2nd Term Break-Amsterdam 28 Mar-02 Apr, 2013

The kids recently wrapped up their second term of the academic year.  J's break began with a "bonus" day off on Fri 22 Mar (see previous posting about that).  W/N's break began on Thursday 28 Mar, again, after a church service.  I brought them home from their service, they changed out of their uniforms, and we were in the car, headed to Hull, England, on the Eastern coast by 330.  Hull is about 2.5 hours from our place here.  It is a port city where we caught the overnight ferry to Europoort, Netherlands (near Rotterdam).



The Pride of Hull
Took us from Hull, UK, to Europoort, Netherlands

  We did not bring the car, to save a couple of pounds, and we weren't sure what the parking situation would be (both if there would BE a place to park, as well as what the fee would be), plus, the public transportation is quite good.  We arrived in Hull @ 6pm, and boarded.   We had three-two person cabins on this ride--luckily, they were all next to each other.  Now I know what it feels like to be in prison!!  Talk about tiny!



One of three two-person cabins we had.  Pretty narrow, and the beds are not even out yet!!! 

We ate dinner, and were done before the ship set sail.  (Food was VG, by the way.  Had ribs-first we've had out over here, fish stew, and fish wellington.)  The kids said good bye to land for the night, and were tucked in.  The ferry was to leave Hull @ 830pm, and arrive @ Europoort @ 0830 the following morning.

Europoort, Netherlands

   We'd intended to eat breakfast on board, so we could hit the ground running when we arrived.  We forgot about the time change, though.  We were awakened by the very loud PA system in our room announcing it was 0630 Netherlands time, so we were already behind!! (We'd intended on getting up @ 530.)  This ferry had a very slow and tedious disembarking procedure, compared to other ferries where we got off as soon as the ship docked.  Everyone had to wait in the nightclub, while they let all the vehicular passengers out.  Then the foot passengers could dismount, and I swear, the immigration people were still half asleep, they took so long!  We didn't get off the ship until 0900.  I was rather antsy, as the ferry'd told us the coach left Europoort at 0830, and in 90 minutes we'd be in Amsterdam.  I knew they'd hold the coach, but I was a having some angst about being put behind schedule for the day's touring I'd planned for Amsterdam, as well as meeting the person to get the keys to our home away from home.  We didn't leave Europoort until 0945.  Aye yi yi!!

P&O Ferries coach bound for Amsterdam

We took the coach to Amsterdam Central Station, got our IAMsterdam cards (free entry to many museums and free public transport), and it was on to finding the apartment we rented.

Amsterdam Central Station



This "clock" is on the left side of the Central Station building.  A "regular" clock is on the right side of the building.  Not sure about this clock, but is interesting.

Large banner at the bike racks at Central Station.  The XXX was everywhere-on police uniforms, taxis, public transit, etc.  Not sure what it symbolized.  However, very fitting for the city, as one of the things it is known for is its Red Light District.

Bike rack at Central Station. Four rows high, by.........

...by very large.  The four layers go from the left in this pic, all the way to the right, and then some.  And its fairly deep as well.  There is parking for 4000 bikes here, and there are 10,000 bikes around Central Station.  That's a couple o bikes!

St Nicholaas Church is right across the street from Central Station.

View from the bridge we crossed to get to our apartment.

One of those places over there is ours.  Which one???

First glimpse of our place.  It's on the 2nd floor, entrance was through the red door.  The balcony with red pot of flowers on table was ours.

  We found our place without trouble, dumped the bags, and it was on to NEMO.  There, we saw a Chain Reaction skit/show, in Dutch, of course.

Chain Reaction show at NEMO

 It was similar to a Rube Goldberg type of machine.  You knew you were in Amsterdam, as one exhibit at the museum had kids put their arms in large tongues, and demonstrated how to French kiss.  Although it was primarily a large children's museum, we steered clear of these type of exhibits.

Kids also played with water to create electricity.  The board on the top lights up to show how much energy you've created.  They eventually lit up their portion of the board.

Water energy

From NEMO, it was on to Amstelkring, or "Our Lord in the Attic" chapel.   To get to Amstelkring, we had to pass through the edge of the Red Light District.    As we were walking to the museum, we walked directly past the windows with the red curtains.  Some of the curtains were open, with "things for sale", and other curtains were closed/in use. J was starting to comment he felt ill- I think he was just super hungry and getting weak/woozy.  Therefore, thankfully, he was kinda mopey/weak, and not looking at his surroundings.  W/N were walking and feeling ok-but were too busy talking/playing with each other as they walked, that they were oblivious to their surroundings.

Look how close the cars need to park to the canal.  Don't get too close!

Bike ramp for bikes-so you can take your bikes up/down stairs.  These ramps were on most steps.  The city has 1 million bikes-more bikes than people.

Japanese pagoda, based on one like it in Hong Kong.  It is a restaurant that fits 900 people.  We saw this on our walk from NEMO to Amstelkring.

NEMO at our backs, and looking I believe West toward Central Station.  You can see St Nick's, as well as the above pictured pagoda.

The Netherlands seemed to have an abundance of swans.  We'd see them everywhere.

A lot of the buildings leaned out slightly.  Also, many had the hoisting beam/hook and cables to help then bring furniture etc, in.  You can see the hook at the top of the darker brown/black building.  Dutch staircases are winding, narrow, steep (almost like a ladder), and the steps themselves are short.  Tricky to get luggage up.  They make the most of what little room they have.

Our Lord in the Attic Museum, Amsterdam

Amstelkring was a clandestine Catholic Church.  Amsterdam became primarily Protestant, and the city's Catholics needed to worship secretly.  A merchant purchased the canal house in the 1600s, and converted the top three floors of its interior to a church.  On the outside, you'd never know what was inside, complete with altar, organ, and confessional.  Really unbelievable that this was hidden.

Inside Amstelkring, taken on first floor of Church.  Note the vaulted ceiling-they had to take the center third of the roof beams out.  Just structurally, its amazing.

Second floor of the attic church

Even a confessional

You'd never know it was a church from the street.  The bottom two floors shown in this pic are where the merchant lived.  The church is located in the 3 floors above home.

 J was fading fast at this point, so we got some pizza to revive him.  Then on to the Oude Kirk, or Old Church.  This too was in the Red Light District, and luckily, it was very close to Amstelkring, and the pizza hadn't hit J's bloodstream yet, so the walk there was "unobserved".  Outside of Old Church, on the pavement is this plaque--G snuck away and snapped a pic of it.

Directly in front of Oude Kirk

  Old Church is Amsterdam's oldest building, built in 1306.  It was built to honor Amsterdam's patron saint, St Nicholas.  Rembrandt's marriage is registered here, and his first wife is buried here.  We didn't have much time here, but did manage to get a quick look around.  I will note that it was quite appropriate we visited Amstelkring and Oude Kirk on Good Friday.  (Sint Nicolaaskerk, built in 1887, is the city's largest Catholic Church in use, and is across from Central Station.)

Exterior of Oude Kirk/Old Church

A bit of info on Oude Kirk

Interior of Oude Kirk

Impressive organ.

Even churches make the most of the space they have.  Not sure where the stairs lead to--choir loft?  Bell tower???

Beautiful stained glass window

Next, it was time to find some dinner.  We found a place in the downtown area called "De Kroonprins". 

Heineken is Dutch...

...and G enjoys it; N concurs.



Not Heineken, but hot chocolate served in a Heineken mug, that W is enjoying.

An Italian restaurant, with the Statue of Liberty outside???

G had pea soup as his starter.  It was done properly, and was reportedly VG.

No children's menu, but the restaurant did have atmosphere.  We encouraged the kids to try something new, which didn't go so well.  N chose a half a chicken, W chose tomato soup and meatballs, and J chose one of a variety of sate offered.  I had the monkfish, and some really delish carpaccio as a starter; G had the Dutch steak w sautéed mushrooms and pepper sauce.  Again, G and I didn't censor the kids' selections, and neither of us were really familiar with sate.  J took one bite of his chicken sate, and said, "There's peanuts in here."  G and I both tasted his dish, couldn't taste anything peanutty, but J was wigging out on us.  "My lip is puffing, I can feel it in my throat...."  "I know there's peanuts in there." "Where's the hospital?"  "I need my epi-pen." "MOM!!"  I have learned to trust J's judgement, and that he doesn't fabricate things like this.  We popped his eyeballs back into his head, and had him swish with water in the bathroom, and drink loads of cold water.  Luckily, there's no way a 6 year old can eat half a chicken, so J had portions of N's chicken, and bits of everyone else's food when he finished panicking, and cleansing his mouth from his one bite.  (His lip really did swell.)  (For those of you who don't know, J has a peanut allergy.) They also had some good desserts here-G had chocolate mousse with egg liquer, and they had a 3 foot egg with small plastic eggs with toys inside that the kids all got to choose from.

After our dinner excitement, we went to the canal opposite Central Station, where a lot of canal boats depart with tours, and took an evening canal cruise through the city.  Photos didn't turn out real well-I think it was raining, so it was really humid inside the boat, and the windows kept fogging up.

One of the many canal boats.  Central Station lit up in the background.

Amsterdam is a harbor town to the North Sea, and is really a floating city.  In the harbor are floating hotels, night clubs, discos, bars, restaurants.....  But all floating.  Central Station is built on 800 piles.

The pagoda lit up-would've been a great photo without the steaminess.

One of the canals lit up at night

 The next day was Saturday, 30 March, and we slept in a little, as we'd been up late the previous evening with the canal cruise.  We made our way to a bike shop (there are MANY!!!), and rented two child-tandems (so we could cover more ground quickly), and a bike for J.  The tandems are different in that the child sits in front, and there are steering cables linking the front wheel with the second (adult) set of handlebars.  There are soooooo many types of bikes available!!  All kinds of devices/contraptions/inventions to transport kids (or things) in.  Bakfliets, regular child seats you attach to the back of your bike, child seats in the front for a small child who can't yet pedal, complete with footrests, "pram" like contraptions with coverings over the infant, and many, many more.  We saw lot of people riding side saddle on bikes.  People will ride holding an umbrella, or talking on their mobile.  We even saw two people, each riding a bike, holding hands as they were biking down the street.  There is even a beer keg bike (check it out here), and on and on.

Kids outside and ready to go.  They enjoyed watching the swans.  One is seen here.

We rode the bikes to the Hermitage, which is a museum that is hosting Van Gogh's works while the Van Gogh Museum is receiving some refurbishment.  You can read more about the Hermitage here.  We had a late breakfast/lunch at the very chi-chi cafe here.  There was LOTS of wine available!

Front lawn at the Hermitage-lots of crocuses

   The kids were really engaged in the museum and enjoyed looking at the works of Van Gogh, which rather surprised me.  There was a really nice kids activity that they had fun completing, and earned themselves a sticker, pin and postcard.

Kids at the Hermitage, completing the children's activity

Back door/exit of the Hermitage

Glad we got there when we did.  When we left, this is what the line to for the Hermitage was like.  This is the side of the building.

We next took our bikes back to our temporary home, and took the metro back to Central Station, to hop on our Amsterdam city bus tour.

 

This photo says a lot about Amsterdam---bikes, and canals, and architecturally beautiful canal homes/buildings, as well as the canal boats.  The city only allows licenses for 2500 houseboats; the license cost is some 100,000 euro.  Most are connected to the city's gas, electric, water and sewage.

Double decker bike rack.

  One of the stops on our bus tour was at a windmill that still has people living in it.  Tour guide said it was 8-sided--looks rounded to me.  The roof is made of cattails. 

The Rikjmuseum, with the IAMsterdam sign in front (hard to see).  Did not get to go in, as it re-opened on 13th April.  Its renovation started in 2004!!!!!

Coster diamonds, est 1840

We also stopped at a diamond factory, and got a brief tour.  Amsterdam is known for diamonds, partly because the Dutch East India Company had a colony in South Africa where diamonds were mined.  Antwerp, Germany is also known for its diamonds.  I saw a beautiful bracelet with a price of 140,000 euros, and another for 173,356 euros here, but I chose not to get any souvenirs here. They locked our group in a room, and showed us various grades and sizes of diamonds, and W tried on a few rings.

On our bus tour-just thought this was neat architecture

   As in any large city, there are many city tours you can take.  I'd scheduled one that included a "skip the line" tour of the Anne Frank House.  (The Franks were German Jews, who fled to Amsterdam sometime after WWII started.  They eventually went into hiding in the city of Amsterdam, and the tour was to the "Secret Annex" where they did their hiding until they were discovered.  Before the war, there were some 90,000 Jews in the city.  Now, only about 10% is Jewish-they either fled, or were sent to concentration camps.    You can read more about Anne Frank here, on Wikipedia, and more about the Anne Frank House here.) 



Westerkirk--lots of churches in Amsterdam.  This one has a tall tower you can go up to view the city in, which we did not do.  This is near the Anne Frank House (down the block).

Anne Frank sculpture at Westerkirk

The Anne Frank House always has hordes of people visiting it, and hence, there is always a lengthy line for entrance.  I'd considered cancelling this bus tour (combined with the AF House skip the line admit), and just getting a bus tour (without the AF house entrance) when I discovered the house was open 9-9 daily, and open til 10pm on Saturdays, figuring we could just go at 8 or 9pm to avoid the lines/peak time.  Am I glad I kept the bus tour that included skip the line!!!  We entered 430 or 5pm-ish, and the line was long, and when we came out ~630pm, the line was still wrapped around the block.  Unbelievable!  Glad we had the skip the line tour. 

Anne Frank House line, at about 6:30pm.  Goes back QUITE a way.

In Copenhagen, one of the things J really had enjoyed was the Danish Resistance Museum, so I thought he'd dig into the AF House too.  I've read some brief stories about WWII to W/N, and we'd been reading the AF Diary before bed, so they at least would know what it was about/who Anne Frank was.  (Still reading the Diary.... we're only in 1943, her diary goes until '44 when they were discovered.)  All of the kids did enjoy this museum, and I even caught J writing in the guest/comment book at the end of the museum.

Just thought this was neat-with all the old store fronts.

From here, it was time to find some dinner, which we found at a restaurant called "Panorama".  Good food, but still no real Dutch food.

It's now dark out, I'm guessing about 8pm, and we're walking toward Central Station, to catch the metro back to our place.  G's getting nervous about walking, lest we end up in the Red Light District again.  I kept encouraging and prodding (after all, as I can't work here in the UK, one of my jobs is family travel planner, and I'd done research and lots of map work-I knew where we were headed), and soon, the back of the Royal Palace was in front of us.......

Approaching the Royal Palace's rear
The government and assemblies are actually seated in Den Haag, even though Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands.  Queen Beatrix uses the palace to entertain and for official state visits.

Atlas bearing the globe, with Temperance and Vigilance on either side (only can see one of them in this photo)

...then New Church,.......

The Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church. 
Built in the early 15th century, it is still used for state functions, ie. coronations.

...and finally, Dam Square with all kinds of carnival rides and atmosphere.

Dam Square
Got its name from the 13th century when the River Amstel was dammed here, and the town that grew up around it became Amsterdam.  Boats could sail right into the middle of the settlement and unload.

In Dam Square, we got some Dutch donuts with custard,

and some of the Dutch waffles.  YUM!!!!  Worth waiting for!  N agreed

 

Canal bridge lit up at night.
On our walk between the metro and "home".
  There are more about 1200 bridges in Amsterdam, most over the canals.  Five hundred of these bridges are from the 17th century.  The canals are about 2-3 meters deep.  Did you know..... that there are more canals in Amsterdam than in Venice?

The next morning was Easter Sunday, 31 March, and the Easter Bunny managed to find us!  He left us some Twinkelz hagel slag, as well as some candy.  The following is from Wikipedia about hagel slag:  "Dutch hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) was first invented in 1936 by Gerard de Vries for Venz,^[4] a Dutch company made popular by said treat. Hagelslag is used on bread. Most of the time butter is spread out so the hagelslag does not fall off. Several letters to Venz from a five-year-old boy, H. Bakker, asking for a chocolate bread topping, inspired and prompted de Vries' development of sprinkles.^{[citation needed]} After much research and venture, de Vries and Venz created the first machine to produce the tiny cylindrical treats. They were named "Hagelslag" after their resemblance to a weather phenomenon prominent in the Netherlands, hail. Only hagelslag with a cacao percentage of more than 35 can bear the name chocolat hagelslag. If the percentage is under the 35%, it has to be called cacao fantasy hagelslag."  "In the Netherlands, chocolade hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) is used as a sandwich topping (similar to muisjes and vlokken); this is also common in Belgium and Indonesia, once a colony of the Netherlands.^[11] These countries also use vruchtenhagel and anijshagel (made of sugar and fruit/anise-flavour respectively) on sandwiches (mainly at breakfast)." 

We had a bike ride to the city of Zaanse Schans planned for the day.  Zaanse Schans is a village from the 17th century.  We hopped on a ferry to get over to Noord (North) Holland.  The ferry is free for pedestrians and bikers, as they can not go on the bridge.  Lots of windmills to see along our ride to get to the village, as well as in operation in the village.  On our way to Zaanse Schans, we passed through other small towns--often they had a small "moat" between the road and their front garden, and each home had a bridge over the continuing moat.  The gardens were quite small.  So quaint.

Houses with moats in front of them.  A lot of the villages had these type of houses.  This particular photo was taken in Zaanse Schans.

 

Had to stop biking to get more pics of the swans.....



First windmill we saw that day, I think..  J is on the bike trail up ahead.
There are 950 windmills in the Netherlands now.  There used to be 20,000 that were used to dry the fields and grind various things.

Bike trail sign



N and G on child tandem, then J

Look Ma!  No hands!  Wheeeeeee!

Goats about, and an interesting paint job on the building behind

This type of windmill is an "American" windmill.  Reminds me of the ones in WI on the East side of Winnebago, though none of them were this large.

Another windmill-they were starting to get plentiful as we approached Zaanse Schans.  Kids actually lost count of how many they saw.

Four of the larger windmills in Zaanse Schans.  You could tour all of them-I think we only toured three.  They are quite large-look at the people in the lower left corner of the pic walking on the path.  The path they're walking on runs right in front of the windmills.

Several of the operating windmills had their products for sale.  One was crushing mustard seed, and selling mustard, another was crushing peanuts, and was selling peanut oil, another selling paint pigments.  They had talks/demonstrators in each of the windmills discussing the windmill and the grinding process, and you could climb about the windmill, and even walk along the top of the windmill.


One of the windmills large grinding stones.  This was in a demo windmill, and I think it was making chalk.  Told you about the process and how the windmills worked.

One of the windmill demos.  Notice the wooden shoes the speaker is wearing.

Smaller windmill

There was also a traditional cheese maker and cheese shop,

This set of buildings (more around back and next to this one) held the pewtersmith and clock museums.

There also was a clog factory with a demo of their production.  I never knew so many types of wooden shoes existed, and have never seen so many clogs!!  Unbelievable all of the different artwork and decorations and variations in functionality on the clog.   So much to see at Zaanse Schanse.....unfortunately, couldn't see it all.

LOTS of different types of wooden shoes.  These mostly had interesting and different artwork painted on them.  I liked the pair on the right, third down, that were decorated like spats.

 

These shoes all had intricate carvings for decoration.  Notice the set of bridal wooden shoes on the bottom.

 

Even a set of wooden skates!!  The ones in the middle (white and yellow) are different-who's got a foot that can fit into that?  Not sure of the purpose of that shoe.

SMILE, kids!

 

Kids have got some big shoes to fill.

 

My!  What big shoes you have.

 

 

Clog-making demo:  The piece of wood his left hand is on is cut following the pattern of the wooden shoe suspended in the machine.  This makes the outside/shape of the shoe.  The machine is from Germany.

 

This machine cut out the inside of the shoe, following the pattern of the shoe on the right.

 

The rest of the shoe is done by hand, using this "whittling" device.

 Another thing we did do there was get some lunch, and here we had some traditional Dutch pancakes.  Many flavors were available-I had Nutella and cream.  The syrup is very thick-like molasses, and tastes different than the traditional maple syrup.  But very good!  I also had a Gevulde Koek, which is a tart with almond paste in it-wish I could get more of those!

For lunch, we had some Dutch pancakes.  He's got some fun strawberry milk too.

J's hungry and thirsty after all that biking.  Re-fueling for the ride home.



G got some traditional herring (Blechhh!)

Another shot of the windmills

 

Good bye, windmills.  Time to bike home.

Windmill wannabe
 

On our way home, we were going through a town.  Thought this was some interesting architecture.

LOve the architecture on this.  Even the smaller light blue building to the right has decorative roof lines.

After a long day, we turned our bikes around to head home, through
Amsterdam, which is an adventure in itself, particularly around Central Station with all of the people, trams, bikes, buses....  It was a circular bike ride, so we took a different path home, and a different ferry.  Kids thought it neat.

Bike subway

Lots o' signs!  Which do we go?? 
This is at the ferry to return to Amsterdam.

  All in all, we went 26 miles.  We got home about 7, and went for Easter dinner across the canal in our neighborhood.  G and I had croquettes and bitterballen for starters, which are traditional Dutch foods.

"Baby" car-sounded like a go-cart engine, and used the bike paths.  There were a few of these that whizzed around.

Sunrise from our balcony on the last day of our trip, Monday 1 April.

Our final day in Amsterdam, Monday 1 April, we had a tour of Keukenhof planned, which departed at 0900.  It was an hour long bus ride to Keukenhof, we then had 3 hours at Keukenhof to ourselves, and then hop on the bus for the hour ride back.

 

On the way to our tour, we passed some museums.

Windmill in the city-on our drive to Keukenhof

Bulb fields-I'm sure they're much more picturesque with the tulips in full bloom.

Daffodils in bloom



Keukenhof garden/park

Keukenhof is 32 hectacres, and is renown for its tulips and bulbs, and the bulb fields surrounding it.  It is open just 8 weeks a year.  Originally it was an exhibition for all the tulip growers to show off their various tulip breeds-started in 1946.  Tulips originally came from Turkey, and were originally very rare and prized in the Netherlands, at one point being so valued that it bulbs became the currency in the country.  Nowadays, 70% of bulbs come from the Netherlands.  After growing the bulb, the heads are cut off, and the plant produces another bulb, and one is sold.  There are 7 MILES of bulbs (tulip and other), and over 2200 kinds of tulips.  You can read more on the wiki page here, or at the Keukenhof website.

G and I both had flashbacks to our youth.  Could it be.....the Forest Mall fountain??
This fountain is located near the entrance to the Park.

There was a real unique calliope near the entrance.  It was amazing in the back-it could play many different instruments, and had a wide genre of songs it could play.  Impressive.

Love the tulips

Venus fly trap tulips



Hyacinths

Look at how tall these daffodils are!

 Unfortunately, the weather here and in the Netherlands has been cold, so we only saw breeds of tulips/hyacinths, daffodils, etc in the greenhouses and pavilions, but they still were beautiful.  (Easter was actually cooler here than xmas!)  


They also had a large maze, and a petting zoo the kids had fun with, as the sheep had just lambed.  The Easter Bunny was also there, so we saw him, although he was not the real E Bunny.  W was able to show me a zipper on his costume.  The real Easter Bunny must've been resting, as it was the day after his big day, at least that's what we assume.



Photo op with Beatles props.  How appropriate after studying the 60's all term.

With the Easter Bunny, who was handing out hb eggs

Kids had fun at the petting zoo area-loved the lambs.

After returning from our bus ride, we began our "Mad Dash".  We raced to the metro station to get to our apartment, hopped on the bikes, and biked across town to return them to the shop where we'd rented them (shop was only open until 5:45pm on Easter, and we'd gotten home ~7).  Then back on the metro to get back to the apartment again, quickly finish packing up and cleaning the place up, and meet our person for check out, and back to Central Station to get to our bus stop to catch the bus from Amsterdam to Europoort, where we'd catch the overnight ferry.  I am happy to report we made it, but there was not a lot of time to spare.  The ferry left at 9pm.  We again caught dinner on the ship, and I believe the kids were in bed, at least in their pj's, by the time we set sail.

We were up early on Tuesday, 2 April, and were in fact, the first ones to breakfast!  J's favorite part of the trip was the city bus tour and Anne Frank museum, W's was Keukenhof (!), N's was the canal cruise.  A close second for all involved was the bike ride day.  We arrived in Hull about 0815 on Tuesday 2 April, and after the slow disembark and passport inspection, we did the drive home.  We made good time.  We got home, G went to work, and I started washing and began final arrangements for family who would be visiting in three days.  Will blog about that next.......

Thanks for reading!