Nothing went as planned, we were late for our flight to Schiphol, Amsterdam, luckily the airline (EasyJet) was prepared to put us on a later flight. 

Our original plan was to walk the 3 kilometers to the area were we would spend the night on the south end of Amsterdam. This meant that we could see Walletjies and all its activities in the hour of sin, but because of the weather we opted for a tram ride instead. We did a tram ride from Central Station to the area by a lively square with deserted open air restaurants.  I jumped off and saw Ben and all our luggage depart again. Because Ben had the a big backpack on he couldn't get off quick enough.  So I took shelter under a little overhang from the rain until he made the roundtrip back.

From there we went to the Van Gogh Museum. They had a special exhibition on Van Gogh and Gauguin, their relationship and how they influenced each others art. I was amazed and could have stayed all day easily.  There were 106 paintings in total and I think we read the background on each one of them in the little booklet they provided with our entrance.  I was touched by the anguish they experienced as they were trying to find their unique identity within the art world, I could identify with their insecurity and am-I-good-enough trauma's they went through, especially Van Gogh.

After the museum we walked the Amsterdam streets a bit.  Although the canals are truly different to anything else that we've seen before, the thing that caught my attention the most was the bicycles.  I don't think there is a person in Amsterdam that does not ride a bicycle. Black bicycles, with no gears, wide round handle bars and springs under the seats.  You would see a mom pass you, with one kid sitting on the bar (they mount a special seat there) and another kid sitting on the back carrier. Or a businessman in his suit. Students 2-2 on a bicycle. People with bags and bags of groceries. They have special parking garages of 5 stories just for the bicycles. In front of the station there must be more than a 1000 bicycles parked. We also passed the Rijks Museum, a magnificent building, with the most amazing art just on the outside, next time we'll do the inside.

We took a trip on a canal boat, which was nice, because we could hear the Amsterdam facts and figures in 4 different languages.  The only thing I can remember is that the reason why all of the houses have a big "hook" in the top corner of the nook. Apparently all the front doors were too small to allow any furniture to go through, so the had to hoist everything up to the first floor and bring it through the windows. The ride on the canals was very relaxing and I had to battle not to doze off, the sun was starting to break through the clouds and baking through the boat windows. 

As a last item on our list we walked down Walletjies street, supposedly the Sodom and Gomorra of the modern age. Since we did it in broad daylight, we didn't really see it in it's full glory. Although there were a few women parading in underwear in windows like shopping items. There are fat ones and skinny ones, ugly and beautiful. Mostly they broke my heart, because they all looked sad and life worn.  I am very glad that I don't have to live that kind of life, and really hope they'll all get opportunities to break away from it.  There were also a few "coffee shops" were marihuana is sold, but we didn't brave it in there.

We took a train and a bus to a little coastal town of Noordwijk.  I was extremely impressed by the Dutch rail system: clean, on-time, fast and so quiet. I don't even hear the train. My best journey ever, although fairly short.

In Noordwijk our hostel made a booking mistake, so we ended up staying in the hotel next door, for only €10.00 more. This was actually a blessing. In the hotel we had a private room and bathroom.  We went for a evening stroll along the ocean, it was cold and gray, but the fresh air was so nice, we didn't mind much. We went to the "Hans en Grietje Pannekoeken Restaurant". For the English only this translates to the Hansel and Gretel Pancake Restaurant.  This all brings me to the whole language thing, after France, the Netherlands was like such a delight, firstly all everyone is fluent in English and secondly all the Dutch language was a real treat.  The restaurant and shop names all sounded like music to my ears, and hearing the people speaking Dutch was like listening to the grandfather of Afrikaans. I loved it, and at some point I almost wanted to cry such an emotional response the whole language thing invoked in me.

On Sunday, we rose early and set off for Keukenhof,  the mega flower park.  I was kind of expecting more of a farming environment, but they have set it up as a huge garden, with big flower beds. And in-between were exhibition halls with flowers arrangements, and a good spot to run to when it starts to rain.  It was colour explosions, my brain almost couldn't handle it all, the colours were bouncing around in my head like laser beams in a microwave.  There were single tulips, double tulips, frilly tulips and you-name-it tulips.  According to the brochure they planted 7 million bulbs. That is the magnitude of it, and each bulb was planted to form part of a natural art piece.  They did a superb job and I just wished I could have had the park all to myself for a day.

The day was rounded off by listening to an old "draaiorrel" from 1978. The mechanism fascinated Ben and I had to drag him away eventually.  The organ has 75 keys, 11 stops, 406 pipes and many percussions.  They feed it papers of books as thick as telephone directories and out comes the music.  They even played a few modern pop numbers.  We ate "poffertjies" while listening to the organ, these are small dough-balls covered in icing/caster sugar. They make it on a special rack, over boiling oil. The sugar messes all over your sweater, so you can see who all had these balls.

I would really love to go back to the Netherlands and just ride my bicycle from small town to small town....I liked it there...can you tell?

 

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