a handful of hatchlings: Let's go Dutch!

A travel log of sorts from our trip to the Netherlands. An amazing trip! For never really having wanted to visit this neck of the world, I love, love, loved it! One of the few perks/rewards for all the travel Jotham does for work.

Our first day in Amsterdam, we spent at the Rijks Museum where I experienced my first original Rembrandt. I call it an experience because, I've never really been moved by a painting like it before. Photo copies just don't do it justice. Its huge and the people just seem to pop out of the painting, the play of the light and the dark, I can really see why he became so famous, truly a remarkable artist.

Makes me want to view more paintings in the flesh. I also really enjoyed the Vermeer's on display. Sadly we didn't make it to the Van Gogh museum. We walked around Amsterdam quite a lot that first day enjoying the atmosphere, fun architecture, the canals, watching out for bicyclists, and eating dutch pancakes.

The street outside our hotel

Canals down the middle of most the streets

Dutch pancake, yum!

You could tell if the building was once a warehouse by the shutters

We toured one of the Gentlemen houses from the Golden Age (1700's), which was pretty impressive and opulent. There was house after house, after house very similar to this one, so fun!

We visited the Anne Frank House, which was neat and sad. I remember being amazed at how dark it must have been all the time. The next day a business associate of Jotham's came into town and I met my first dutch man. Tys and his wonderful wife, Evon. They took us on a canal cruise and a bike tour of the city. We even rode quickly through a portion of the red light district. (Gasp! I know!). There's a funny story there, if you are interested you'll have to ask about it.

Bikes in the Netherlands are crazy. They are everywhere, everyone rides one: Grandma's, businessmen, children, women doing their shopping, with kids in front or kids in back. We saw almost as many bikes as cars, and they'd ring their bell at you if you happened to be walking in their bike lane.

Tys insisted we try the raw herring the dutch are famous for. I ate a lot of raw fish this week, more than in my entire life, but herring was the worst. It felt like somebody else's tongue was in my mouth, I ended up spitting it out! I just couldn't do the texture!

Tys, like most dutch, loves good, fine food. That night we ate at a very fine restaurant (almost $60 a plate), and that was, wow!, an experience. Five courses, and more raw meat, but excellent and exceedingly fine, truly a culinary feast for the palate.

One of the courses at restaurant Envy

The food tour continued the rest of the week, fine restaurant after fine restaurant. I became very familiar with the rancid smell of alcohol. I also found it amazing that they always served the water from a glass bottle, and often a bowl of fries came out near the end of the meal, even at the very fancy places. What we know as steak fries should really be called dutch fries. The are often enjoyed with mayonnaise. I was glad to be done with all that fancy food by the end of the week and the last day we just ate fries from a street vender for dinner.

Jotham's meetings started Monday and so we took a two hour train ride to a city called Bergen op Zoom and checked into the oldest hotel in the Netherlands, Hotel de Draak, the Dragon Hotel. So the next day while Jotham was teaching carpet cleaning technique in fantastic rooms that looked like this:

hotel de Draak

Evon took myself and a few of the other wives on a bike ride in the very green, beautiful and varied surrounding country-side:

from the coast line to the forest

The weather was overcast and rainy the entire week, apparently typical for the Netherlands. We had to stop at this fun cafe and wait out a down pour before heading back to the hotel.

That night we went to Antwerp, Belgium for dinner on the river, I was glad the shops were closed because it was everything I could do to talk Jotham out of wanting to buy diamonds.

Antwerp Cathedral

The next day we went to an Oyster farm and enjoyed some more raw fish, followed by a pot full of mussels for lunch. It wasn't my favorite, but very memorable and fun none-the-less.