April 1: Amstelveen
Fun this morning with the kids, easter egg hunts around the house this morning… then we decided to head off on bikes, all together, to the Amsterdamse Bos for the afternoon. This is a huge park near Amstelveen, owned and maintained by Amsterdam, though about a half hour out of the city. It was about 25 minute ride from our house in Ouderkerk. Unfortunately the weather continues to be cold and drizzly… indeed I can count the sunny days of our trip so far on one hand.
At the park was a fun family oriented “Pure Market”, a boulevard of outdoor travelling market booths selling locally made food and crafts. Lots of cheese of course, but various kinds of hot meat finger food, pizza kind of bread thingys, and of course poffertjes and deep fried potato spirals on a stick. There were outdoor tables with lots of families and couples enjoying the food and the music provided by a guitar duo playing country and R&B fun stuff. Great fun with the grandkids and their Dad despite the chill.
Pat and Julian then headed on home while Jeremy and Nyah and I rode further into the park to find the Goat Farm. This turned out not to be just a risky dink petting zoo, but a pretty large scale working goat farm with dozens and dozens of does, and probably close to a hundred “kids” of various ages. The huge barn area was set up with some corrals that kept the goats separate from the crowds… and there were crowds on this Easter Sunday… and one corral that invited the human kids in to interact with the goat kids. Needless to say, that corral was a bit of a madhouse with crying toddlers, rambunctious kids of both species, and the human parents bring to quell the chaos. Fun though. This is Nyah’s kind of thing, so she really enjoyed it. We bought a small milk bottle with nipple for a Euro… most of the “kids” had had enough by this time of day, but she managed to coerce one little guy who slurped down the whole thing in about 10 seconds.
Back home, Pat had a nice Easter dinner ready, followed by a game of Haunted House directed by Julian. It is one of those games where the rules are so obtuse and obscure that no-one can understand them except 15 year old boys, so I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or how I almost won until the last minute where something happened and I lost. Something to do with my ”Cat” failing to “knock down the airplane” which was protecting the “conspirators” in the “haunt” which is the “endgame” that only begins after two hours of…. I dunno what we were doing. Still fun though, to watch Julian in action. He is the “Dungeon Master” with his Dungeons and Dragons buddies.
Had to buy Poffertjes from this guy in the orange VW pickup.
April 2: Delft
After a relaxed morning, Pat and I set off on stage 2 of our European camping tour. The kids are back in school this week, so we figured we may as well head off and let them get back into school mode.
We are set up in a full service campground at Delft Hout, a park just a 10 minute bike ride into old town Delft. We biked into town after lunch, and spent the afternoon strolling around the canals, squares and shops. Delft is of course famed for its blue pottery, but it is also the home town of Johannes Vermeer, so there are historic signs around that refer to Vermeer’s life and works. It is also a very pretty little town in its own right, with canals, renaissance churches and beautiful old private homes and shops.
At beer o’clock we retreated to a cafe that had music playing.. 2 guitars, a base and and accordion. The lead guitar swapped into mandolin and fiddle as needed. They sang mostly American 60s and 70s pop…. very nice, especially in the atmosphere of a 19th C Delft coffee house.
Tomorrow we will probably leave the van here and catch a train from Delft into Rotterdam.
This is the little group playing in the cafe.
April 3:
Well, prejudices be damned! I’d never particularly been interested in Rotterdam, imaging a big industrial city full of dockyards and freight trucks. Ha! The only dockyards I saw were beautiful little 18th C havens filled with classic old river barges, and the only freighters we saw were plying up the Rhine alongside the beautiful cafe at the Hotel New York where we dropped in for a beer… more on that later.
We set off from the camper at about 9:30 this morning after a leisurely croissant bought at the campsite “supermarket”. Our bicycle route to the train station took us back into the old town through the beautiful twin turret Oostpoort gate with its tiny classic lift bridge, and about a 10 minute ride to the other side of town.
At the bright modern station we bought tickets for the roundtrip to Rotterdam, only 15 Euro for the two of us roundtrip. There is a train every 10 minutes, and the trip itself was only about 15 minutes.
The Rotterdam station, like the rest of the city, is modern and of spectacular design. Indeed, the architecture is what Rotterdam is known for. The city was pretty thoroughly trashed in 1940 by allied bombing. Instead of reconstructing the old buildings, Rotterdam chose to go modern. There are only a few pre-war buildings, including the 13th C Laurenskirk church and the 18th C city hall.
We picked up a walking tour that took us southward through the city to the waterfront. Along the way were some really spectacular buildings, as well as a huge outdoor marketplace. We shared a sandwich of Herring (Pat informed me as I was enjoying it that it was raw… not that that would worry me) and a cone of frites slathered in mayonnaise.
At the waterfront we walked along some small “havens”, or harbours, with some classic old river barges and the maritime museum boats. We were beginning to get tired after about 3 kilometres of walking, so rather than crossing the iconic Erasmus bridge to the south side of Rotterdam, we hopped on a water taxi… very fast and powerful churning through the very choppy river mouth to the cruise ship port. It landed us right at the Hotel New York, which is a very classic old 1910 hotel and cafe that was the original headquarters and departure point of the Holland America lines. We had to have a proper look inside, which required having a Heineken each!
After walking the little peninsula for a bit, we walked back over the Erasmus bridge, and then northward along a boulevard through a few surviving 18th C houses, some sculpture parks and back to the station. Pretty pooped after about 8 kilometres of walking!
No more dissing Rotterdam… indeed I would now recommend it as a must see for visitors to the Netherlands.
Inside the enclosed market hall apartment building.
And outside...
Famous cube apartments...
View from inside
On the water taxi
In the Hotel New York cafe
Erasmus bridge... aka "the swan"
April 4: Kinderdijk
Another amazing day at a site that we hadn’t been aware of before, and only came because we noticed we were close to it… but now would call it a “don’t miss” place to visit. It is a large polder territory, still serviced by about 20 authentic old windmills.
But first, our morning in Delft:
We wanted to visit the Vermeer Centre before leaving Delft, so biked in this morning. It is set on two floors of what was once the location of the Artists’ Guild. It was a bit expensive, at least by our standards, at 8 Euro each, but was an excellent exhibition of his life and of the composition and process of his works.. There were no original works at all, Vermeer only painted some 35 works, which are all now in international galleries. But there were displays of each painting, with thorough descriptions to their symbolism, composition and significance, as well as displays of the paint mixing elements, the light effects, and some ceramic, glass and household effects from the mid 1600s.
We were back at the van at the campground for lunch, then departed for Kinderijk. It was only about a 30 minute drive. mostly freeway and busy town roads. Nearing where we thought was Kinderdijk, our GPS and Google Maps got a bit confused. It turned out we were on the wrong side of “De Lek” which is a part of the complex river system leading down into Rotterdam. We soon determined that there was a five minute ferry ride across, to avoid a 25 minute detour drive. The ferry only cost 3.25 Euro and there was almost no wait.
We drove beyond the town of Kinderdijk to Alblasserdam. Here there is a bit of a small boat port with a nice parking lot type of campground. It has toilets, electricity and wifi for only 17 Euro… thats all we need.
From Alblasserdam it was about a 15 minute bicycle ride back to the windmills. The area is a UNESCO world heritage site, and deservedly so. The polder land is extensive, and has small canals running straight up the middle. Along the canals are the windmills, connected with walking/cycling trails. 4 or 5 of the windmills were operating, though most apparently are capable of operating. Two of the operating windmills were open to the public… we decided to pay the 8 Euro each which gave access to the two operating mills and a visitor centre. They really are incredible feats of engineering considering that we are talking about 350 years ago… the blades alone weigh several tons, and to have them swooping around at quite an amazing speed, attached to wooden gears and shafts, and driving wooden water wheels is quite breathtaking!
After about an hour, as we were checking out the older of the two open mills, the sky had darkened ominously, the wind came up to a gale, there were a few thunder and lightning claps, and the accompanying rain squalls. The wind was strong enough that they put the brakes on the mill for a while.
We took shelter in the mill for the thunderstorm, as advised by the guides. The weather eased enough for us to set off toward home, but soon came on again with a vengeance! We ended up riding home along the bank of de Lek in gale force winds and pelting rain… but no thunder and lightening at this point or we would have taken shelter. It was quite the adventuresome ride! Of course now, as I type this, 20 minutes later, the skies are blue and the breeze is light. It was a nice demonstration of the kind of weather the ancient Dutch had to deal with.
This t3 Vanagon was right in front of us on the ferry.
No comments:
Post a Comment