Sat, June 20: Efteling Amusement Park

If the point of the game was to use as many modes of transportation as many times as possible, we would beaten everyone today! This morning we took two trams, two trains and one bus to our destination. The way home was thankfully only two buses and a train, but you get the point. While the journey is often the point, today was all about the destination - Efteling Amusement Park. Located outside of Amsterdam, this is one of oldest amusement parks in the world. It opened in 1952, so it predates Disneyland by 3 years. It is about the most charming park you might ever see. Based on fairy tales, it is modeled like a medieval village. There is a lot of detail everywhere you look, it is very visually appealing. It is built within a pine forest, so the greenery is very lush.

The oldest part of the park, and unfortunately the part we didn't get a chance to visit, it the fairy tale lands. These were the original attractions of the park. We planned to walk through on our way out, however, there was a special mid-summer's party tonight, so they kicked everyone out at 6pm to ready for the festivities. It's kind of a bummer, but we had a great time.

Everyone's favorite was a wooden coaster called Juris en de Draak, or George in the Dragon. It is actually side-by-side racing coasters and it is quite fast. Other highlights included a coaster called The Python that has loops and corksrews and a Swiss Bobsleigh ride. The Bobsleigh's were unique - you weren't actually on rails, except on straightaways that re-centered you. It's hard to explain. There were other unique rides as well, such as a cool experience called Villa Volta. You are supposedly in the cursed villa of a robber (who robbed an Abbey, nonetheless) and you are in long benches with a lap bar and I think we decided the the benches rise and fall slightly, but the room around you spins and the effect is that you are upside down in the room. It's a little disorienting and totally wild. Very clever. The only thing lacking is the efficiency of a Disney operation. No one can load a ride like Disney can and we figure that the wait times could be cut in half if the loading operations went better.

Waiting for George and the Dragon

The Python

The Flying Dutchman water coaster

The Flying Pagoda

George and the Dragon

But, really how can you complain, we you can go to a pancake restaurant for lunch?!?! Theme park food in Europe kicks the heiny of food in the states. There are the usual suspects, plus Dutch treats like fried croquettes, fritters, and poffertjes :)

Yes, this is a thing... Call it a poor translation...

We were lucky to have great weather and it made for a fantastic day, even if it took a dedicated effort to get there!

Fri, June 19: Delft and The Hague

Last night (after the blog was done), we were able to stream Ferris Bueller's Day Off from Netflix for Josh to watch.  Of course he loved it.  We told him not to get any good ideas.

One thing we are doing well is sleeping.  All of us are sleeping very well.  Even that first night was good.  The jet lag was not an issue, thankfully.  It will be nice when we head to Tanzania on Tuesday because they are only 1 or 2 hours difference from here.

Before I describe today's events, I need to comment again on the bikes.  Not only does nobody wear helmets, kids are on their own seats on these bikes with their parents.  Restraints/seat belts?  Ha!  Kids must bounce here better than in our country.  We have seen kids standing on their seat and sitting facing out or backwards.  In fact today I saw a 2 year old that had a handle bar (if she chose to use it) -- but she rode with her hands stretched outwards trying to balance herself.  Every once in a while she would come back to regain balance with the handle bar.

The other things is the texting while biking.  We talk about texting while driving back home but here, it seems that 20% of the people are looking down at their phones while riding.  There have to be a lot of biking accidents here but we haven't seen one.  Oh wait..  (more to come)

Today's agenda was to visit The Hague -- and to visit what was supposedly a nice town just outside of it called Delft.  The Hague was top on Josh's list because of the car museum (Louwman Museum) there.  We headed there first -- a quick 50 minute train ride and a short bus ride.  The museum is outside of town but it was impressive.  The outside is really neat:

Louwman Museum Entrance

Maclaren F1 outside the museum

Now that's a nice (well you know)

The museum is a private car collection and they had a lot of impressive cars on display.  They also have a lot of memorabilia.  Josh was in heaven.  Here are a sampling of the many cars (Josh has about 50 more of these pics but I've tried to cut them down to just a few highlights here)

One of Elvis' many Cadillacs

One of the 4 cars from Goldfinger

1952 Jaguar XK120 Fixed Head Coupe

It took us a good 1.5 hours to go through the entire collection.  They also had a great app for your phone to listen to details about the best of the best.  To top it off, they had a great cafe for lunch in a well decorated interior:

Cafe interior -- view from our table

Those white-linen tables were not ours.  They were preparing for an event.  But the room is very impressive.

From there, we took a quick 10 minute train ride to the neighboring city of Delft which Rick Steves says is much more interesting than The Hague.  And he was right.  This city rivals Bruges in terms of beauty and charm.  (yes, I'm lifting up my pinkie finger when I say that)  We took a 1 hour canal cruise through the city and walked around the quaint streets.  Right when we got there, we finally saw a small bike accident.  A smaller car was slowly pulling across an intersection waiting to get past the bikers when a younger woman (maybe 18?) comes along and just plows right into the side of the car -- who was basically stopped waiting for a few others to clear the rest of the way.  She was going really slow so she didn't fall or anything.  I don't know what the lady was doing because we all thought she would just stop when she got close like everyone else.  Nope.  And she wasn't looking at her phone.  She was looking right at the car.  Almost purposefully hitting him.  Anyway, the driver was super pissed because it left a mark (didn't look like a dent though) and she was turning around to continue around him when he jumped out of his car and was barking something in Dutch to her.  She didn't hustle fast enough because the driver reached out and grabbed the back of her bike and pulled her back and forced her to (we think) apologize before he let her go.  I wish I knew Dutch so I could understand what he said to her.  As far as I could see, she never said much.

Delft Canal View

Delft (yes the tower is leaning!)

Wouldn't be Europe without scaffolding and cranes!

Delft

Delft

We hopped back onto the short 10 minute train back to The Hague to check out the city for an hour or so.  The Hague has lots of modern buildings and doesn't have a lot of character but the central square was quite nice with the large pond in front of it.

The Hague

Oh that picture above reminds me how cold it was today.  Well, cold for summertime.  It was 59 today and windy.  I guess that beats a miserably hot day but still..

We headed back to our apartment in Amsterdam and decided to eat in rather than go out.  We will be up early tomorrow for a long day out to Efteling -- Europe's oldest and best amusement park.  We don't normally think of doing amusement parks while in Europe but this one really looked neat.  And we want Josh to have some fun too.  Here's part of the dinner course tonight -- with a warm baguette, sliced meat and strawberries added too:

Dinner Starter Course at Apartment

Oh how the Dutch like their cheese..  and I love them for it.  We cannot get enough of their cheese..

Time for bed.  Wish us luck on our long day tomorrow.. :)

Thurs, June 18: Tourist Amersterdam

Today we behaved like proper tourists. On the agenda were two museums and a look about town. We even vowed to take public transportation and not walk as much... Anyway, being that we were good little tourists we were out the door at 8:30 and on our way to the Rijksmuseum to view the Dutch Masters, most famous of which, is Rembrandt's the Night Watch.

Getting there at the opening and pre-purchasing tickets was the way to go - we were inside in no time. The building itself is impressive. It was built by the same person who did the Amsterdam Centraal Station. It has also been recently renovated, so it is very modern inside, despite the old exterior. We got to the gallery of honor early so we didn't have to share it with too many people. We went straight to the Night Watch. I won't take the time to describe it here, you can read about it if you wish. His mastery of light and movement is incredible though. It's as if some of the people in the painting were reaching out of the canvas. The main hall is also home to several other famous painting and we all found our own favorites. The realism from the 1600s is quite stunning. The museum is also very well interpreted, everything had in depth and informative English descriptions and specific pieces had information cards that explained different aspects of the work. Josh found these to be interesting, which was nice! We spent about an hour in the main floor of the museum then walked through a few other areas before deciding we didn't want museum burnout with another one to go visit!

Luckily, the Van Goch museum was just a walk (and a waffel stop) across the plaza. The plaza is a large area with a reflecting pool and a collection of statues of Nijntje (or Miffy), a popular cartoon character. It's like the Cow Parade in the US - different artists decorate a statue to their own taste and they are all displayed together.

Anyway, I digress... The Van Gogh museum has a fantastic collection of both his works and his letters. He wrote over 800 letters (most to his brother, Theo) and the museum houses over 500 of them! They really gave insight into his work and examples were sprinkled throughout the museum. Although not as well interpreted as the Rijksmuseum, there was still ample information. I really like a series of paintings he did of an orchard, I had never seen them before.  Josh actually knew a lot of information because they had read about Van Gogh in his art class. He even looked for a few works he knew about! It was funny though, they mentioned one of his most famous works several times, but "The Potato Eaters" was on loan to a museum in Oslo, so we couldn't see it. With phase one of touring complete, we headed back to the apartment for lunch.

Emboldened by our lack of walking we decided to follow a Rick Steve's walking tour from the central station through many of the main tourist areas. This taught me a couple of things. A) it made me appreciate the quiet neighborhood and canal we are staying near and B) Made me realize how much I don't enjoy doing the tourist areas. Sites along the way were pretty and the canals are always nice, but it's all the same stores, souvenir shops, and chain restaurants that you see everywhere. Not to mention hordes of people. However, we did pick up a few requisite souvenirs, so I guess all was not a waste. By the time we got to the Bloemenmarkt (flower market), we were fairly done. The market itself was not how I pictured it - maybe earlier in the day or at other times of the year there are more fresh flowers, but the stalls had mostly seeds and bulbs. I am assuming that the real flower market must be somewhere else. We fueled up with some Poffertjes (butter and sugar and well as chocolate) and kept on truckin....

At some point, rebellion was in the air - mostly Jeff's feet refusing to move forward anymore, so we decided to head down the Prinsengracht and back to our district. We ended up at the same Italian place we got take out pizza from on the first night and rewarded ourselves for being crazy tourists with ice cream! We were back in the apartment and in PJs by 7pm.

Oh, and the official day of not walking? Just shy of 9 miles and 20 flights of stairs climbed. Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

Wed, June 17: Amsterdam and Windmills in Zaanse Schans

We ordained today as "sleep late Wednesday".  Which really just meant that we woke up at a leisurely pace around 9am and had no real timetable in mind.  We didn't go to bed until midnight last night so the extra sleep was sorely needed.  Today I ordained that we would take a break from all the walking and rest.  However, I failed to recall how all these Europe trips work out -- you end up walking to do everything.  With some trains inbetween.  We ended up doing only about 7 miles.  That's "rest" for us I guess.  Oh and have we mentioned how insanely steep the steps are here inside our apartment complex?  I guess this is the norm for Amsterdam but a shock for us.

Apartment Stairs -- Don't trip!

First stop this morning was to find out what the deal is with the Dutch pancakes they keep raving about.  We hit (i.e. walk to) the Pancake Bakery not too far from our place and get in right away.  So we get to the table and immediately notice something different:

Bowl full of molasses table-side

Yes, it's just that kind of place.  They have 79 kinds of pancakes here so it is quite an ordeal to figure out what to order.  We opt for three things to share.   A Dutch pancake with a Dutch Syrup cookie crumbled on top, cinnamon ice cream, chocolate flakes and whipped cream.  Next is a pancake with ham, cheese and onions (our one savory item).  And last are the poffertjes -- tiny puffed pancakes with butter and sugar.

Breakfast of champions

We dive straight into the poffertjes without breathing.  These things are just that damn good.  The dutch pancake is amazing as is the savory ham/cheese one.  Josh quickly proclaims this meal to be the best meal so far on our trip.  I think we would agree with him.  He also says that he could eat this meal every day for the rest of the trip.  Suffice it to say, this was a hit.  If you want proof that we liked it, here you go:

Carnage

We then walk (remember how I wanted to rest today?) another 20 minutes to the central train station.  Karen mentioned the insane number of bikes.  Here are some pictures outside the central train station just to give you some idea of the magnitude of them.

Bicycle Ramp Parking Lot

Bicycle Parking Insanity

We are there to take a short 20 minute train ride to Zaanse Schans -- a small city in the country where there are lots of windmills still in operation.  We arrive and *walk* another 20 minutes to the tourist part of town where they have a historic area set up around the still operational windmills.  It's very serene out there (until the hoards of Japanese tourists descend on the place) as we walked all around the grounds visiting the windmills and reading about the historic town.   The grounds are very well done:

On walk to windmills (across the river)

They had a place that showed you how they make those Dutch clogs:

Josh in some large clogs

And they had some place that made cheese and another that let you make your own hot chocolate:

Hot Chocolate Creation

It was a neat place to visit but it still was quite the hike to get out there and back!  On our return, we took another canal picture (it's hard not to do this over each bridge as you walk):

We picked up a few items from the grocery store on the way back then headed back to rest our feet and relax earlier than usual.  (around 4pm)  We had the usual cheese/bread/chicken ritual dinner and then went out for a walk/jog in the large park nearby.  We barely missed the rain and got a little aerobic exercise on top of all the walking.  On the way back, we finally got a picture of this tiny car we've been seeing here (in the land of small cars):

I swear, every time we have seen this car parked, it is not in a normal spot.  It's always parked on a sidewalk or some place you wouldn't expect a car to be.  This one must have thought it was ok because it had a handicapped sticker on it.

That's it for today.  Tomorrow we plan to actually see the sights of Amsterdam -- since we've concluded there's no different between resting and walking on this trip.