Keeping Busy Between Trips

We’ve enjoyed the past few weeks at home after our Northern Europe trip before heading out again next week, this time to Scotland for 17 nights. It’s been a wet and cool Spring so the opportunities to be outside have been more limited than we’d like. In between trip planning and getting doctors’ appointments and related routine tests taken care of, we’ve had a few adventures.

Our friend Connie is in town and she’s good at organizing things, including games with friends and bike rides. On Mother’s Day I joined her for a long ride that went to an old mine. The scenery was terrific along the way.

Then we had a surprise visitor:  our friend Atsuto from Japan. He was in town with his boss and colleagues doing research for the group of Spanish restaurants his team runs. We had a great time catching up and reminiscing about when he and Rieko lived here.

Last week we went back to the spa in Orio to enjoy the water circuit and lunch. And this weekend we finally had a sunny day, so we went for a walk on the beach. As of June 1, dogs will no longer be allowed on the beach until after the summer season. We love seeing dogs frolicking in the sand and sea. This time we saw one special pup who was jumping over and even body surfing the waves – it was incredible.

We’re excited for Scotland, even though the weather might be like our last trip – cool and rainy. We’ll do our best to roll with whatever comes our way.

TTFN,

Shana & Jeff

Haarlem and The Hague

Having been in Amsterdam less than two years ago, we had done a lot of the big sites, which gave us the opportunity to take two day trips out of town to Haarlem and The Hague.

Haarlem is very close to Amsterdam (only 15-20 minutes by train) and has become a kind of suburb for people looking to get out of the craziness of the big city. However, in the middle ages, Haarlem was an extremely important North Sea trading port, and in the 17th century home to Franz Hals one of the most important artists of the Dutch Golden Age. We decided to skip the Hals museum because there was a large Hals exhibit in Amsterdam, which meant the museum in Haarlem would have been a bit bare.

Instead, we headed to the Verwey Museum Haarlem, which in addition to some small art exhibits, had a truly impressive exhibit on the history of the city. Haarlem was a city that was run on a guild system: in order to work in a trade, you had to be a member of the guild for that trade. In addition, they closely controlled immigration to the city (easy to do with a walled city), and had extremely harsh sentences for lawbreakers. In the end, it sounded like a bit of a police state, but it was interesting to learn about a very different way of living. 

The exhibit was extensive, starting from the middle ages and going all the way through the current day, including an exhibit on WWII (a bit of a repeat from the Resistance Museum) and through a period in the 1960's and 1970's when Haarlem had a significant music scene. We saw several (loud) school groups at the museum, which makes sense for a great local history museum. 

One site that we walked by was the house of the Ten Boom family (now a museum). During the Nazi occupation of Haarlem beginning in 1942, the Ten Boom family hid hundreds of Jews and other refugees in their home upstairs from their watch shop, which was right on the main shopping street in Haarlem. Unfortunately, the family was betrayed in 1944 and several of them were killed in concentration camps.

Walking around the city, we also saw the Windmill De Adriaan, which was a distinctive part of the Haarlem skyline from when it was originally built in 1779 until it burned down in 1932. In 2002, the city rebuilt the windmill, which is now a tourist attraction. Shana also had to get a picture of this house, which seemed to be sloping dangerously, even having pulled away from the building next to it.

The Hague, which is the administrative center of The Netherlands, is about 45-50 minutes from Amsterdam. There, we visited the Eshcher Museum, which is housed in a former royal palace. Although Escher is not among our favorites, it was quite interesting to see his evolution from a more traditional artist toward his more well-known pieces depicting impossible structures and things turning into other things.

Another related exhibit of visual artists contained this globe, which appears to be totally reflective, but as you can see from the left photo is not. On the other hand, the right photo suggests it is reflective. Essentially we have no idea how the artst created this optical illusion.

After the museum, we found a fantastic and very authentic Italian restaurant, where we ate pasta despite our usual rule of not eating pasta outside of Italy. It was definitely worth it.

After lunch, we walked around the city, which is very pretty, although it is probably even nicer in better weather (a definite theme of this whole trip). Even so, The Hague had a good vibe to it.

Finally, on our last night in Amsterdam, we returned to a place we ate on our last visit to the city: Fromagerie Abraham Kef. There, we had a wonderful cheese tasting with very good French wine for dinner. On our way there, however, we had to take the ferry from the main part of Amsterdam to the north part of the city. During this voyage, we saw some of the strongest rain of the entire trip.

And that concluded our trip to Paris and the low countries. The flight home wasn't the best, supporting the general rule for local travel -- trains can be more comfortable and pleasant.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana

Tiptoeing through the Tulips in Amsterdam

When we visited Amsterdam in July 2022, we felt it was a destination worth returning to in the not-so-distant future. Thus, we were happy to meet up there with our friends Cathy and Karen. Having done the most popular sights on our first trip, we were able to explore other options.

Our first stop was the Verzetsmuseum (Dutch WWII Resistance Museum), which has a compelling and well-done exhibition on how the Nazis governed in the Netherlands, which was different from other occupied countries based on the expectation that the Dutch might eventually embrace German rule. Ultimately they did not and the efforts to undermine, support, or tolerate Nazi rule were told through more than 100 individual stories. Afterwards we walked by the nearby Holocaust memorial.

We continued to enjoy the architecture and scenes on the canals, especially at sunset:

The highlight and reason for visiting in April was to see the tulips in full bloom. Our trip to the seasonal Keukenhof Botanical Garden did not disappoint. The Keukenhof is like Disneyland for tulip aficionados, with display after display after display by different growers. We were super lucky with the weather this one day of our trip.

We strolled through the grounds for nearly two hours enjoying the amazing displays of color and the creative names of the various tulip types. Fortunately, we got there early thanks to good planning by Cathy. By the time we left, the crowds were intense.

That afternoon we enjoyed the World Press Photo Exhibition 2024 at the De Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), showcasing the most important photojournalism and documentary photography of the last year, with award-winning photos from the 67th annual World Press Photo Contest. As you can imagine, the majority of the photos on display were hardly uplifting, but because the show highlighted stories from every continent we also learned about events and stories we were not aware of previously.

As always, we ate well, with Indonesian and Nepalese food being highlights. We also enjoyed meeting Cathy’s friends Jason and Sean, who are happily living in Amsterdam. It was fun to discuss the ups and downs and challenges of expat life with them.

We left before King’s Day – always the current monarch's birthday, and a national holiday in the Netherlands, but you’ll notice our celebratory headpieces that I couldn’t resist.

It’s always fun to see friends on this side of the pond. More to come on our day trips from Amsterdam soon.

Shana & Jeff 

Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent

After Bruges, our next stop was Brussels, which we used as a base to explore two smaller cities, Antwerp and Ghent, which are each less than 45 minutes by train.

First, however, we wandered around Brussels a bit, including to its spectacular main square.

While wandering near the square, we found a street that had literally seven or eight chocolate shops in a row. We still wonder how they all survive.

The one museum I wanted to visit in Brussels is dedicated to one of my favorite artists, the surrealist Rene Magritte. Although many of his greatest and most well-known works are in other museums, we very much enjoyed seeing so many of his works in one place. We also learned that Magritte painted numerous Impressionist style pieces. In addition, we were introduced to the works of Jean-Michel Folon, a later Belgian artist who clearly was inspired by Magritte. In addition to paintings in the museum, some of Folon's sculptures were displayed around the city, including this one, which made a great view even more interesting.

After an enjoyable afternoon in Brussels, and a very good traditional Belgian meal, we set out the next morning for a day in Antwerp. One of the most famous and beautiful sites in Antwerp is the train station, so we arrived at our first tourist destination.

Next, we headed to the Museum Plantin-Moretus, which tells the story of a printing business begun in the middle of the 16th century, and endured for nine generations of the Moretus family. Our regular readers may recall that we visited the Guttenberg Museum in Mainz last summer where we learned a lot about the origin of printing. The Museum Plantin-Moretus extended our knowledge and showed us how important (and lucrative) the printing business became in the centuries after Gutenberg's creation.

The museum is in the building out of which the business was run; it was also the Moretus family's home. The building itself was impressive with its beautiful inner courtyard, but the history of the printing business inclunding a display of the two oldest still existing printing presses in the world, along with many other rare items in the collection, was amazing.

After our time at the museum, and a yummy Greek lunch, we spent a bit of time walking around Antwerp in the cold. We got to see the Het Steen, a medieval fortress, which is Antwerp's oldest building, as well as the ubiquitous central plaza.

On our last day in Belgium, we traveled to Ghent. There, we visited the City Museum, which taught us a lot about the history and importance of the area as Ghent had a very central role in the cloth business. In fact, one display showed that around the year 1400, Ghent was one of the larger cities in Europe. Of course, over subsequent centuries, Ghent's population ebbed and flowed while that of cities such as London and Paris grew dramatically.

Later we walked around the old part of Ghent, which is really quite beautiful (although it would have probably looked even better on a warm, sunny day). Ghent, like Antwerp, also has an old medieval castle / fortress in its center called Gravensteen. It's quite a sight mixed in with the classical northern European facades and architecture.

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And that was the end of our time in Belgium. We only wish we could have enjoyed a Belgian beer outside in the sunshine, but the dreary weather followed us everywhere. More soon from The Netherlands.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana