Our last post was five months ago, so a quick update… December was busy as usual, and Christmas with the kids was great fun. After that we headed back to Palmetto, Florida for the winter season, where we had fantastic weather and played golf two to three times a week. Both of us are improving, and Bill found a deal for a full bag club fitting. They recommended all new clubs for me and a change of driver and putter for Bill. All the recommendations were naturally the latest and greatest and more expensive than we would normally have considered. Bill got a new putter which has dropped his putts per round below 30 (I’ve broken 80 a few times now but still working on a single digit handicap) and I got a new driver which has added about 30 yards to my drive. I’m thinking it was definitely worth it! (and now she wants the other recommended clubs – maybe that deal on the club fitting was not such a good idea after all…)
In March Bill’s parents drove down from Kitchener to visit us for a week, and then shortly after they left his sister flew in for a week. They enjoyed the wonderful weather, some time at the pool and the Tampa Devil Rays spring training games (the new rules that speed up play are fantastic). Back home we had less than four weeks to spend with family, catch up on doctor and dental visits, and prep for our next trip. We had a great time at Elderly’s, Harry Potter themed, seventh birthday party. It was held on Easter Sunday at their farm, and was a great place for the kids to hunt eggs. Before we knew it, it was time to take off on the Covid delayed trip to Europe that we had originally scheduled for 2020. Since we would be gone for two months, we packed our two biggest suitcases, plus two carry-ons, and put the trailer and truck in storage.
Our flight to Frankfurt on American was delayed (big surprise) but nothing out of the normal. We lucked out and there was no one in the middle seat so I could lie down on Bill’s lap to sleep during the flight. (I was as uncomfortable as I expected to be and didn’t get much sleep). Our connecting flight to Amsterdam on KLM however was a new experience. It was also delayed but they told it was because the starter engine in the back of the plane wasn’t working so they needed to wait for a machine that would let them start the engines (The first one that arrived was also broken so we needed to wait another 30 minutes for a second one. Being told that the engines needed to be jump started doesn’t build a lot of confidence when you can tell from the interior of the plane that it is well past its prime!)
On arrival and just a little jet-lagged, I wasted no time in almost being mowed down as I stepped out of the Uber in front of the apartment. Welcome to the “city of bicycles”! Unfortunately, this was not our only close encounter, as cyclists were always zipping up from behind or crossing in front of us. (Theoretically, pedestrians have the right of way but someone forgot to tell the cyclist and a large number of the drivers).
Our Airbnb was less than ideal with a long, dark set of spiral stairs leading to the third-floor unit, with the bedroom up another set of stairs. My luggage mule was a little (very) winded after lugging our heavy suitcases up to the bedroom. Like all buildings in Amsterdam, our apartment building appeared to be a few hundred years old. For the most part, that made it a quaint place to stay. However, it did create one very weird side effect. The one bathroom in the apartment was split into 3 pieces. The toilet was on the main floor, the shower was in a separate room across from the bedroom and the vanity (such as it was) was inside the bedroom. Beyond the weirdness of this separation, having to walk down the twisty 6-inch-wide stairs in the middle of the night while partially asleep was pretty hazardous!
I’m sure it is just my American expectations that caused me to misunderstand that when the Airbnb listing said it had a dryer they meant drying rack and walk-in closet meant a rod behind the door to the closet sized room containing the shower. No dryer meant the towels were like sandpaper and I had to wear the same clothes repeatedly.
The weather while we were in Amsterdam was less than ideal, dark clouds, drizzling, and temps in the low 50’s, which of course we were not fully prepared for. Even when I was wearing the four layers I brought, it was cold. On day three we broke down and went to TK Maxx (not a typo, same store, just spelled with a K) and bought a coat (and a hat and gloves) for me and a warmer shirt for Bill.
One of the nicer things about our AirBnB was its central location. We were able to walk to all the main sites. The city was generally pretty dirty, even though we were told by an acquaintance that they had “really cleaned it up” since their previous visit. The buildings are mostly four or five stories tall, some with shops on the ground floor and residential above. Around the canals, you frequently see them listing to one side or another, occasionally even leaning forward towards the canals. We didn’t see very many “new” buildings but we did spend most of our time in the city center. One that we did visit was the NEMO Science Museum. It is a huge green modern structure, built to look like a ship. It is clad in oxidized copper, and juts out into the water, with a large rooftop terrace that has a nice view of downtown.
The canals were filled with houseboats and (too many) tour boats packed with tourists. It was incredible to watch the skill of their captains as they passed under the bridges and navigated the turns in the canals. In many cases the tour boats were just barely shorter than the width of those canals so watching the boats spin 90 degrees was impressive.
Saturday night, we made the trek to the Red-Light District. While it was crowded, I was surprised by how tame it was. The girls were fairly attractive in their scanty attire, but they were clearly bored, looking at their phones and putting no effort into engaging customers. Maybe we were there too early at 10pm for their regular clientele. There are fines for taking pictures in this area, so no examples. More to our liking than the red-light district was the bakery or sweet shop that seemed to be on every corner. Our favorite was the Appeltaart, it was a cross between apple pie, cake, and a tart. Bill has already found a recipe for me to try when we get home. We did not try the nasty raw herring they eat by just letting it slide down their throats. I read most people puke it up the first time…sounds right to me.
Tulips were the reason we chose to visit Amsterdam in April, so beware… flower photos ahead. The Flower Festival’s Parade was the day after we arrived, and we considered where along its 26-mile-long route we wanted to view it from. Knowing we would be jet lagged the idea of taking the train to some town, then getting ourselves to the parade route did not sound like fun (that and we generally aren’t big fans of going to parades – especially in the cold rain). Luckily Bill read that the floats would be parked in the final town of their route the entire next day. This would make it much easier to take photos and give us another day to acclimate.
Sunday, we walked to the train station for the trip to Haarlem. Unfortunately, there was construction on the rail line so what should have been a 30 min direct ride, became a 1-hour metro to train excursion with some extra fun. The woman at the ticket counter, told us our train ticket to Haarlem would include the ride on the metro and sent us on our way. Apparently, they didn’t tell that to the cops who asked to check our tickets while we were on the metro. They were not happy when Bill gave them our train tickets. Bill tried to explain but the language barrier wasn’t our friend. Thankfully, another cop showed up and acknowledged that the train line construction allowed the metro use with a train ticket.
The parade floats were amazing and made the trip worthwhile. They were constructed of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths, and they smelled wonderful! This is one the smaller parades in the Netherlands, the largest being Zundert (the Dutch equivalent of the Rose Bowl parade), so maybe we will return to see that someday. There was a massive crowd of course, creating some photo challenges, especially since the selfie obsession has gotten much worse. We are still amazed by how enamored some people are with their own image, taking hundreds of pics with their own face in all of them (These selfie fanatics seem to think having an iPhone and an Instagram/Facebook account transforms their trip into a Vogue magazine shoot so they need a dozen or more photos of each spot with different poses. Then the even more self-obsessed will continue to stand in front of the photographic object while they review their shots preventing everyone else who doesn’t want them in their photo to wait even longer. Sorry for the rant but this DRIVES ME CRAZY).
The Flower Parade was a nice bonus to the trip, but the main attraction for our visit to Amsterdam was Keukenhof Gardens, and the nearby tulip farms. There are many ways to see the fields, from tours to walking or renting bicycles, but with a high of 49 for the day, we decided to rent a car (we got lucky as this was the sunniest day of our visit to Amsterdam – still cold and it rained but we got sun for lots of our photos). The fields really were beautiful, with the contrasting stripes of brilliant colors, and our pictures don’t do them justice. The farmers grow the flowers for the bulbs, so they cut them off soon after they bloom leaving just the stem and leaves. The bigger the bulbs, the more they get when they sell them. The Keukenhof was lovely, with not only an amazing variety of tulips, but tons of other flowers that come from bulbs. They plant by hand approximately 7 million bulbs, and 800 varieties, in new designs each year. The garden is only open for eight weeks every year, and while we were there they were removing some of the worn flowers (worn is generous, a lot of the flowers they were throwing away would have still been for sale at Walmart or Kroger).
Just by chance our last day in Amsterdam coincided with King’s Day, when all of the Netherlands throws a party, with all day drinking, and lots of street food to celebrate their Monarch. Almost everyone was wearing orange as the King’s family is the House of Orange. There was a carnival atmosphere with homemade midway style games, music of all genres everywhere we went, and a tax-free day for citizens to spread blankets on the sidewalk to sell their old junk. Our Airbnb host told us about one street to avoid because of the crowds, but when we did not at first find the massive party scene we expected, we headed downtown which meant we had to cross that street. BIG mistake!! It took us about 20 minutes to cross a single canal bridge, and I seriously thought I might get crushed. It is never fun being the shortest person in a crowd, but this was terrifying (I wasn’t terrified but I was quite surprised that I was at most average height for the crowd – there are a lot of tall men and women in Amsterdam). I almost had a panic attack in the middle of the bridge when I was being pushed from all sides. I stood on my tiptoes just to get a few more inches, and tilted my face up to get air. It is hard to fathom, but most of the people were not trying to go anywhere, they were just standing in place drinking, in a crushing crowd. We had been stuck in place for about 10 minutes when I finally started shoving my way through. They may have taken pity on me, because some of the guys lifted their arms so I could go under (I’m used to being able to push through crowds but I couldn’t make any headway so I followed Dessa as she weaved through mass of people). I was grateful to escape with my life!
The rest of the day went much better and we found bridges where we could watch the party boats that were so full of people, some with standing room only. We even saw the Prime Minister float by (the couple beside us who pointed him out to us, were not fans of his). Back at the apartment around 6pm, the music from the block party on our street was so loud that that it was pounding on the windows. I had read that the King’s Day Celebration ended at 8pm and sure enough, the noise stopped and everyone left. There were massive amounts of trash in piles and scattered all along the streets while we were out walking but they must have worked all night because the streets were pretty much back to normal the next day when we left for the airport.
On to the next adventure and hopefully much better weather in Spain where we will spend the next three weeks.
You can see all of our photos from Amsterdam here.
…Bill & Dessa
Beautiful pics!
Glad y’all had a great time despite the cold weather. Stay warm, and safe travels to Spain!
Love, Mike and Lori