Leiden, Holland June 2010

The train ride to Leiden was only a few minutes, just enough to get comfortable and then it was time to jump up, grab our bags, and stumble throught the station to find a taxi. The ride to our hotel was even shorter; we were literally within walking distance of our hotel, but then we didn't know that until we got there! We apologized to the driver, but he was very gracious and thought nothing of it.



I must say that our little hotel room was one of the weirdest we had ever stayed in. We couldn't get the door all the way open; the king-size bed blocked it. The room was very small, with a bathroom included, though the shower was good. It had a narrow passageway to the window - we had to stack our suitcases there and then scoot sideways through it to get to the small desk where we set up our computer. Fortunately it had a window, so I could cock my head up to see the sky. We asked if there was a pot to boil water for instant coffee; the hotel said oh no, only the deluxe rooms get coffee pots. I rolled my eyes at that one, but the internet connection was rather cheap per day, so we at least had internet. We went to the store and bought a little travel coffee pot, so there! It is nice to have a hot drink in the morning; it gets you going.

We started exploring by visiting the tourist office to get brochures, maps, walking tours, etc. The walking tours are great, because it takes you to all different parts of the city that you may not have even noticed.

Leiden is a pretty little town, with a long history. It had a technical college from the middle ages, and even Einstein came here to teach. It capitalized on its river, the Rhine, by letting it meander through the middle of town. And for some reason it has many good little restaurants. We really enjoyed our stay here.

The World Cup is starting here, and we are taken up in the excitement. USA was to play England on Saturday night, so naturally we went to the English Pub on the corner to join the crowd. We thought we would be in the minority, but we found out that there were many American fans there - they were going to school or were just in Holland for the summer. When England scored its goal, there were shouts of joy, but when USA got the goal - the English goalkeeper stopped the ball but it bounced out of his hands and rolled into the net! - the whole pub was excited and chanting USA,USA. I really got into the whole game - there is something about being part of the crowd during a game, isn't there? There was a friendly guy standing next to me - we were all squashed in together, of course - and I asked him about the rules whenever anything happened. The next thing I knew another guy next to me said "how can you be so passionate about something and you don't even know the rules??" I wanted to say, what is complicated about this game - you just kick the ball into the net? But I just shrugged my shoulders and kept on cheering. His girlfriend was American and she sympathized with me and gave me some hints about the rules. It was a fun evening, and I was thrilled that team America was popular.

It is amazing that all over Holland there is so much construction going on. They are renovating old structures, they are building more roads or subways, they are laying new pipe for sewers, etc. This country seems to be thriving. I was glad to see that, amid all of the horror stories of European economy collapsing. I don't see Holland having that kind of problem, at least not in their public works.

We enjoyed our time in Leiden; the neigborhoods are very accessible and the canals are well kept and pretty. We were having a good time.

We happened to notice that one of the busses that passed by our hotel actually went to the Hague central station. That was our next destination, so we decided to just drag our luggage down the street a few blocks to the bust stop instead of getting to the Leiden train station. It made a lot of sense and we could enjoy the countryside on the bus. Our destination day dawned; we had a quick breakfast and then we were on our way to the Hague. Good bye Leiden, hello the Hague!



Leiden is a university town; it actually had the first university in all of Holland in the middle ages. There are lots of students there, which makes for lots of bars and cafes.



We were back on the street in a few minutes to discover our surroundings. Downtown the old Rhine River meets the new Rhine river, so there are various waterways and canals there, which makes that part of town very lovely. We immediately found the shopping area; most of British towns has this same kind of setup. It is a very long street for pedestrians only, except in the mornings when trucks made their deliveries. There are many shops and places to eat. We walked the several blocks to see what Leiden had to offer: shoe shops, phone shops, electronic shops, bakery shops, cheese shops, eye-glass shops, and lots of shops selling casual clothes. Since it was still very chilly in Holland, I marveled that they could sell the shorts and tiny tops at all; when would they be able to wear such summer clothing?



We hoped that we didn't have to walk down this area again; we thought we didn't need any of the things they were selling. However, Jack later realized that he had left his battery charger somewhere, so we had to find a photo shop.



He was ready to photograph Leiden; it seemed to be much more photogenic that Haarlem; it had prettier canals, real windmills, and parks that were beautiful. We were on our way around the town to learn about its history and to take photographs of its interesting profile.

Haarlem, June 2010

On Tuesday, June 1, we walked up to our favorite breakfast restaurant, had our usual coffee, eggs and bacon and then walked back to the hotel, loaded up our luggage and took the taxi to Centraal Station. It was warm and cloudy, and I was sweating under my jacket, but it was easier to wear it rather than pack it. Jack had already told me my luggage was way too heavy, and I knew that but I had decided that I needed all of that stuff. Now I wasn't sure what was even in my luggage!

We bought the train tickets- I think they were 4 euros apiece, found our train track to Haarlem, piled our luggage on the train and sat down. These inter-city trains are usually second class seats, so people just sit anywhere. Right on time the train pulled out of the station and we were on our way to our next adventure. The problem is that all of these towns are very close together so in about ten minutes the engineer was announcing Haarlem. We couldn't believe it, so we asked another passenger, and he said, yes, this is Haarlem.

We jumped up, gathered our luggage - we each have a big suitcase, and then I have a cosmetic case, a backpack and a small container for our computer. Jack has his camera case. From past experience, we know these trains do not stop long so you have to be ready to hop off as soon as the doors open. We passed our luggage to each other out the door, gathered them up, got our bearings for filing out of the station to find the taxi line. We hardly had time to look around at our new town.

Before we knew it the taxi had delivered us to our hotel, the Carleton Square Hotel, a nice-looking hotel in a very green area of town - parks going every which way. We soon discovered that we were on the edge of the green part of town. As we discovered in our exploration of the town, we only had to take a right and we would find the shopping part of the town.

The town of Haarlem is very old, with canals and narrow passageways and apartments close together. I think that it is unfortunate that the city situated itself to the west of its river Spaarne, instead of having the river run through the middle of the town. Now the Spaarne is an afterthought and not taken care of at all.

The center of town is the GroteMarkt, the Large Market, with the St. Bavo church dominating it now, as it has for over 500 years. The church itself is beautiful, and I found out that this church is the location for the International Organ Competition to be held in a couple of months. When we visited it, someone happened to be practicing, so we heard its magnificent organ. Its picture is above.

They have a real market in the space every other day, and the one we found most interesting or weird was the comic book market. Evidently people come from all over Holland to visit this market. There are bars and cafes ringing the market space and it is a great place to get a beer and people watch on a sunny day.

We were always on the look out for good restaurants, and they were tucked in small places all over the town. There are some great chefs in Holland, and Haarlem was no exception. These restaurants are tiny, maybe ten tables at the most. The people in Holland eat early; six o'clock or little later.

One of Haarlem's claim to fame is the artist Frans Hals, born 1582. Besides many of portraits, his museum had a very good history of Haarlem. Visiting his museum was part of the walking tour of the city, which we found very interesting. Holland is very proud of its almshouses, which were set up in the 18th century for unmarried women who were faithful Calvinists. They usually have a small courtyard with little one-story apartments ringing the courtyard. Now they can be rented, usually only for women.

Our next place to visit is Leiden. I will have some photos of that lovely town in my next posting. Stay tuned! Any comments? Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

More of Amsterdam

The Van Gogh Museum

Our visit to the Van Gogh Museum was really a great experience. Of course there were lines, but somehow the Dutch have figured out how to handle crowds and moved us through quicky. There were also tour groups, but Jack is always encouraged if these groups are teen agers; their attention span is nonexistent, so they move quickly through the exhibits.

The museum itself is beautiful; huge and very modern. It can handle exhibits very nicely. We saw a temporary exhibit on Gaugain and it was very well done. Unfortunately, there are so many Van Gogh's spread around the world that if one came to this museum to see some of the favorites, one would be disappointed. I over heard one man mention that he wanted to see "Starry Night" but it is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Ann Frank's House

Everyone has heard her story or read her diary, and yet looking at the house gives you a very sad and eerie feeling. All of these houses facing the canal are tall and narrow; of course they have renovated the original house, but the tour through the house is similar to what was there in the 1940's. It is dark and gloomy to represent how they spent most of their time there. I did not know that the Dutch government, who had fled to London when the Germans first occupied the Netherlands, encouraged the people left there to keep diaries of their experiences. So Ann had worked very seriously on her diary, hoping that someday she could publish it.

The sad part is that her family was there for so long before someone informed on them. They do not know who, of course, but they are convinced that that someone went to the Germans and told them. The interesting thing was, as we toured the house, it was almost like visiting a church. Everyone was very quiet and reflective.

The Resistance Museum

That afternoon it only seemed fitting that we visit the Resistance museum, to see how the Dutch handled occupation. For awhile, it seemed that the Dutch could live with occupation. Things seemed to get back to normal after the Germans strode into the city. But little by little the began to realize that things would never be the same when the restrictions on the Jews got tighter and tighter. The museum had some good artifacts and photographs. We were a little spent that day, after these two tours.

The Concert

We were in walking distance of their concert house, so we bought tickets to a Sunday matinee. We were on the 9th row so we could see the musicians breathing and bowing. It was a visiting group; the Brussels orchestra. They played the Debussy Afternoon of a Faun and Ravel's Valse. The concerto was a Schumman concerto for cello and orchestra. The soloist was a young woman from Germany, I think. She was wonderful. We could see her perfectly; she was so into the piece that she almost led the orchestra. The acoustics in here were really unbelievable. Jack said that the researchers for the Myerson came here to visit this house for its configuration and its acoustics.

Visits to Edam, Voldenham and Maarken

A couple of mornings we took the bus to small towns north of the city. They were very old towns which were typical of the old Dutch towns of the 15th, 16th centuries. Edam was a few miles north, and the bus trip was very interesting. Once outside Amsterdam, the suburbs are beautiful; huge trees and greenery everywhere, nice wide bike paths, and the cows munching the grass or just enjoying the nice weather. I just couldn't get over how flat this county is, but I kept reminding myself that this land is mostly reclaimed from the sea so of course it would be flat.

The two little towns are very quaint, a little too quaint for us, but they had nice town squares and charming little souvenir places. Maarken had been an island but the sea kept flooding it, so they finally filled up the area and it became part of the larger countryside. Voldenham is really touristy, but they did have good places for lunch. We took the bus back to the city after a couple of very restful days in the countryside.

I am going to add photos next time. We are just out of time for Amsterdam, so our next stop in Haarlem, just a few miles west of the city.

Amsterdam, June, 2010

Jack and I have been in the Netherlands for about a month now.
Our first job was to wander around our own neigborhood and find the usual things we needed; a little neigborhood fruit store to buy water, fruit, and various snacks. These stores are usually run by Middle Eastern or other foreigners. We found one a couple of blocks away, run by Turkish guys that were very nice and friendly and helpful. We also found lots of restaurants in walking distance that we would try later. We needed an ATM machine; we found a couple immediately. We were set.

Jack studies the guide books and maps and figures out what to explore on which day. We make a practice run of the city, figuring out the bus and tram/subway system to find out how to get around in the city. In Amsterdam the trams run north and south, north to the train station, the Centraal Station, and the Museum section, where we were staying. The public transportation in
these cities is so wonderful; they have them, first of all. Then each stop indicates which trams or busses stop there and where they go. They have a bus/tram schedule at the stop and in the big cities they have an electronic sign that gives the estimated time for the next tram.

By learning the bus/tram system we get the feel of the city geographically, so after a few days we know where we are going without having to read a map. Amsterdam is a little bit more confusing, because the major canals ring the city. So they change directions and it is harder to figure out north and south. But Jack caught on immediately and knew where we were most of the time.

We had several places of importance to see in the city: the Rijk and the Van Gogh museums, the churches, Anne Frank's house, and the tulips.

As I mentioned before, we did get to see the tulips and they were magnificent. We took the bus to Schipohl, the big airport, and then a bus to Keunkenhof, near the North Sea. It was very crowded because it was the last weekend of the presentation. This place is like the Arboretum in Dallas, only about 10 times bigger.

The Rijk Museum - in Dutch the "j" following the "i" makes the vowel long, as in "I" or "mine". Rijk is similar to the German Reich. So the Rijk museum is the State museum. Anyway, this museum is being renovated so about a third of it is in use for visitors. They have taken the best of the best, mostly the Rembrandt's and the Vermeer's and the Ruisdaal's and presented them for the public.

Jack and I did not get the opportunity to take a Northern Renaissance Art History class at SMU back a few years ago, but we did take the survey of Art History, so we studied several of the Dutch artists. We were thrilled to see the originals, especially the "Night Watch" by Rembrandt.

The lesser known Dutch painters are represented here of course, so it was interesting to see their work and figure out their style, etc.

Stay tuned for my next installment of our exploration of Amsterdam. We have yet to see the
Van Gogh, Anne Frank's house, and a walking tour of the city. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you like, don't like about my narratives. Jole