The Netherlands

The weekend following our big Italy trip brought with it a UK Bank Holiday. Since I had Monday off, we knew we needed to get out and see some more of Europe! We'd decided that Amsterdam and The Netherlands in general was worth a full 3-day break (as opposed to the standard Sat-Sun affair).

Saturday, May 23rd

We flew out early again, and since Amsterdam is so close to the UK, we were off the plane by 9am. There are a few smaller towns outside of Amsterdam that we'd heard were worth a visit, so we left our bags in lockers at the airport/train station (which is genius - why doesn't every city do this?) and headed off to a few of these countryside villages.

Haarlem - This is a just outside Amsterdam, almost a suburb really. It is known for its quaintness and its weekend market in a cathedral square. We didn't spend too much time here, but were able to stroll a bit through the town (which was quaint!) and go through the market. The market was interesting, selling what you'd normally think of finding like meats and cheeses, fruits, and clothing. There were also several pretty random things like the guy who was selling everything you'd find in Walmart's toiletry section. By far the main thing sold, though, was flowers. Holland (another name for The Netherlands) grows something like 60% of the flowers sold in the entire world. As a result, world flower prices are set based on the prices in this area. So if there is a bad crop here, you can expect to pay Valentine's Day prices all year round!

Leiden - This town is not necessarily famous for anything in particular, just a "nice" town to visit. We visited the old fort at the top of the main hill (which is now a public park area) which offered great views of the whole town. We also spent a long time wandering around the streets (mainly because we got very lost). It probably would have been better if I weren't so annoyed about getting completely turned around. Even so, it was a nice little town to visit and walk around.


Delft - This town is famous for its unique pottery - creatively named "delftware". You've probably seen it around. It is white pottery with blue painting on it, as seen in this example which I stole from Google since we didn't take a single photo of it:


The paint that is used is surprisingly not blue. In fact, whatever they paint it with ends up turning blue when they cook it in the kiln. We browsed in some of the shops where they hand paint these. They were very impressive, but outrageously priced (like a few hundred dollars for a small plate). After giving up on the dream of owning some official pieces, we ran down the road to one of the touristy shops that sells the stuff that is machine-painted, and much more affordable. Please note that this is inside information for our blog readers only - anyone who sees the little pieces will be told that they are official Delftware (not a complete lie since they were bought there, but not exactly the truth either).

We ended up spending most of the day travelling between and visiting these cities, so by the time we got back to the train station to get our bags and made it into the city center, it was about time for dinner. We checked into the hotel, which was definitely one of the nicer one's we've stayed in so far. We've been staying in hostels lately to save money, but we were a bit worried about this option in Amsterdam, the Sin City of the world. After looking into it and finding that our best "cheap" option was the self proclaimed "Most eXXXclusive hostel in Amsterdam", we decided that we should upgrade, and ended up at the proper Victoria Hotel.

We got a suggestion of a restaurant from the concierge, which we got lost trying to find, so we ended up in a pretty touristy area at a random Italian joint. We wandered around a little bit, taking in the ambiance of the city and the fumes coming from the coffee shops (which is an interesting choice of the name of places where you can legally buy and smoke marijuana - if looking for real coffee, ask for a cafe). Since we had gotten up early to catch our flight, we headed back to the hotel at around 10 and hit the sack. Oddly enough, we still went to bed before it was dark out. Since it is pretty far north, sunset isn't until nearly 10:00, and it stays relatively light until after 11:00!

Sunday, May 24th

Sunday was our day spent in Amsterdam, mainly at its museums. The first stop was the Van Gogh museum. Our friends Eric and Anne had been there a few weeks prior, and had told us a horror story of spending an hour waiting in line in the pouring rain, so we booked our tickets ahead. It was sunny for us, but the line was still pretty bad, so we were happy for their advice that let us skip it.

The museum was pretty nice, detailing Van Gogh's life from its normal beginnings through the crazy ear-cutting years and all the way up until the day he shot himself in the chest (a wound that took 2 days to kill him). The best part, though, was the temporary exhibit called Colors of the Night that focused on his fascination with finding the colors in evening and night scenes. There were a lot of works on loan from different galleries around the world, including The Starry Night, which was really cool to see.  Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed inside, so we had to download the copy above from the internet.  But, they did have this large sign outside with some conveniently placed initials.

Our next stop was the Rijksmuseum, which was just a few blocks from the Van Gogh. This holds the most important works in The Netherlands, with several Rembrandts (probably Amsterdam's most famous painter), including one very large one called The Night Watch that is supposed to be one of the first examples of an artist showing people moving in the piece. Not sure about all of that, but it was big and pretty nice. Again, no photos were allowed here so we had to steal one from Google.  It was much better in person.

We also had tickets to the Anne Frank house, but not for a few hours, so we took some time to wander the city a bit. Amsterdam is a city full of canals, sometimes called the Venice of the North. It is very different than Venice, in that its canals are much larger and seem more structured, but they are laid out throughout the city.

We walked through some of the main neighborhoods, saw another large flower market, and enjoyed lunch of pancakes at an outdoor cafe. Pancakes are a local specialty, and are somewhere between a french crepe and Bisquick, though leaning more toward the former, and they put just about anything on them. Jenna went with the plain cheese, while I tried the ham. Both were pretty good.

We still had a little while to spare before we needed to go to the museum, and we saw some little paddle boats (canal bikes) for rent. Jenna felt like it was a must do, so we hopped in. It was a fun way to see the city, but boy was it exhausting. It didn't help that from time to time I would stop pedaling and realize that the boat stopped, meaning that Jenna had not been pedaling at all, but resting her feet on the pedals to make it look like she was. This happened several times. We spent about an hour tooling around the canals and peeping in the house boats before heading off for the museum.

 

Amsterdam is where Anne Frank and her family hid out during WWII and wrote her famous diary. The factory and house above it, which is where they all hid with blacked out windows for 2 years, has now been converted into a museum. It was pretty surreal to see the small apartment, hidden above the factory warehouse, where eight people stayed in hiding. It was horrible to know that they were given up and eventually died in the concentration camps (all but Anne's father, who ended up publishing the diary several years after the war). It brought back pictures of Dachau from a few months ago, and again just made us realize the magnitude of what happened under the Nazis.

After the museum, we wandered back to the hotel and changed for dinner. Traditional food in the area (Netherlandish? Hollandian? Dutch?) is pretty delicious, but I guess the city is also known for Indonesian food, which is a little more exotic and new to us, so we gave that a shot. We enjoyed the rijsttafel, which was a large tray filled with about 12 different dishes. It was similar to tapas, but everything sort of went together rather than being stand alone dishes (so plain rice was a "dish", and so was the saucy-chicken that you ate with it). It was very good, and we were pretty glad we tried it.
  
After dinner, we did the shocking "must-do" of Amsterdam - the Red Light District. We spent very little time here, as it felt a little weird and dirty. It is odd and really more sad because the main section of the district is situated directly around the city's main cathedral. It makes you wonder how the neighborhood came to that, and why the church was unable to fight it off. It is actually a little more clean than the stories you hear. We only saw a few windows, and all the women were dressed. It was odd to think that this is their chosen life. When you think of prostitution, the first thing you think of is generally the related drug problems and the pimps that force the women into that life. Here, though, the vast majority are considered entrepreneurs, owning or renting the room that they use, and many of which are in an organized union. It is sad to think that here in Amsterdam, this is thought of as a profession. They claim that with many things like this and the soft drugs that are allowed here they are not "legal" but are just not "illegal" (the term tolerance gets used a lot). They are famous for being laid back about these kind of issues, but when you think of some of the consequences, it makes you (or at least us) glad that not everyone is so tolerant.

Monday, May 25th

We love UK Bank holidays. There are less than we had been led to believe (I think just 3 per year). Also, they are in place of some of the other holidays that we get back home, like 4th of July or Thanksgiving. In reality, I get one less holiday over here than I did in the States, even though Europe is known for its time off (which comes from the vacation allowance, which usually starts at 5-6 weeks). Anyway, this Monday, which happened to be Memorial Day back home, was great for us as it allowed us to spend an extra day in Holland to see windmills.


We actually started the day with a quick boat tour of Amsterdam, which Jenna had really been wanting to do. It was pretty informative but also a relaxing way to take in some of the sites of the city. Plus we stumbled on this en route:

After the tour, we made the long trek (1 hour train, 20 min subway, 1 hour bus) out to the small town of Kinderdijk, which is famous for its windmills. The majority of the country is below sea level, so in order to create usable land, they had to dig a vast system of canals and build these windmills to drain the land and move the water out to the sea (I have literally no idea how this works). Anyway, in a one square mile area, this place has 19 windmills, so we got there, rented bikes, and set off to see them.

It was very cool to ride along through this countryside area and see all of the old windmills. We were also able to get away from all the other tourists (we dislike all tourists other than us). Most of the windmills were near the main road, and the masses stayed right around there. Since we had our bikes, we were able to get a little further away, where it was nothing but us, the windmills, and the farm animals. Along with the windmills, there were fields with horses, cows, sheep, and ducks all living together. It made us feel like we were really away from the tourist spots.

None of the windmills are really in use anymore (apparently they've found other solutions to the water problem), but it was still very cool to see. We were pretty upset that we missed the famous tulip festival (which took place while we were in Italy and ended literally 2 days before we came), but this was a nice replacement.


After the windmills, we made the (long) return journey back to Amsterdam to catch our flight back home. It was a short, jam-packed weekend, but it was great. We got to see everything from The Starry Night to illicit drug use to windmills to wooden shoes, and we really enjoyed the experience.