Now we\u2019re in the Netherlands. \u00a0(Again, pics and links to come.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a funky country \u2013 bikes everywhere.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to here.<\/p>\n
Saturday<\/strong> was a roller coaster of a day.<\/p>\n We had a flight at 8:30 in the morning, on Ryan Air, which flies out of a small airport on the outskirts of London, so we had to allow plenty of travel time.\u00a0 Happily there was an express train at reasonable cost, though annoyingly, the tube station across the street from our apartment was closed on weekends for construction, so we needed to take a taxi to get to the train station.<\/p>\n We packed the night before, so that we needed only to put the final things in the suitcases Saturday morning, but we were still nervous about getting us, and the kids, ready in time for the taxi scheduled for 5:30.\u00a0 Then, at 5:30, we made it in front of the building \u2013 when we realized that we had all left the apartment without any keys and, though we left the apartment door unlocked, we had forgotten about the need to get buzzed into, or unlock, the building entrance.<\/p>\n We were doomed.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 We started randomly pushing buttons, hoping desperately that someone would answer so we could beg to be buzzed in, but it was 5:30 in the morning.\u00a0 Now, as it happened, the building was on a bit of a slope, and one of the second-story windows was half-open, so my husband boosted my middle son up, who rapped on the window and, in his politest, but most desperate voice, asked for help, and the poor resident was willing to buzz us in.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the taxi dispatch called us, asking whether we still wanted the taxi.\u00a0 Yes, of course, my husband said, somewhat irritated.\u00a0 Do you want to talk to the driver?, the dispatcher asked.\u00a0 No, we said, we just want the taxi to come. \u00a0But the taxi was nowhere to be found \u2013 until, after a few more puzzling exchanges, we finally figured out that the taxi was at [address] Street, and we were at [address] Road \u2013 which was, at least, just a couple blocks away, so once this was straightened out, he made it over to us and got us to the train station in plenty of time.<\/p>\n The airport \u2013 it was not like any airport I\u2019d seen before.\u00a0 In order to make it to the gates, you first walk through a long shopping mall (basically) where they advertise sales, and women stand ready to hand out perfume samples.\u00a0 They you wait at a food court area for gates to be assigned \u2013 but, astonishingly, the \u201cPret\u201d at the airport had prices identical to their locations in the city.\u00a0 Then you get your gate assignment, walk there, wait in line for some time, then walk down stairs, and walk outside to the plane itself, which you enter not through a jetway but by going up the stairs.<\/p>\n Oh, and Ryan Air?\u00a0 So cheap that the seats don\u2019t even have a pocket in the back of the seat in front of you, but have the plane safety information as a sticker on the seat back.\u00a0 And the seats themselves are vinyl, all the better, I suppose, for wiping down as needed.\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t fork over the extra cash, as we did, you have to find your own seat rather than having an assigned seat.<\/p>\n But we made it to Eindhoven (because Ryan Air flies into minor airports), and picked up our rental car.\u00a0 The good news:\u00a0 we were upgraded from the cheap Skoda Oktavia to an Audi A6 licensed in Munich, because of some quirk that required that the car needed to make its way there.\u00a0 The bad news:\u00a0 it seemed to have been just repaired, and there were still bits of glass in the back seat, including some in the seat belt buckles.\u00a0 Before we drove away, we concluded that the seat belts were a bit fussy but functional, but after our lunch stop, we were unable to buckle our youngest son into the middle seat at all, so we concluded that we\u2019d have to, reluctantly, turn in the car the next day.\u00a0 In the end, happily, my husband fussed with it enough (attacking it with a knife) to get the seatbelt to buckle one more time, and now our youngest get into his seat by loosening the seatbelt, climbing in, and tightening it again \u2013 a fair price to pay for a roomier car with a high-end navigation system and all manner of electronics.<\/p>\n The place we\u2019re staying at isn\u2019t in Amsterdam itself, or any city, but a few miles from the coast in a touristy area; it\u2019s a resort with rental houses which are little more than glorified mobile homes.\u00a0 The bedrooms are tiny, but there are three of them, so we all fit reasonably well, and there\u2019s an adequately-equipped kitchen and living area.<\/p>\n And the weather?\u00a0 Well, so far there\u2019s not much of an improvement on London; rain is and has been in the forecast every day.<\/p>\n In any case, on Sunday<\/strong> we slept in, then drove north to a national park, where we hiked along a path, then went another path that was supposed to take us to a (European) buffalo (wisent)-viewing spot, but we couldn\u2019t see any buffalo.\u00a0 In the evening the kids went to the pool, and that was about it.<\/p>\n As a side note, I had had the impression that we were solidly in Calvinist-country, and figured our only church options were Dutch Protestant services, which seemed a bit much to oblige the family to attend.\u00a0 Well, I should have looked a bit harder, as I would have found English-language services not far from here had I gone onto masstimes.org, which has international listings, as I later learned.<\/p>\n Monday we went to Amsterdam.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, the odd thing is that the guidebook reported that parking in Amsterdam is insanely expensive, and that you\u2019re supposed to park at the Park + Ride and take mass transit in, but it turns out there was a parking garage a short walk from the train station and the city center, with reasonable rates (EUR 13!), so we drove in (45 minutes) for a look-see.<\/p>\n Turns out, I don\u2019t like Amsterdam.\u00a0 The whole area by the train station is super-seedy.\u00a0 The Red Light District is so close to the train station that we wandered in by mistake, and the \u201ccoffeeshops\u201d were all over, and the stink was not limited to the inside.\u00a0 We finally made it to a nicer area, and walked along a canal, then to the Beguine-Hof, and then to the Anne Frank House \u2013 but, as it happens, it\u2019s a two hour wait to go inside (really \u2013 I asked the women at the front of the line and that\u2019s how long they\u2019d been waiting), so we didn\u2019t.\u00a0 (Until 3:30, admission is by advance booking only, with tickets mostly sold out more than a month in advance, so not an option for short-notice tourists; and according to the guidebook, lines shorten in the evening, as it\u2019s open \u2018til 9.)<\/p>\n A couple comments on churches:<\/p>\n We walked into or passed seven churches.\u00a0 Directly by the train station was St. Nicholas, a Catholic church, and one with a Holy Door, for that matter; had it been Tuesday rather than Monday, we could have attended an English language mass.\u00a0 Later we passed another Catholic church, this time a small one in the midst of coffeeshops, with, also an English language mass available (with Latin liturgy, in fact).\u00a0 Then we passed the Old Church and the New Church, both in the core of the city center, both now turned into museums.\u00a0 In the Beguine-Hof, the old Beguine\u2019s church had been turned into a church for the English-speaking Protestant community in 1607, and is staffed by Scottish Presbyterians.\u00a0 Across the street, a Catholic church which looked old but couldn\u2019t have been earlier than the 1800s, when Catholics were permitted to worship openly.\u00a0 Then, finally, just across the street from the Anne Frank House was the West Church, the first functioning Dutch Protestant church we\u2019d seen in the city.<\/p>\n What\u2019s going on?\u00a0 Are the Catholics more religious than the Protestants?\u00a0 Or is it that the Catholic churches there are serving an immigrant population, and, among native Dutch, both historically-Catholics and Protestants are equally indifferent to religion?<\/p>\n Also, with respect to Amsterdam, it really didn\u2019t have much with respect to attractive sights.\u00a0 Even on the main square, the \u201cDam,\u201d one of the major sites was Madame Toussaud\u2019s.\u00a0 The other attraction is The Heineken Experience.\u00a0 Of course there are art museums, but that\u2019s not high on the list, especially with the kids.<\/p>\n So on Tuesday, when my husband had a visit into the company\u2019s Amsterdam office on his agenda, I was initially at a loss for what to do.\u00a0 Other than go to English-language mass at 12:30, there wasn\u2019t really much appeal to a second day in Amsterdam.\u00a0 There was a science museum (EUR 15 per person) but the reviews suggested we\u2019d get tired of it, and that it was aimed at younger children.<\/p>\n Instead, we went to Leiden, which is a short drive from the vacation rental where we are, so not terribly out of the way for my husband to drop us off there on his way to Amsterdam, and then pick us up at end of the day.\u00a0 The forecast was for rain in the afternoon, and Leiden had a number of museums to offer, so the plan was to walk around the city in the morning, then duck into a museum when the rain started.<\/p>\n Leiden, it turns out, is just as cute as Amsterdam is supposed to be, with old buildings and canals, but without all the unpleasantness and without all the crowds.\u00a0 True, the buildings aren\u2019t all as old, but it was still a very pleasant place to walk around, with a long shopping street, and canals, and another Catholic church (which had a flyer posted seeking children of immigrants to be interviewed and talk about religious customs in their parents\u2019 home countries \u2013 a bilingual poster, in fact) and another Protestant church (very white inside, and with the worship area condensed to a small portion of the overall building).<\/p>\n There was also a part of the canals where a half-dozen historic boats were docked, with bi-lingual descriptions.<\/p>\n Leiden also features a windmill that\u2019s been restored and turned into a museum which was a huge hit with the kids.\u00a0 They were ready to go there as soon as it opened, and I had to stall them \u2018til the afternoon, when it did indeed cloud over and look ready to rain, and rain very heavily, though the clouds ultimately blew over.\u00a0 The museum had a video (choice of language) explaining museums, and an extensive display explaining all about windmills, as well as preserving the furnishings of the miller\u2019s home on the first two floors.<\/p>\n And after we\u2019d toured the windmill museum, we then went to the Ethnology Museum, which had very nice displays of artifacts from Indonesia, Africa, Asia, etc., acquired through the Netherlands\u2019 years as trading and colonial power. \u00a0Then we got the promised ice cream, and wandered around some more until pick-up time (arranged by an exception-to-the-general-rule turning on the phone to receive texts).\u00a0 The one thing I wished, in retrospect, that I\u2019d done, was to pay a bit more attention to the time so that we could have also made it on a boat tour of the canals, which, if you go to Leiden, you should totally do.<\/p>\n Here are two more wild things about the Netherlands:<\/p>\n First, they all speak English.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 The first couple instances I felt a bit sheepish about addressing shopkeepers, restaurant counter workers, etc., in English, but they really do all speak it.\u00a0 And their television is, to a large extent, American and British shows with subtitles (we watched Invictus on TV Tuesday, while the rain, which finally came, poured down), and, from what I understand, movies are also generally subtitled rather than dubbed, because the country is too small for a full dubbing industry, so I guess the school classes get plenty of reinforcement.<\/p>\n And they all ride bikes.\u00a0 The number of bikes is just astonishing, and mostly on dedicated bike paths.\u00a0 The small road our vacation resort is on, and many others, are the width of two-lane roads, but with wide shoulders painted for bikes and pedestrians, \u00a0with the idea being that drivers use the full width of the road only when there\u2019s a car coming from both directions, but otherwise drive in the center.\u00a0 Now, what I don\u2019t really know is this:\u00a0 is the proliferation of bike paths a response to a Dutch love of bicycles, or is it not really correct to speak of \u201clove\u201d of bicycling so much as being compelled to bike due to the government, in a myriad of ways, making it difficult to drive?<\/p>\n Oh, and one more item:\u00a0 Dutch is a really funky language.\u00a0 It\u2019s got a lot of guttural sounds to it, so it just sounds wild to listen to.\u00a0 But it\u2019s this hybrid of English and German, so you can make out a lot of the basics just by knowing those languages \u2013 not in the spoken language but certainly on signs for basics like opening hours, or basic street signs.<\/p>\n And, incidentally, you know how bloggers have been pointing to self-service ordering machines at McDonald\u2019s in the Netherlands as a sign of things to come in the U.S. when the minimum wage hikes have their impact?\u00a0 Yes, they\u2019re at every McDonald\u2019s, but it\u2019s not simply a matter of requiring fewer workers; it\u2019s tremendously useful to have the opportunity to select among multiple languages when ordering, and to review your order more easily than talking to a counter order-taker.<\/p>\n Wednesday<\/strong> was Rotterdam.\u00a0 Our prime destination was a boat tour of the port, which is extremely cool.\u00a0 Had it been July or August, we\u2019d have taken the two-hour tour, but in June, only a 75 minute version was available.\u00a0 Pictures to come later, but it was just wild to see all the ships and the massive numbers of containers stacked like Lego blocks or being moved about by giant forklifts.\u00a0 We also checked out the \u201cCube Houses\u201d and stopped at the beach on the way back (though it was too windy to actually enjoy it).<\/p>\n And today, Thursday<\/strong>, we much more challenged to entertain ourselves due to the weather.\u00a0 The initial forecast was for rain all day long so we took our time about getting ready and eating breakfast.\u00a0 The forecast was eventually revised to rain at 3 pm, so we figured we could finally take our walk through the dunes to the North Sea and walk along the sea and along the dunes \u2013 but it actually started raining partway through the (curtailed) walk.\u00a0 Then we spent a couple hours at the \u201cSpace Expo,\u201d the visitor center for the European Space Agency; this would have been cooler if we\u2019d been there on a weekend or during the Dutch school holidays when you can take a \u201cspace train\u201d tour through the complex of buildings rather than just looking at the various exhibits, which kept us busy for all of two hours with looking at them as in-depth as we could, but we were grateful for the activity when we heard the rain pounding on the roof while we were dry inside.\u00a0 We did see an astronaut \u2013 that is, the former Dutch International Space Station commander, Andre Kuipers, whose comments and personal items figure prominently in the displays, was there signing books for some kind of corporate event.\u00a0 Of course, I wouldn\u2019t have recognized him were it not for the book-signing, and the fact that there were photos of him everywhere, but there you go.\u00a0 Anyway, we finished the day with ice cream after dinner, and, after I finish up a few things, we\u2019ll plan our route for tomorrow when we leave the Netherlands and head to Germany.<\/p>\n (Helpful hint for other Netherlands-bound travelers:\u00a0 plan your itinerary with more care than we did.\u00a0 Many museums are closed on Monday, and the multiple Atlantic Wall museums were universally open only on Sunday, which, if we\u2019d looked in advance, would have been our Sunday activity so as to not miss it.\u00a0 And don\u2019t assume that the Netherlands is just Calvinists, as I did but try your luck with masstimes.org.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now we\u2019re in the Netherlands. \u00a0(Again, pics and links to come.) It\u2019s a funky country \u2013 bikes everywhere. Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to here. Saturday was a roller coaster of a day. We had a flight at 8:30 in the morning, on Ryan Air, which flies out of a small airport on the outskirts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[418,415],"class_list":["post-4782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-netherlands","tag-vacation-2016"],"yoast_head":"\n