GOEDEMORGEN FROM THE NETHERLANDS
A
4 day weekend so we're outta Madrid. Wednesday night we caught a KLM flight to
Amsterdam and arrived at our hotel just before midnight (
Travel Tip: Do
NOT sty at the
Hotel Chariot near Schiphol Airport. The service was awful - the only time we encountered it). After brekky on Thursday morning we were in the car and heading south to the city of
Maastricht to visit Dulcinea's
Tante Marianne at her nursing home. Tante Marianne is also known as
Zuster Johanna within the Carmelite order. We arrived to be greeted by all the sisters, who were genuinely thrilled to see us. We spent several hours there with Tante Marianne. She is a lovely lady, overjoyed to have seen her niece and a real highlight was Aimee and Liam both playing the piano for her. We were about to see some wonderful sights, but visiting Tante Marianne was the highlight of our 4 days away.
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| A magic moment |
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| Aimee channels "I Say A Little Prayer For You" |
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| Buzzy rips off "Stairway To Heaven" |
We headed east to
Belgium overnighting in
Brussels, and to say we were taken aback would be an understatement. What a stunning city, so beautiful. Our hotel (
Travel Tip: Hotel St. Nicholas is inexpensive and centrally located - great value) was literally around the corner from
The Grand Place, and we couldn't think of a more appropriate name. It is surrounded on all sides by gothic masterpieces, truly extraordinary. Of course, we ducked down a side street to see the
Mannekin Pis.
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| "Just a few steps up to your room" he said! |
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| The Grand Place at night..... |
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| .....and by day |
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| Mannekinpis |
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| Call me sceptical, but.... |
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| Not easy for everyone |
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| Tin Tin wall murals abound in the city |
If you have any doubts about Belgium's obsession with
chocolate, then Brussels will eradicate them. Chocolate stores are literally everywhere, without exception amazingly merchandised, without exception willing to offer free samples (I put on 2 kilos overnight). There were chocolaterias that displayed their delicacies like jewellery pieces - amazing. Brussels is also renowned for
waffles, and the ones we had were as good as any I have ever tasted - real 'melt in the mouth' stuff. And as Belgium is the
global epicentre for comics, no visit would have been complete without visiting the
Tin Tin centre!
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| This is a chocolate store! |
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| Macaroons as gems! |
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| Chocolate chefs wall of honour |
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| Mokafe - trad Belgian cafe |
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| Waffles.... |
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| A slightly healthy version! |
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| Belgian hot choc...mmmm mmm |
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| Belgian café latte!! Nuff said... |
"Manuel Moment": It was a public holiday, and when we went to get the car, the
car park access was
closed! Mild panic. We got directions to the 'after hours' entrance. We got there to be told
'wrong park' and head off under new directions. We go in but the vending machine rejects our ticket. Nevertheless we head down to the
3rd floor - the
'green rabbit' floor but can't find the car! Why?
Wrong car park! All the car parks are owned by the same company and in a case of
'franchise merchandising technique' gone mad, they mark all the car parks the same....we finally found the entrance to our car park on the 3rd attempt, an hour after we had checked out! Departing Brussels we were obstructed by a protest march that blocked the main arterials and delayed us a further 45 minutes - not a good start to the day!
Time to
tilt at a few windmills. We head to
ZAANDIJK near
Rotterdam. It's drizzling, but this
UNESCO listed site is simply awesome, containing
19 windmills dating back to 1740 - we're all impressed (it's the first time we've ever seen 'real' windmills). Rotterdam has the worst traffic congestion I have seen
ANYWHERE in the world, so bad it destroyed any chance we had to visit the
Schiedam windmills, and we also missed out on visiting the town of
LEIDEN, where we had an appointment with the local sign writer to point out the correct spelling! We finally made it to Amsterdam and our spectacular apartment in
PC (Pieter Cornelis) Hooftstraat (look it up on Google maps!), the most exclusive retail street in the city and a 5 minute walk to all the major museums - it was a stunning location and excellent apartment (
Travel Tip: I found it via
AirBnB. If you ever go to Amsterdam and need an apartment then I can give you details).
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| Zaandijk windmills |
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| EuroBoy |
Over the next day and a half we did a
canal boat tour, walked through the
Old City, the groovy
Jordaan district, the
Dam, walked through the lanes and canals, absorbed the beautiful
architecture, lost count of the number of
bikes (
Travel Tip: BEWARE in Amsterdam - bikes are a law unto themselves and have right of way. They are
maniacs on 2 wheels!) managed to keep the kids out of the
red light district, and lingered too long outside some of the "
coffee shops".
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| Believe it or not this is a hairdresser |
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| Imagine zipping these up |
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| Drum anyone? |
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| The things you see in lolly shop windows |
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| Kebabs and adult shops - perfect |
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| No idea what this is.... |
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| ...or this. |
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| Jumper store! |
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| Big foot |
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| ...x 2 |
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| All aboard the canal boat |
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| Canals by day...... |
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| Warehouse apartments |
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| ....and night |
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| Bikes have priority |
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| A fortune just waiting to be made - in bike helmets! |
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| Ingenious |
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| How do you pick yours? |
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| Dutch company cars |
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| Stunning architecture |
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| Anne Frank's house - no problem finding it these days! |
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| Rembrandt's house - circa 1606 |
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| Concert Hall |
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| Van Gogh Museum |
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| Stedelijk Modern Art Museum |
To crown it all off, went to the
RIJKSMUSEUM. On our first visit nearly 10 years ago it had closed for renovations and has only recently re-opened. It is truly magnificent and we got there early enough to see its signature work -
Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch" almost unhindered. Whether it's
The Prado, Reina Sofia, Sorolla Gallery, Louvre, D'Orsay, The Tate, London National, Van Gogh, or Rijksmuseum, they are all magnificent and very different experiences to one another.
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| Magnificent Rijksmuseum |
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| Hall Of Honour |
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| No.1 attraction - The Nightwatch |
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| The Milkmaid by Vermeer - exquisite |
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| Museum library |
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| Portrait of Gerard Bicker by Van De Helst |
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| Quellinus' sculpted portrait of Johann de Witt 1666 |
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| Extraordinary doll's house from 1676 |
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| Holland means Blue Delft porcelain |
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| .....even for violins |
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| Do Rembrandt's portraits all look the same? |
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| Van der Heist's Treaty Of Muster circa 1648 |
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| Chilling - you can work out what it is |
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| Dutch designed FK23 Bantam |
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| Nazi chess set |
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| The good guys.... |
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| Three priceless works of art |
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Dutch East Indies Presentation Box with sample opium packaging.
An attempt to eliminate narcotic smuggling - brilliant!! |
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| Museum centrepiece no. 2 - The Battle Of Waterloo by Pieneman |
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| Piano Practice Interrupted by Van der Kooi |
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| Reclining Venus by Lambert Sustris. Predates Goya by 200 years! |
Amsterdam had one more little twist for us....at
airport security I was subjected to my usual full body search (I was a bit surprised when the officer said
"thanks big boy" afterwards!), but the X-ray girl snaffled
Buzzy's backpack. She couldn't find anything wrong,
UNTIL....she pulled out his
plastic Halloween meat cleaver! It took 2 of them 10 minutes (it would have only taken 5 except Dulcinea kept interrupting them telling them not to be so silly!) to evaluate whether a little boy's plastic cleaver presented a security risk, and ultimately let him keep it!
FANTASTIC TRIP - and los ninos were really well behaved (mostly!). Sadly, so was Dulcinea.
Travel Tip: if you are thinking of going to Holland or Belgium then have no fears about any potential language barrier. Belgians without exception all seemed to speak at least 4 languages (Dutch, French, English, Spanish), although few spoke Flemish (go figure!!), and in Amsterdam I swear the first language spoken by everyone was English. It made travel very easy.
