Every trip is tiring but in the end every trip has been worth it, so I am grateful for yet another carefully and painstakingly planned trip by Sue, this time a trip planned to Holland motivated largely to see my old freshman year college roommate for the first time in 15 years.
The funny thing is, prior to 15 years ago, I saw him once 17 or 18 years ago, and HE FORGOT ABOUT THAT, and then before that, it was freshman year in college, in 1984. So after we arrived in Amsterdam last week, planning to drive to Delft the following day, Sue said, "So what can you tell me about Coenraad? What has been up to? How long has he been married?" I suddenly started wondering what I was doing going all the way to Holland to visit a friend I knew 23 years ago for one year! I started to break out into a cold sweat, since I had pretty much committed us to two almost full days of our vacation time with him …
Turns out, all was well. It's like we stayed in constant touch the whole time. It was great to see him and meet his family for the first time. Weird, huh?
If I had a 24 year old picture I would include it here, just to show how we've not turned into a couple of old farts, that we've always looked this good ;-)
But back to Amsterdam, where we spent the first day. First of all, don't rent a car if you are going to stay there. We made one false turn and it took us 30 minutes to go around the block to try again. Then it cost us £40/day to park the car there! Wait - not £'s but … €'s. Wow - how do I type that on a keyboard? Still prohibitively expensive!
Instead of cars, this is what they use:
If you are not careful you will be hit by impatient bicyclists who are on a mission and you better not be in the way! They take it very seriously. Amsterdam is a great city to have a bike in I think, but so was everywhere else we visited in Holland.
Amsterdam is a city of streets with lots of canals. Venice is a city of canals with lots of streets. One of these scenarios makes a lot more sense to me, and so I thought Amsterdam was a great place.
A one hour canal boat tour was recommended to us for Amsterdam, and it was one of the better boat tours we have had I'd say. Amsterdam is interesting and pretty and pretty mellow. OK - I am not sure why we liked it so much. We just did.
Kinderdijk
After one night in Amsterdam, we jumped into the car and let our GPS to the talking. I love this thing:
This thing never lies, at least not to us, not yet. But at one point we were driving along, minding our own business, when we rounded a corner and were faced with nothing but water. Luckily we figured out that even though there was no road there, there was a ferry service:
It was the only way across this body of water we could see on the GPS for many many miles so off we went. We were trying to get to the windmills in Kinderdijk, where we wanted to do the Dutch thing of riding around on bikes admiring windmills:
Funny thing is, less than a month ago I was riding on the back of a bike just like Jason is here, with my arms lovingly wrapped arou … ok, never mind.
Jason wasn't big enough to get a bike for himself, but we decided to give him a go on the large bike. Pretty quickly he figured out how to get on and off the bike without killing himself, even though his feet were 6 inches from the ground when sitting on the seat. He loved it.
The windmills were awe-inspiring in a number of ways. The power is incredible. My friend Coenraad told me that people get whacked by them regularly and it's basically game over, and here you can see why:
As you can see, we're dwarfed by this thing, and the blades are moving very fast. This shot was slowed down on purpose to show you the blur: 1/15 seconds. Wow - it took me a long time to remember how to convert .0666666667 seconds into a fraction. Scary.
Inside the windmill we got to see the whole mechanism from top to bottom, although not too up-close and personal because there's no much opportunity to basically die inside there if you get too close to the wrong moving part. The two things which blew me away were: the thing is made of wood, the size of the vertical axis going down the height of the tower: probably 2 feet by 2 feet, or maybe more. Just a huge hunk of wood. The thing is loud!
I wish I had taken a photo of the little cupboard bedroom we saw in there. Reminded us of Harry Potter's room under the stairs … tiny.
Delft
Coenraad lives in Delft where we stayed for three days. It's a really nice, small town. The first morning there was a small fair being set up. Very small but everything was free. Madeline went straight to the top:
I like the church in the background there. But what is it with Holland and church bells? That thing rang every 15 minutes all day and into the evening, finally stopping at (I think) 11pm and then picking up again at 4am. Wow.
One night I was woken up at 3 in the morning by the sound of people singing Billy Joel songs at the top of their lungs from a bar that was … frankly not that close! "Up Town Girl".
The Dutch are very friendly, and when I asked 'Do you speak English?' they always said, "Of Course!" as if I were stupid for asking. Finally I stopped asking IF and just said "CAN".
Jason was into the basketball, and this little silly shot went straight in:
The Dutch are very liberal. You can smoke pot, drink in public, have sex with women in windows, everyone has health insurance, they even allow men to get pregnant:
and in the zoo they encourage zebras and donkeys to get married and have children:
The neighborhood Coenraad lives in is very typical, he says, where the houses are laid out with tall brick walls and narrow paths between them, which is perfect for little kids to ride around on:
Here we all are enjoying a dinner at Coenraad's house taken with my lovely camera and my extremely handy, portable tri-pod, which was a recent gift from a friend who came to visit us here in London at the beginning of the summer:
I hope a few more pictures of Coenraad and his family are OK. I want to share them with some of our old friends from college. His kids are very cute, but whose kids aren't?!?
Madeline took about 200 pictures on her own. Some of them were good, like that one of Simon above, and this one below is kinda cool as well:
We went to the zoom in Rotterdam and it was an excellent zoo, with a small aquarium and a nice little playground as well:
Madeline and Jason were jumping off the swings. I was reminded of one of my first times jumping off the swing, where I let go too late and landed right on my back, knocking the wind out of me for the first time in my life:
In this one, Maddie's feet are also off the ground:
Anne Frank
Back and Amsterdam we did the van Gogh museum, which I didn't remember at all from the last time I was there in 1989. OK - it appears that it's pronounced either "Hoff" or "Goff" where the "ff" is pronounced with a sound not unlike when you're going to hauk a loogie. I'd like to know the correct way to pronounce it. Most Americans pronounce it as "Gough" rhymes with dough, which I never heard once while there.
I think even the kids liked the van Gogh. I liked his work from 1888 to the end the most. I found his story to be sad, moving, etc. Sue and I are considering buying some of the paintings we saw to hang them on our mostly bare wall so we can maintain that depressed feeling ;-)
We also did the Anne Frank house, which I highly recommend. The little tour in the house was very well done, you can easily spend an hour in there watching the occasional video, reading all the notes and excerpts, and checking out the many rooms. The story, of course, is sad and horrible. It's a good reminder of what went on, sort of the ultimate, old-fashioned blog, complete with pictures.
The site of the Anne Frank statue with a swastika painted on it is a perfect example of why we need the Anne Frank house, even if some people choose not to believe what is undeniable. I was very moved.
Here's the church right near the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam:
Here's the bird trying to get a drink nearby:
and here's Jason doing the same:
EasyJet
Let me just throw in a plug for EasyJet. Leading up to this trip I was feeling more anxious than usual because we were going with a low-cost airline for the first time. The one-way tickets to Amsterdam were something like £5/each, which is obviously mind-boggling. Even more so is in the end the whole cost of flying to and from was about £200, the rest being taxes.
I was worried that we were flying on an airline with 30 year old, unmaintained, because-how-else-can-they-afford-to-fly-us-for-£5, airplanes. The night before we left I did a little research (without telling Sue, who planned the trip) to see what was the deal with them. I found out, among other things, that they have the youngest fleet of planes in the industry: average of 2.5 years old. Sue, it turns out, did all this research planning the trip.
Arriving at Gatwick, which is 50+ miles from where we live, we were greeted by an entirely orderly process, a professional airline, early boarding, effortless travel. I really quite enjoyed the whole thing and was blown away.
Also, 50+ miles away seems far, but we took a train to Victoria and then an express train to Gatwick. Pretty easy and not that expensive. Highly recommended, both EasyJet and Gatwick (as opposed to Heathrow).
