My flight from Palermo arrived in the early evening on Friday and the bus from the airport dropped me very close to my hotel which occupied the top 3 floors of an old building just opposite the Rijks Museum. This was my first experience of one of the old Amsterdam homes and I was aghast at the steepness of the staircase. 80 steps from the pavement to my attic bedroom! My room window open onto part of the roof and I was able to sit out there having supper most nights – Kip& salad from the local Spar. I grew attached to my little room. Breakfast was served in a lovely old room decorated with interesting art. It was various breads, fruit, cereal, boiled eggs, ham and cheese and plenty of good coffee. For the sweet toothed there was Nutella and some chocolate sprinkles which I didn’t find the courage to try.
Amsterdam
K & S were also in Amsterdam for weekend, staying close by, and S had bought us all museum cards, so we dashed about visiting lots of them on Saturday and Sunday: the van Gogh museum (which was very crowded and did not meet my expectations); the Rijks ( which cannot all be seen in one visit and I found the layout a bit confusing) ; a fun small modern museum -Moca?; the van Loon house; a photography museum which had a lovely exhibition of Bill Brandt works, and others. Amsterdam is full of small museums and K led us along at a cracking pace. S treated us to a lovely dinner on Saturday night at a Michelin starred restaurant near the bottom of Vondelpark. This is one of the large parks in Amsterdam and well used by people and their bicycles.
I don’t think anything quite prepares one for the number of bicycles and speeding cyclists there are in Amsterdam. As a pedestrian one is pushed up against the shops frontage. To cross the road one has to navigate a sprawl of parked cycles, then a lane of speeding cyclists and then 2 lanes of cars and trams and then another cycle lane before one reach the safety of the far pavement. Fortunately there aren’t many vehicles and some of them are tiny but I was almost hit by speeding cyclists several times. In Switzerland some cycles towed covered buggies for babies. In Amsterdam, the large carts were in front of the cycles and could take several small children, the dog and shopping!
The canals are the glory of Amsterdam. Apparently thousands of cycles land up in them each year. Some canals have a metal railing about 30 cm off the ground. I thought it was to tie the mooring ropes to, but no, they have been put in place by the insurance companies to prevent clients reversing into the canals when parking.
I found the layout of the city a bit confusing to begin with, but once one realizes there are 3 concentric rings on canals it is a bit easier to find one’s way about, even without the Google lady.
My museum card was valid for 4 days, so on Monday and Tuesday I crammed in more museums: the Diamond Museum, The Tulip museum, a Canals museum, a very interesting Pipe museum, Rembrant’s house which was also very interesting, the Hermitage museum where I hoped to see Vermeer’s Milkmaid, but the exhibition had just closed. I also went back to the Rijks museum and spent time enjoying the 17th Dutch art which I especially like. A canal trip had been included with the museum card and this was a very worthwhile experience, helped to orientate me and showed me things I had not seen yet.
The Consertgebouw was also close to my hotel and the museum card gave a 25% discount so on Monday evening I popped down just before the performance and got a ticket to sit on the stage for a lovely concert of Stravinsky, Bernstein, Gershwin pieces played by the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest conducted by Lorenzo Viotti. The last piece was a clarinet concerto by Artie Shaw, with Andreas Ottensamer as soloist, which brought us all to our feet in ovation. It was lovely to hear live music again. The concert hall reminded me very much of the Cape town City Hall and I thought the free drink, both before the show and at interval a good idea.
I also spent time trying to find a Speculaas mould. I enjoy making Speculaas biscuits at Xmas and wanted some shaped moulds for them. Eventually I was sent to the best kitchen shop in Amsterdam – Duikelman- where sadly they only had 1 small shape- a Dutchman. I was hoping for a windmill! These moulds are still carved from wood and I have been warned to chill my biscuit mix before pressing it in.
The Hague and Rotterdam
On Wednesday I walked to the main station – about 4 kms from my hotel and bought a return ticket to Rotterdam for the day which would allow me to stop off in Den Haag (The Hague) on the way. I also bought an all Netherlands travel pass for the next day.
I very much wanted to visit the Mauritshuis museum in Den Haag which is famed for its collection which includes Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl erring and Carl Fabricius Goldfinch made famous by Donna Tartt’s book. This is a fabulous museum. Just the right size and full of ravishing paintings, especially if you like Dutch 17th century art. They even had a special exhibition of floral paintings. The Hague also surprised me with its exciting towering new buildings. I wish I could have spent longer in the city.
It proved a bit difficult to reach Rotterdam, I had to go via Gouda and I discovered that the Boijmans van Beuningens Museum was closed for renovation. The Depot, an exciting mirrored new building which was designed to serve a storage and curatorial facility for the museum, was open and said to be displaying part of the collection. I found it disappointing with very little to see for the entry fee, although the building itself was quite fun and it had a nice roof garden. Rotterdam also has some very interesting modern architecture and I wish I had had a bit more time in the city. Given that Dutch railways seem a bit more unreliable than Swiss, I decided to head for home.
Krӧller Mϋller museum and Zutphen
Thursday was the last day of my holiday and having bought my all day travel pass I set off to find the Krӧller Mϋller van Gogh museum in De Hoge Veluwe National Park at Otterlo. This is a must for those who like this artist’s work. It involved catching a train and 2 busses but I arrived at about midday and found the modern building in the tranquil forest enchanting. The collection is lovely and well worth seeing as is the extensive (25 hect.) sculpture garden surrounding it. The only negative is that it was abuzz with hordes of school children from kindergarten to high school and they were dashing around making a terrible racket. Modern museums have no carpets or curtains to soften sound. Modern teachers seem immune to noise. It was so deafening I had to escape outside. Unfortunately the day was rainy so I only saw part of the sculpture garden.
As it was mid afternoon when I left the museum, I decided to catch a bus to Apeldoorn and see a bit more of the country rather than go back the way I had come. I travelled through several pretty villages, but arrived in Apeldoorn too late to visit Het Loo palace. So I decided to catch a train to Zutphen nearby. This old town was part of the Hanseatic League and I had read it still had some of the city walls standing. It was indeed a charming old town and I had a quick stroll around the streets as the bells of the church pealed out rather stridently.
I realized I was at the east end of the Netherlands, Amsterdam was in the west. It was 6pm and although it is a small country, I should be getting home. It was a repeat of the day before. Various trains had been cancelled, I was advised to go to a different town and maybe catch a train from there. I cannot recall the various towns I was sent to, but suffice to say I eventually got back to Amsterdam at 10pm. I was pleased my all day travel pass allowed me to catch a tram back to my hotel, rather than walk the 4kms! I was up at 6 the next morning to catch my bus to the airport.
I saw quite a bit of the countryside in my 2 days of travelling about. It was pretty. There seemed to be lots of small farms with open fields and pastures and handsome farmhouses. Even the odd windmill to be seen. I had expected lots of plastic tunnels and signs of intensive agriculture as well as industrial buildings in the countryside, but there were not many in the parts I visited. It was very flat of course with big skies. Constable country I thought, but then the Dutch had lots of painters who also painted similar landscapes and cows. It doesn’t look all that different today.
Read more about the museums and paintings
May 2022: Netherlands gallery
![rotterdam](https://ksugarden.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/rotterdam2.jpg "Rotterdam "bent" building")
