Easter, like most of the year for me, was a mixture of emotions. About ten years ago, my Poppa convinced his grandchildren that there was a contest to see who could send him a Russell Stover’s Milk Chocolate Easter Bunny the first every year (yes, he was that specific on what he wanted). I, not in the least bit competitive fashion, would scour the store Easter section every year to ensure that I had THE BEST bunny to send to him. One year, I called HEB to ask when their Easter shipment would arrive...it was January & the customer service representative was confused. The subsequent year, I realised that I could buy one on clearance after Easter and keep it in my pantry for the following Easter. When I mailed it to Poppa on January 1st, he called to ask where I’d found one so early. I explained what I’d done. He laughed for about three minutes straight. To this day, I’m not sure if he was more proud of my ingenuity to get him a bunny or his ensuring he had a steady stream of chocolate being delivered to his house. In Poppa’s memory, this year I saved the ears from my bunny until the end. They are the best part.
Also this Easter, Adam has finished his classes for his MBA! Hard to believe he’s nearly done! He still has exams for this semester, his consultancy project and a dissertation to write, so he doesn’t get a break yet. But to celebrate being finished with a significant portion of his degree and because I had a four-day weekend from work, we took a trip to Holland.
Thursday after work, I dropped the girls off at the kennel, loaded the car with the roadtrip goodies, and picked up Adam from school. We’d decided to take the ferry over to the continent so that we could meander through Belgium & Holland at our own speed. Turns out our speed is often in circles. More on that to come. We were booked on the 11pm ferry from Dover. Yes, that’s right. I started an activity at 11pm...way past my bedtime. There were alot of families with young (screaming) children all up way past their bedtime.
When disembarking the ferry on the France side, it was 1am and as dark as could be. There was a definite lack of street lights and signs. I had prebooked a hotel, but their office hours didn’t extend to 1am, so they had emailed me the key code to get into our room ahead of time. So calling the hotel to figure out where they were was out of the question. I had written down the Google Maps directions, but not brought the detailed map. And it was 1am. And the street names I’d written down were not what was written on street signs. And it was 1am. Somehow we eventually wound up on a road that I had written down for the following day to get out of town towards the Netherlands. We still weren’t sure where we were nor were we sure we were going in the right direction. As we were driving, I saw a sign for Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale. We knew the hotel was on Avenue Université, logically, the university would also be on that road, but we were in France so I didn’t hold out much hope. After another 15 minutes of driving in the dark, and nearing 2am (and Amanda cranky time) we reached the exit for the university. We got off the highway and into small streets with even less signage. We somehow arrived on a series of one-way streets where we could see the university, but not actually get on to the road where we thought the hotel might be. About another 10 minutes of confusion later, we found our way to the hotel and amazingly it was on Avenue Université. I have never had a larger sense of relief in my life. We parked by the hotel. When Adam turned off the car (at 2:15) this is what I could see outside.
Isn’t the hotel beautiful? Do you see the seaside view?
We got into the hotel and room without incident. The key code they had emailed me worked. The room had a bed and shower and was clean. At that point, those were the only things I cared about. The next morning, the view from the hotel actually was beautiful as was the promised seaside view. I’ve subsequently tried to look at Google Maps again knowing some of the landmarks we passed to see if I can recreate our route. No idea how we ended up at the hotel.
Unfortunately our direction woes didn’t end there. We headed out from the hotel towards Belgium about 10am. The drive was beautiful; green, spacious, nice roads, we had our best Texan attempts at pronouncing the French and Belgian town names. We stopped in a road side park and had a picnic in our car.
Here’s where we had problems.
Antwerpen
Oh that city.
There is a loop around the city. We entered the loop or the R1 from the E17 and were supposed to exit on the E19. There are apparently no exit numbers on Belgium roads. Neither are there crossovers on the highways. So when the map reader gets confused and tells the driver to take the A12 instead of the E19, there is no correcting. There is only going on a two hour detour to get back to a road where your previously written Google directions pick back up so you can find the second hotel of the journey. When you do make this mistake, however, you go through some darling small towns with traditional windmills.
The journey to the left, through Rotterdam, was what we were supposed to take. The one to the right through a bunch of other cities & back roads is the one we did. Oopsie.
We did eventually make it to Lisse in the Netherlands (just outside Amsterdam where we were staying). The hotel was nice. Adam’s eyes lit up when the television welcomed him to the hotel.
It had the traditional European double bed – two twins pushed together. And the shower was just kinda part of the bathroom. It didn’t do well in the water containment section of the hotel scorecard.
But best the part. The view from our window.
You could see the tulip fields from our room!!
Once we got settled in the room, we headed out to Haarlem to see the city & search for dinner. Haarlem gave New York’s Harlem it’s name when New York was New Amsterdam as a Dutch colony. It’s market square, the Grote Markt, has been there about 700 years. On a nice day, the tour books say it is the perfect people watching spot to sip your hot chocolate and enjoy the scenes that inspired the great oil painters such as Van Gogh in their works. In the center of the square is a 15th-centry Gothic church with a 5,000 pipe pipe organ. We’d planned to sit outside and eat, but it was too cold for our likings, so we took a quick picture of the church and found a heated, indoor restaurant.
Saturday morning, we headed into the city of Amsterdam. Adam has a fascination with World War II. He watches Band of Brothers at least once a year, can tell you all about battle scenarios, and is generally fascinated by the events of the early 1940s. We went to the Anne Frank House in the morning. I have never been colder in my life than I was when we were waiting in line to go inside the house. The cold northern wind was gusting through, the temperature never got above 45*, and we were not moving. At. All.
The house was interesting. It’s hard to imagine spending two years in hiding in the annex behind the business. I however, don’t fully understand why so many people refer to it as a must-see pilgrimage when going to Amsterdam.
We picked up a guidebook in the gift shop that allowed us to do a self-guided walking tour from the Anne Frank House to the Verzetsmuseum (the Dutch Resistance Museum). We headed out on the tour. Along the way, we found Sara’s Pancake House. My new favorite word: stroopwafel.
We ended up eating pancakes three times over the weekend. They have both sweet & savory pancakes. Adam usually went for the sweet...chocolate & more chocolate. I tried some variety – bacon & cheese, apple, and all sorts.
Y U M
Also along our walk, we came across a group trying to break the record for the world’s largest pillow fight. We didn’t participate, although we did still see feathers from the pillows in the air three streets away.
The Resistance Museum was an impressive view of how the Dutch resisted the Nazi occupiers from 1940 to 1945. It goes through the peaceful, even oblivious Dutch in the 1930s through the German invasion in May 1940 which pummelled Rotterdam and sent the Dutch monarchy into exile in the UK. From there, you see the mobilization of organized resistance and the full out war that enveloped the area.
From the Resistance Museum, we walked through the Red Light District on our way back to the bus stop for the hotel. We stayed just long enough for Adam to get uncomfortable...about 17 seconds, then moved along.
Easter Sunday the Easter bunny made an appearance in the hotel room.
How Adam managed to sneak two Easter baskets, all that chocolate, and the eggs into the car so I wouldn’t notice I still haven’t figured out. And he won’t share. Which is kinda okay with me because he did share the chocolate.
We were able to walk from our hotel to Keukenhof, which is the 80 acre park with 600 varieties of tulips and 120 varieties of daffodils. It’s billed as the ultimate Spring Garden and since 1949 has been an exhibition showcase for the flower bulb industry. We spent about 6 hours wondering the 9 miles of paths through the park. It was cold, so we were pretty bundled up, but there were stroopwafel stands everywhere, so our noses guided us through the park. Barrage of tulip pictures below:
There is a windmill in the park. It was built in 1892. The tour guide said that it would still work, but they have it locked down so all the tourist can climb on it. So we did. The walking area on the windmill even had tulips in it!
Throughout the tulip season, they do special exhibits & demonstrations. The day we were there, they were having a falconry exhibition. We stood and watched for awhile. They got really close to the crowd – English health & safety was not a consideration here!
As you walk out of the park, you go over a little waking bridge, once you’re on it, you realize that it is a mosaic out of the flowers. Anyone guess who this it?
After the park, we went to Catharina Hoove, which we thought was supposed to be a cheese factory where we could see some Gouda being made. When we got there, it turned out to be a tourist trap village with a cheese factory, pastry factory, woodcarving factory, and other. We decided that in Dutch ‘factory’ must mean ‘store,’ because there were no actual workshops there, just shops to purchase the products. It was a cute little village, but not what we were expecting. We walked around and enjoyed with windmills, ate some samples of cheese in the shop, and headed back to the car to get somewhere warm!
Happy Easter from Holland!
