the little harbor. We then walked around the town. There were little canals behind all the homes. The protestant church had interesting furnishings—model ships were hanging from the ceiling.

Vicki:  Marken was certainly a pretty little place.  There is a harbor/marina where maybe 100 boats were docked.  We arrived just after 9:00 and watched several of the pleasure craft take off.  I think the town is fairly safe from flooding because of the big dike that formed the Ijsolmeer Lake.  We went through a small museum which had an extensive exhibit of the great flood of 1916.  It devastated the little village.  The museum also showed what a typical house would have looked like in around the turn of the century.  Since it was an island for so long, the people on Marken were fairly isolated.  They had their own costumes and dialect.  Of course, many of the little towns we’ve visited have their own traditional costumes.  The girls and women used to wear the lace hats with the wings on the side that became so associated with “little Dutch girls”.

After a couple of hours in Marken we boarded the Marken-Volendam ferry to head back to the mainland. Volendam was something of a shock. We pulled up into the harbor and the streets were filled with people who’d decided that Volendam was a great for a Saturday outing. This wasn’t what we were looking for, so we wound our way through the crowds until we found the bus stop to take us out of Volendam and on to Edam.

Edam was just a couple of miles north of Volendam, but it was a welcome change. The tiny town was calm and very scenic. Like the others, it lost its identity as a fishing village when the Zuiderzee was cut off from the North Sea. We walked the streets and canals and had lunch at a little café before getting on the bus and heading back for Amsterdam.

Vicki:  We boarded the ferry from Marken to Vollendam and were seated with about 6 or 7 other people.  We were thinking that it was going to be a pretty empty boat when suddenly a large tour group showed up and pretty much finished filling the boat.  As George said, Vollendam appeared to be running over with tourists and tour groups.  It was like being in Branson so we just kept walking past the tourist area to the bus stop to go to Edam.  I figured that Edam might be as crowded.  However, when we arrived, we found a quiet little town that the big groups seemed to be skipping.  It was great to sit at a little place recommended by Rick Steves for a quiet lunch.  Their cheese market will open in July so they will probably have larger crowds later this summer.  The walk around the canals in the older part of town was very pleasant.  People keep flowers in their yards.  The “garden” areas near each house are generally very small, but typically filled with flowers in every nook and cranny.  In fact hollyhocks grow from cracks in the sidewalks around here, and they look very healthy and happy growing from the cracks.  Flowers are everywhere. 

George said that we did 13,800 steps today.

Enkhuizen & the Zuiderzee Museum

Growing up, I remember hearing of of Holland and the Zuiderzee, the huge bay that opened onto the North Sea. It came as a surprise to me a couple of years ago when I found out that there is no more Zuideerzee. It’s now the Ijsselmeer(pronounced eye-sul-mer) or Lake Yssel! In fact, the Zuiderzee went away in 1932—17 years before I was born—when the Dutch built a 20-mile-long dike known as the Afsluitdijk or “closure dike” so that the Zuiderzee was no longer connected to the North Sea.

The resulting lake has a surface area of 420 square miles. The lake would be larger, but after building the dike, the Dutch reclaimed 548 square miles of land from the former bay and established the province of Flevoland. So what was once a great salt water bay is now a freshwater lake and polder land that’s home to over 400,000 people.

So today we took a train to the town of Enkhuizen that sits on the western shore of what used to be the Zuiderzee. It’s home to the Zuiderzee Museum. The museum has taken buildings from all around what used to be the Zuiderzee and rebuilt them there in Enkhuizen so that there are old buildings much like one would have found in a Zuiderzee fishing village a century or more ago.

We got off the train in Enkhuizen and walked across the street to the tourist information office (VVV) and bought our tickets to the museum. We took a ferry from the dock behind the tourist information office to the East entrance of the museum. We spent a few hours walking through old buildings and seeing “living history” reenactors show how people lived in the area during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. 

Vicki:  There was a note on each of the buildings explaining their history.  On the houses there was the name of the person first known to own it and live in it.  Sometimes there were stories about that person from a neighbor.  Many times, the children lived on in the house maintaining the family business.

We did take a break for a lunchtime snack of strawberry cake before visiting the indoor portion of the museum where we saw more ships along with the traditional dress associated with each of the little towns that surrounded the Zuiderzee.

We caught the 2 o’clock train back to Amsterdam and walked back to our B&B to rest a little before our final adventure of the day, a cheese tasting. We signed up earlier in the week for a tasting at ReypenaerCheese Shop a few blocks from our hotel. The tasting costs € 15 per person and sounded like fun. We’d tried to get in on Tuesday, but all the tastings were full.

Reypenaer is an old cheese maker here. Their original ageing warehouse is in Woerden, and the only temperature control it has is opening and closing windows. This warehouse holds 17,000 wheels of cheese, and they’ve built a new one that holds 100,000 wheels. They wanted to duplicate the “natural” aging as much as they could, so they monitor the temperature and humidity in the old warehouse and have the climate control system in the new warehouse mimic the conditions in the old one. Incidentally, each of those wheels has to be wiped down (to remove “sweat” from the aging process) and turned over once a week. The wheels typically go from 13 kg to 10-11 kg in the aging process.

So we tasted 6 cheeses—2 goat and 4 cow. For each one, the recipe was the same, but the cheeses differed in how long they had been aged. The goat cheeses were aged for 4 and 10 months while the cow cheeses were aged for a 6 months, a year, two years, and 3 years. We were also given wines (white, red, and a port) as “appropriate” wines to pair with the cheeses. All in all, it was a fun experience, and we are now official cheese “tasting masters.” If you don’t believe it, we can show you our certificates.

After cheese tasting, we walked from Reypenaer to Rembrandt Square where we ate outside at an Italian restaurant. It’s Friday night, and lots of people are out enjoying the cool, sunny weather.

Vicki:  Let me just repeat the above.  There are LOTS of people out.  George keeps reminding me that we are in an area with a large population density.  LOTS of people . . .

So we’re back at our B&B (with a stop for gelato on the way home), getting ready to kick back and read a little. Step count for today was 17,366!

Vicki:  George didn’t mention the BREXIT vote.  I think it’s interesting that I’ve overheard people talking about it today.  Okay, so I’ve heard “Dutch, Dutch, Dutch, BREXIT, Dutch, Dutch, Dutch.  The gentleman who took our tickets on the ferry today asked if we were from the UK since we spoke English.  He was very surprised about the way the vote went and didn’t like the outcome.  We were surprised as well.  However, there has been a lot in our own elections that have surprised me.

Morning Weather—Not so Gouda!

Today’s plan was to get up early walk to the train station and head for Gouda. Every Thursday in the summer Gouda holds an open air cheesemarket, and it sounded like fun. During the night, however, there was lots of rain, thunder, and lightning. Around 5:00 a.m. I rolled over and noticed that the bedside clock was no longer working. The storm had knocked out our power. Around 6:30, we were still in the dark and the rain was pouring down, so we decided to sleep in and pass on the Gouda trip.

Vicki:  The Power flashed on long enough before it stabilized completely for me to make a cup of coffee before going out again. We have a Keurig-type espresso machine in our room which is very nice first thing in the morning. There is also a tea kettle water heater if we want tea.  They leave nice little chocolates for us. Very pleasant . . .

Around 7:30 the power started coming back. We had turned a light on, and it would light up for a few seconds and then go dark again. Things finally seemed to get fixed sometime after 8:00. So after showering, getting dressed and eating breakfast, we decided we’d make a trip to the Rijksmuseum—the national museum of the Netherlands. We’d been before, but we’d always had time constraints on our visit, so we decided we’d do it again and take our time.

We got there around 10 o’clock and went right in without any lines. We went slowly through the things we liked and moved more quickly through the others. By around 1:00 p.m. we’d had enough and went down to the museum’s café and had something sweet to eat before heading back to our B&B. We took a round-about route and spent some down time reading and resting.

Vicki:  We’ve been at the Rijksmuseum before on tours with Viking and Vantage. They take you through to hit the highlights of Vermeer and Rembrandt then give you 45 minutes to cover essentially 3 floors of wonderful exhibits. Today we enjoyed the Impressionists, Delft pottery, ship models, furniture, musical instruments, etc., etc.  Who knew they had a collection of really, really old guns—blunderbusses. It was a real luxury to take our time and linger over what really interested us. I jogged through the guns pretty quickly, but the Delft exhibits were extraordinary.

We also made reservations to eat at Indrapura, a restaurant we’d tried last year with our friends the Simpsons and Frisbys. Given the history of the Dutch in Indonesia, it’s not surprising that Amsterdam has tons of great Indonesian restaurants. We had a rijsttafel or rice table. The one we chose had small portions of 20 different dishes. It was great, but we couldn’t finish it all.

So we’re back in the room watching the BBC to see how the Brexit vote goes, although Trump is getting almost as much coverage. Today’s step total—14269.

Vicki:  We’ve been watching the news on BBC.  Trump isn’t liked very well in Scotland.  Evidently he keeps referring to himself as Scotch, and the locals find that confusing.  

Not Feelin’ Blue in Delft

Today we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast here at our B&B. The owners put out food and let their visitors help themselves. After breakfast we walked to the train station, bought tickets and boarded the train for Delft. The train was pretty full, but we found seats without any real problem. We enjoyed watching the countryside and relaxing.

We got to Delft around 10:00 and managed to find the right tram to take us to the Delft Pottery Company (De Delftse Pauw). This is not the big Royal Delft, but a smaller independent factory there in Delft. We could have visited Royal Delft as well, but Rick Steves (in Rick we trust) suggested this factory as a better and less commercial alternative. We had a short tour with just three of us taking part. There were a couple of people hand painting pieces prior to firing. After the tour we were able to walk through the showroom where—surprise!!—stuff was for sale. I didn’t know that we needed any Delftware, but apparently we did… We had it shipped so it’ll be a month before we get our tulip vase! I’m hoping that we can live without it for that long.

Vicki:  The tour of the factory was interesting but brief.  We were shown how clay is poured into a mold.  It dries and is released from the mold.  The piece is allowed to cure then fired for the first time.  It is painted, glazed, and fired for the second time.  It was a 15-minute tour literally.  I did find a tulip vase that is very pretty.  Happy anniversary, George!

We were going to take the tram back to the city center, but we asked the lady at the factory about walking. She told us that it was a 30-minute walk along the canal, and directions were simple: “Turn right at the second bridge.” It was a cool day with a nice breeze, so we strolled back along the canal to the old city.

In old Delft we walked around a little and found a canal-siderestaurant with tables set up on a barge that looked nice. We split a big Dutch pancake with apples and bacon. Vicki had mineral water and I had a 7 ounce diet Coke for $3—not like any size for a dollar at McDonalds!

After lunch we walked around Delft, visiting a couple of churches, the Old Church and the New Church (built between 1396 and 1496—obviously new). All of the monarchs of the Netherlands are buried in the New Church—from William of Orange in 1651 to Queen Juliana who died in 2004. The Old Church (first built in 1246) contains the graves of Johannes Vermeer and Anton von Leeuwenhoek of microscope fame.

After our walk we managed to stop once more for an apple tart and coffee before walking back to the station to catch a train back to Amsterdam. The train was more crowded than before, and we had to wait until the train stopped at the next town and people got off before we could get seats.

We’re now back in our room, having stopped at a grocery along the way to get some bread and cheese for a simple supper here after our long day (step count 13,538). 

First Full Day in Amsterdam

Last night we took an evening walk down the Zeedijk, a narrow little street that runs from the Nieumarkt Square almost to the train station. We looked at a lot of restaurants before deciding to try the Bird Thai Restaurant. We each had a set menu with chicken satay, spicy soup with shrimp, and beef and coconut milk in paneg curry. The spicy soup was really spicy, but other than that everything was great. We made it back to the B&B, put on our pajamas and tried to read before falling to sleep. I think that Vicki passed out before 8:00 p.m., and I made it until almost 9:00.

Vicki:  I added a glass of Thai Iced Tea to my meal.  I had not had that since the 80s.  It’s as sweet as I remember.  I did fall asleep pretty early.  Then awoke around 2:30 and tossed and turned until 4:30 or so.  I think I fell back asleep before we got up a little before 6:00.  I hope to stay asleep all night tonight.

Of course, we woke up really early. So we were out and about by 6:30 or so (that’s 11:30 p.m. back in Nashville! We walked to Centraal station where we caught bus 172 around 7:00 a.m. for an hour ride to the big flower auction in Aalsmeer. The auction opens at 7:00 a.m., and it’s done by 11:00 a.m. Flowers come from all over the world, are sold, and then shipped out—the building is next to Schiphol Airport. The building is the largest in the world in terms of footprint (321 acres, 13 acres of that is cold storage).

They sell 34.5 million flowers a day in over 100,000 transactions. The flowers are sold by “Dutch auctions,” where the price starts high and goes lower with time so that as soon as it drops to the highest bidder, it’s sold. A single auction takes a second or less. Once the auctions are done orders are sent to the floor where the flowers are and pallets of flowers are driven across the storage floor where individual bunches or boxes are placed on to customers’ pallets for delivery. So a driver might take a pallet with 50 boxes of plants or flowers and drop 5 off at one location, 20 at another, etc. It’s fascinating to watch. I’ve posted a video of the drivers on my FaceBook page if you want to watch.

Vicki:  It was really interesting.  We watched the same process over and over.  It was just like nothing we’d ever seen before.

After the bus ride back into town we did a little more walking around and got sandwiches for lunch at the Café Van Zuylen on the Singel Canal. We had a leisurely lunch on the bridge over the Singel before walking back to the hotel.

After a brief rest, we set out walking again, headed for the Dutch Resistance Museum. This museum chronicles the Dutch resistance movement during World War II and all the hardships and atrocities inflicted on the Netherlands by the German occupiers. It was a sobering experience.

Vicki:  This museum was really well done.  The Dutch were faced with the decision to “adjust, collaborate, or resist” when Germany invaded.  They were shocked that Germany invaded.  They thought they could remain neutral as they did in WWI.  Stories were presented from all people who had adjusted or collaborated or resisted.  It made me wonder what I would have done. It took a great deal of courage to resist.  The Nazis were brutal in their dealings with the underground.

We made it back to the hotel by around 4:00 p.m. and read and rested before going out for a light supper. On our return my phone was registering 16,372 steps for the day. Hoping to stay awake until 10:00 p.m....

Rainy Day in Amsterdam
The trip over went reasonably well. We were scheduled to leave Nashville at 11:45 a.m., but we breezed through TSA PreCheck and managed to get onto a 10:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia. Of course, that just meant a longer wait in Philadelphia. We got there around 1:00 p.m. EDT. Our flight to Amsterdam wasn’t scheduled to board until 6:05, so we had a leisurely lunch at Legal Seafood and then found a place to sit and read.

Boarding went smoothly, and then we sat and sat. Finally, the pilot announced that someone had checked a bag that had been loaded onto the plane, and then the person never boarded. Apparently that’s a big no-no, so we had to wait until they found the bag and took it off the plane. We were over an hour late leaving, but we were only 15 minutes late getting in to Amsterdam, arriving at 9:00 a.m.(2:00 a.m. CDT). We both managed to sleep some on the plane, so we’ll see how we sleep tonight and how we feel tomorrow.

Our seats were right next to the door, so we were some of the first people off the plane. We walked right through passport control with no lines. We weren’t even questioned. We managed to find an ATM for cash and got train tickets to Amsterdam Centraal. I (George) managed to put us on the wrong train. It was going to Amsterdam Suid (south) rather than Amsterdam Centraal. A helpful Dutchman told us that we could catch a tram at Amsterdam Suid and it would take us into town. So we took the tram to Dam Square and walked to our hotel from there.

Our rooms weren’t ready, but Chris—one of the two owners—welcomed us and let us leave our bags until the room was ready. So we got our raincoats and headed for the Maritime Museum. I had seen the museum last year, but Vicki wanted to see it as well, so we walked through the museum and had a bowl of tomato soup for lunch before walking back to the hotel.

The Tulip of Amsterdam is a B&B with only two rooms. It sits in the back of an old canal house across the canal from the B&B we stayed at last year. The proprietors, Chris and David live here as well. Our room is on the 1st floor (up one flight of narrow, winding steps) and is nice and cozy.

Vicki:

We had pretty good seats with lots of leg room.  There were only 2 seats on our “row” by one of the big front exit doors.  Sleeping sitting in an airplane seat continues to be a challenge for me even with George’s sleep shift routine the week before we left.  By the end of the week, he was getting up at 3:00 am and going to bed pretty early.  I was getting up at 4:00 or so and at 3:00 the morning we left.  As I was sitting in the plane waiting for the baggage people to find the bag of the passenger who didn’t show up, I began to wonder if the new sleep routine didn’t serve to make me grumpier than usual rather than all accustomed to a new time zone.  I did sleep some on the plane.  I know because I kept waking up throughout the trip.

The Tulip of Amsterdam B&B is pretty cute.  Our room is actually big with a tiny bath.  It seems to be very comfortable.  We’ll see how it goes, but we’re initially impressed.  Chris was very kind to us this morning and again when we checked in this afternoon.

Here’s a link to the Maritime Museum:

https://www.hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl/discover/exhibitions

There were several really impressive exhibits.  I was astounded to see all the old atlases.  The Blaeu volumes were published in the 1600s.  They are large and I think there were 9 volumes of the one set.  All of the atlases were beautiful.  I also found the exhibit of the old navigation tools interesting.  They have 2 bronze astrolabes.  These are very rare.  These instruments were finally replaced with sextants.  The bronze instruments were typically melted down for the metal so not many remain.  The exhibit of maritime paintings was pretty wonderful as well.  One battle depicted in a painting was one of 100 British ships against 98 Dutch ships.  There were a lot of ships in that painting.  A lot of ships . . .I did enjoy this museum a great deal.  It’s housed in a storehouse and arsenal built in the mid 1600s.

Looking forward to our visit here.  We have a loose plan for each day but also want to be flexible enough to sleep in if we like.  That would be like 7:30 for us.

Ready To Go!!

It’s Saturday evening and we’re just about ready to go. Bags are packed, and we just have to put our final things into hand carry bags and we’ll be done. Vicki has been concerned about clothes, and I’ve been working on electronics. 

I’ve also been carrying out the great jet lag avoidance experiment. I’ve been going to bed earlier for the last few nights in an attempt to cut the time zone effects from 7 to 3-4 time zones. So I’m planning to turn in soon (7:00 p.m. CDT) and get up around 3:00 a.m. Vicki has not been quite as enthusiastic about this effort, but she is going to bed a little earlier. We’ll see how we feel on Monday and Tuesday. 

It’s always hard to know what to pack for a trip. We’re expecting high temperatures in the low 70s for the week we’re in Amsterdam (one day it’s supposed to get to 77), so we won’t need hot weather clothes. It looks like we’ll be seeing some rain though. 

We’ll be traveling with carry-on luggage only. That way we won’t have to stand around waiting for luggage to arrive in Amsterdam or Nashville. So we’ll be travelling with a few pairs of slacks, shirts, socks and underwear. We’ll also throw in some rain gear and toiletries. 

For nerds like me the big deal is packing the right electronics. So for us that includes:

George

• Microsoft Surface Pro and mouse
• Kindle Paperwhite
• Galaxy Note 4 with extra battery
• Panasonic FX1000 with extra batteries

Vicki

• Microsoft Surface 3 and mouse 
• Kindle Paperwhite
• iPhone 5

Infrastructure:

• 2-3 European to American plug adapters—no converters needed since electronics all charge on 220 volts 
• Plug “multiplier.” Takes one socket to four. 
• Multi USB charger—plugs into socket with 4 USB power slots
• TEP wireless hotspot (rented). Even though the hotel has WiFi, I wanted to be able to use my phone when away from the hotel. The alternatives were to 1) buy AT&T’s ridiculously expensive European data plan, 2) get a preloaded SIM card for Vicki’s iPhone, or 3) rent a hotspot ($9.95/day). Vicki’s iPhone is aging so that the battery doesn’t hold up all day, and I’ve had good luck with the TEP in the past, so I went with it. 
• Anker 20,000 mWh portable charger—just in case. 

Add in a few snacks for the plane trips, and we’re ready to go! We have exit row seats, so we’re hoping for lots of leg room and a good night’s sleep.