Bruges to Brussels

The last morning in Bruges I had a task. My task was to find the Saturday market and report back whether it was worth a visit before we left town. The market was about a 10 minute walk away, up a street that was totally under construction, the better to bring in a bunch of new mall shops. I don't think there are any Starbucks there yet, though I may be wrong on that. But the other main street up to the market is lined with Tommy Hilfiger and Zara as well as snack shops.

Even on a Saturday morning in a light rain, the men were busy laying in yet more cobblestones. The street was pretty much deserted; one café was open. People do not get up early around here. The very good coffee shop across the street from the hotel doesn't open until 9. Can you imagine? I got up to the market around 8:45 and it was open and still setting up. I could smell it a block away. Dozens of chickens on rotisseries, meats, cheeses, charcuterie, baked goods, all beautiful. That was one half. The other half was slower to set up, and it included all kinds of clothing and household items, from mops and dish drainers to pants to "As seen on TV" miracle products.

It was nice enough, but hardly picturesque and not in any way rustic. Everything was in trailers, with all the requisite equipment. I knew there was a more locally oriented market nearby, so I followed the people and found a smaller square with smaller, less slick-looking stands, mostly with produce, but let's not ignore the live poultry section. Get it while it's fresh.

After due consideration, we decided to get to Brussels instead. The drive was incredibly easy, as was the car dropoff at one of the train stations downtown (I'd read horror stories about it but also stories that said it was simple). The cab driver didn't exactly know where the hotel was, but we got here okay. Then we headed out to visit the art museum.

I've been to a bunch of these older type museums, but this one was by far the most chaotic. They have combined 3 museums into one and have totally shuffled the curation as a result. It was incredibly hard to find anything, though we did eventually get to the paintings we wanted to see. We then wandered down the the Grand Place, of Grote Markt, depending on whether you're of the French or Flemish persuasion. Everything here is in 2 languages, although everyone I've interacted with speaks French. I can speak French just well enough to get myself in trouble. I guess my accent is good enough that people think I can really speak the language and am not just doing the best I can to be polite.

We had lunch down there and then walked around and bought some chocolates. The place was packed. It's a very large square (one might even call it 'grote') with some grand and beautiful buildings. One end is under renovation (we noticed that one of the buildings had been cleaned and re-gilted since our last visit) and over the scaffolding the have life-size pictures of the buildings. On the ground floor? Starbucks.

The walk back was a chore. It's uphill the whole way and it was windy and slightly rainy out. We got back to the hotel just before it started to pour. It's cleared up now and we'll be going out for the evening sometime soon.

What happens in Bruges

We had dinner our first night in Bruges at a place called Bistro Zwart Huis. A lively, not at all fancy spot with good food and atmosphere. The waiters were all these middle-aged guys and they were all characters in some way. A guy with a ponytail who winked a lot, that kind of thing. Our waiter was tall and thin and had a prominent and carefully shaped beard. I had a good steak with fries (what, no mayonnaise?) and a great, classic Belgian beer called Tripel Karmeleit, which I'd not had in a long time and thoroughly enjoyed.

We slept well and I woke up early enough to climb the Belfort, or bell tower. They really like ringing bells around here. They have a whole carillon song going the whole time the clock is chiming, which makes for a pretty but chaotic sound. The tower, in a slightly fictionalized arrangement, figures in a prominent scene in the movie In Bruges. Of course, if you're shooting a movie in a place that has a clock tower that looks like this, you have to make it a key part of the movie. It worked for Hitchcock.

The tower opens at 9:30. I got there are 9:20 because I wanted to get back in time for breakfast, which is only served until 10:30 at the hotel. I wasn't first in line, but there were only a few people ahead of me. So in and up I went.

There were a few places to stop along the way. There are bells and what they refer to as a drum that looks like one of those cute little music boxes that kids like, except this one is about the size of a tank. And the gears that work it are equally big. I have no idea what sounds this makes but I wouldn't want to be in the room with them when they are being made.

Up and up I went until I got to the top. It was 363 steps (that's what they say and the teenagers who arrived shortly after me counted them just to make sure). The bells up there are very large. One of the smaller ones rang at 9:45 and it made everyone up there jump. The view was amazing though.

Going down was somewhat more harrowing than going up. Dodging the people coming up was particularly amusing.

Got back to the hotel at 9:55, just in time for breakfast. It was your basic hotel buffet thing. Then we went for a walk around the rest of the city. It seemed much more crowded today, perhaps because it was Friday and perhaps because we were out late afternoon. But it was kind of hard to find a quiet spot. Still very pretty, and we saw the one particular thing we wanted to, a gorgeous Michelangelo madonna and child sculpture that was originally intended for the Siena Cathedral but was bought by some rich family here and placed in the church. 

We walked until around 3 and then had some lunch and a nap. Dinner awaits.

Getting out of town

Considering how hard it is to walk in Amsterdam, you can just imagine how intimidating the idea of driving was. We had a car reserved somewhat nearby, but the prospect of dealing with driving back from the rental place to the hotel and then out of town was incredibly unattractive. So I checked with the concierge and we decided that it would be best just to check out and take a taxi to the rental car agency.

This turned out to be an excellent choice. The rental car place turned out to be a significant drive and it was perfectly pleasant picking up our car and heading off to Bruges. We had discussed possibly taking some back roads and making a stop or two along the way, but ultimately Ronnie suggested that we just get to Bruges so we could have more time here. I agreed and ultimately it was a smart move.

The drive was unremarkable. One doesn't necessarily remark on drives anyway, and since nothing bad happened, we'll follow suit here.

Bruges, on the other hand, is remarkable. It's a well-preserved medieval town that's been transformed into a tourist haven. It's somewhat reminiscent of the Italian hill towns, except larger, Siena is a reasonable analog. But this place has way more eye candy that Siena can dream about. Not sure why. Siena is pretty. But this is one of those places where every time you turn a corner you see something beautiful.

Now that I think about it, Verona is maybe a better comparison, though they don't have marble sidewalks here. Just cobblestones. Lots and lots of cobblestones. Someone in the vicinity must have been doing some serious cobbling to come up with all these stones. I understand why it seemed like a good idea back in the day. It's cheap material, I presume, and extremely durable. It's also ridiculously tiring to try to walk on because it's very hard and very uneven, and making both the sidewalk and streets out of the same material makes them indistinguishable and kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing, don't you think? But I suppose back in the 13th century when people only lived 30 or 40 years it wan't a big deal. Not much vehicular traffic back then. But for 60 year-old knees and feet, it's tough going.

The good news is, it's worth it. Our hotel is a couple of blocks from the main square. Okay, I should stop here and note that Ronnie and I are huge fans of the movie, In Bruges. This is a movie that requires a particular sensibility to really enjoy. It's not for everyone, but it's definitely for us. So we will eventually hit all the key sites from the movie. But for today we "settled" for a gorgeous walkaround hitting a number of the main attractions.

Aside from the attractiveness of the place, it's got a wide variety of nice shops and restaurants. Combine that with a small scale the fact that it's very safe, and I can see it being a great family destination. That being said, after a few minutes, we couldn't wait to get out of the crowded part of town and into the quiet, pretty edges.

Fortunately, we're here on a Thursday and not the weekend, because if it's this crowded today, I can only imagine what will be on Saturday. We'll tour around more tomorrow. I'm getting up early to climb the bell tower.

Morning walk on the last day.

I went for a long walk this morning. On purpose this time. It's easy to make your walks overly long in Amsterdam. The whole concentric semicircle thing makes it all very confusing to plan routes. I wanted to talk over to the old Portuguese Synagogue. We've been there before, but it's pretty spectacular.

The shortest route over there was straight and I knew from experience that it was kind of crowded and unattractive, so I went for the innermost canal and minimized first my circumference and then my time spent walking straight. I walked through the so-called flower market, which had lots and lots and lots of bulbs, but no flowers to speak of. All the way I'm dodging bikes and cars and scooters. But not trams. Nobody screws with the trams; they are the badasses of public transit and to be honest, everyone not on them is terrified of them. They are huge and go fast and of course can't stop very quickly. Nearly saw someone trying to get a stroller across the tracks get stuck and nailed yesterday.

I took some videos while I was walking here's a couple

So you get the idea. Amsterdam is impossible and marvelous at the same time. On the live here/not live here scale I would put it solidly in the live here column, but with some reservations.

Speaking of which, let me describe the hotel to you a bit, now that we've left it. Excellent location. It's a partial block of canal houses all connected, so you go up and down stairs to get from one part to the other. Our room faces the canal and it's beautiful, and the bed is among the most comfortable we've ever encountered. The downside is that the room and the bathroom are both small, and there wasn't enough room to put all of our clothing. It worked out okay, because I'm okay using my suitcase as a drawer. The staff is uniformly great.

I'll post a full review on TripAdvisor. I'd say we really liked it but didn't absolutely love it. Four stars out of five.

Third day, which is enough

Can't way we woke up today excited. We were both very tired and we not really sure what to do this morning. I went to the gym and did what is perhaps the stupidest thing one could do in Amsterdam, that being riding an exercise bicycle. This is a city that thrives on people getting from here to there on bicycles, so what business have I pretending to ride a bike while listening to awful dance music in a small room, laughingly referred to as a gym? Whatever. i didn't feel like going out and renting a bike. So sue me.

We got up late, had breakfast, and went to explore a new neighborhood that supposedly had shopping possibilities. Not. Didn't even get cheese this time. And then when we came home, we rode on a tram for part of the way, and then I asked the driver if we could transfer to the bus at a convenient spot. What he neglected to mention was that the busses and trams are different companies and yes, you can transfer, but you have to pay again. Even though they stop at the same stops. Does this make any sense at all? The Dutch are usually so logical about this kind of stuff.

But we got back. Had a quick bite to eat and then went to have a massage. The hotel that we're staying in is very nice but is mall and does not have have a spa. So they booked us massages at a nearby day spa. That was different. Don't get me wrong, it was very nice and the massage was good, but compared to what happens in a US spa there's no easy comparison. First of all, no matter what spa you enter in the US you have to sign a waiver of liability, so if the massage therapist does something that kills you and you have even a hint of a preexisting condition, you can't sue them

Second thing, one locker room. There is a little toilet room if you don't want to get naked in a co-ed room, but nobody else seemed to mind. The waiting room was like the salon of a grand house. It was a really beautiful building with all kinds of art nouveau decor inside, and the massage rooms were fine.

In any event, we walked home more relaxed and then took a pleasant cruise around the Amsterdam canals on a beautifully preserved old boat.

It's quite a remarkable city, and a lot quieter and less hectic on the water. The canals are lined with houseboats and apparently just a space to park a boat costs a quarter of a million Euros (that's what they call their money here, even though we all know dollars are the only real money). The boat is extra, and some of them are pretty amazing. Kind of like a nicer version of a double-wide trailer with a much nicer ambience to boat. I mean, to boot.

After the ride we rested a bit until dinner, which was at a local restaurant called Envy. If you want to know the whole story, you can read my TripAdvisor review once I've posted it. But it was a ridiculous meal in many ways. Everything except the food was incompetent and the food was very very good.

The waitstaff seemed to be stumbling over each other a bit, and we were chuckling with the German people at the next table about it. At the table beyond the Germans, there was a very attractive young couple who were pawing at each other the whole time and at one point both just leaned over the table and started kissing and did not stop until their waiter came with food.

Once we were done with dinner, we tried to pay the check. In Europe, they use these little wireless charge machines that they bring to the table. Theirs was literally taped together and simply refused to work. Eventually someone decided to restart it and it finally worked, but Ronnie and I and the Germans were laughing so hard at that point it was hard to take the restaurant seriously, even  though they clearly want to be so.

Enough of Amsterdam. Off the Bruges tomorrow.

Rest of the second day.

We got back from Keukenhof with a kind of "what now?" kind of feeling.  I mean, after this, where can you possibly go?

We've been here before, we hit the sights we wanted to. Amsterdam is a cool place, but I've been surprised at how many people who recently arrived here are asking us questions looking things to do. The conclusion I draw here is that Amsterdam is a great place to hang out. There are countless young, aimless-looking sorts everywhere, but there isn't that much to actually do. I mean, unless you include drinking or smoking, only one of which I'm doing and neither of which actually constitutes an activity (though some frequenting the Coffee Shops may disagree).

So we fell back on the old standby, shopping. We'd exhausted the local streets, so we headed for another area, which was very nice. We didn't buy anything. except cheese and some apple cake, but it was still pleasant.

Back to the hotel for a nap and then out to dinner. I wanted something slightly more upscale this go round, so we went to a nice restaurant not too far from here. The food was fine, but overall it's hard not to draw the conclusion that this isn't a foodie destination. You don't see a lot of Dutch restaurants elsewhere.

Regardless, it was a perfectly nice dinner. When we got back, I had kind of an anxiety thing where I'd been sitting around too much and had to go out for a walk. This happens to me occasionally; I'm not very good at sitting still for a long time, and though we'd been out and about some, I needed to move.

So I went out for a walk. At 11:00 at night. Fortunately, this is a good town to do that kind of thing in. It's very very safe, and as I said to Ronnie, I was more afraid of being run over by a bike or scooter than of being mugged, for example. The streets were very busy and active, though I was probably the oldest person still out there.

Stopped paying attention at one point, which is a bad idea here, and ended up walking much further than I wanted to, but it was beautiful out and not in any way bad.

Keukenhof

Today, after a bit of discussion on how to pronounce our destination, to Keukenhof, the premier bulb garden in the world, I suppose. Thirty-five hectares planted with 7 million bulbs. I continue to deny the existence of a hectare as an actual unit of measurement and believe it to be purposely indecipherable and therefore seemingly impressive.

North Holland, like the Northeastern US, had a very cool, grey, damp spring, which means that the full bulb display was not yet to be seen. But for a partial showing, this was pretty darned impressive. You enter the place through the usual big attraction gates and you get kind of a Disneyland feel right off the bat. Maybe that's because you have a calliope in the entrance plaza playing calliope versions of classic rock songs. Actually, I'm kind of bummed that I didn't buy the CD they were offering there, because what could be better to liven up a party than some calliope.

Saying something has a Disneyland feel can sound pejorative, but it wasn't really like that. It's a beautifully designed garden full of a variety of plantings, some permanent, some torn up every year and replanted. Because of the weather, the main tulip show was not to be seen, including the tulip mosaic of a Van Gogh self-portrait. But there we still thousands and thousands of flowers everywhere, and an huge indoor pavilion that had every kind of tulip imaginable.

I mean, I knew there were a lot of kinds of tulips, but really?

We walked around for a couple of hours and saw a lot of wonderful flowers and plants ready to have flowers. It was really pleasant and a fun trip, as you can see.

I'll fill in the rest of the morning (it's about 1 AM now).

Second day in Amsterdam.

The second day after a multi-time zone trip is when it really hits, at least for me. I always feel kind of borderline lousy all day. Not enough to hole up in the hotel room, but enough to get in the way of total enjoyment of the experience.

As an aftermath to my walking this morning, I should point out that as nicely scaled and attractive as this town is, it's an impossible place to walk. I can handle the brick sidewalks; they're uneven but there's rarely anything to trip on. The problem is that in many places they are simply too narrow. Combine that with the fact that both bicycles and motor scooters ride whichever way they want on the street or the sidewalk if they so choose, regardless of one-wayness, and there's simply no sure way to maneuver. It's not so much of a problem if you're walking by yourself, but you simply can't walk side-by-side with someone with any level of comfort.

That's a problem because I am here with someone and we walk around a lot together. Today we went to the Rijk Museum. All the signs make that one word but the museum itself seems to separate them. I don't get it and I don't care. The language here is opaque. I know English is ridiculous too, but they just use so many damned letters to spell anything here. It seems incompatible with the whole Dutch aura, which is to take it as it comes and make money off it, whatever it is. They're traders, but I guess they have their own language so as to have something incomprehensible to foreigners, all of whose languages they understand. It's a ploy, clearly.

We took the bus there, which was quick and easy and we liked what Ronnie referred to as the "time-out chair."

Last time we were here, the museum was under renovation and they had a kind of "greatest hits" thing in what felt to me a small and kind of cramped place. The actual museum as a whole is huge and rambling to the point of being unamangeable, kind of like the Louvre, where you can't get from one place to another without having to backtrack. The other thing is that there's nothing international about this place, even though it's one of the world's great museums. It's all Dutch. If you don't like Dutch painting, do not any under any circumstances go there, because there ain't nothing else. There's plenty of great Dutch painting, don't get me wrong, but don't expect to find a Monet or DaVinci or even Rubens, who can't have been from more than 100 miles from here.

Anyway, we saw what we wanted to see and then walked back, first on one of the most crowded, tackiest shopping streets I've ever been to. I was surprised to find a couple of places where we'd eaten last time visiting still there, as was the sports bar where we watched the famous Zinedine Zidane headbutt game with a huge crowd of French and Italian football fans. Which reminds me, the other thing I learned today at the museum is why all their athletic teams, soccer and Olympic most notable, where orange. It's because of William of Orange, whom I presume never wore anything orange in his life, but who led the rebellion agains the Spanish that led to Dutch independence. So there.

We escaped that street and headed back for the hotel, where we did some more sedate shopping and had lunch. Then back to the room for a nap and then suddenly it was time for dinner.

Dinner was at a trendy-type place with DJ and a guy occasionally accompanying him badly on a keyboard. Not really sure what the deal was there. The food was uneven but it was fun. It seemed like everyone there knew each other. Then back to the hotel to wind down for bedtime. Off to the botanical gardens tomorrow. Should be amazing.

Waking up

I actually slept pretty well considering it was absolutely the wrong time to go to sleep and wake up in the morning. Second day of a trip like this is when the jet lag really hits, and you have to force your way through the day. You may not feel horrible, but you never feel really good. It's also gray and ever so slightly drizzly. Sounds like the perfect day for a museum.

Which is what we're doing today. I got myself out of bed around eight, had some coffee to set my body clock and then went for a walk. The hotel is a block from the Anne Frank house. As I walked along the street I could see that at 8:30 in the morning the line was already halfway around the block to get in. I don't know if we just got lucky last time, but I don't remember waiting anything like that to get in. 

Because of the cold drizzly thing, I didn't want to go to far from the hotel, so I zigzagged through local streets. It's very pretty here, not pretty the way French somehow managed to do it. It's more utilitarian, but still with a little bit of an eye for what might be attractive. Also bicycles friggin everywhere. There's a pretty good number with people riding them and thousands more chained to every conceivable immovable object and to each other.

What I remember of the first day

We got to Amsterdam about 45 minutes early. This is the only kind of flight where you don't want to get in early. Flights from them US go overnight and get in early morning, before rooms are customarily available at hotels, so early means more time at the hotel uncomfortably and at times desperately waiting. Even on the best of flights, and this one was fine, you sleep maybe a couple of hours, and when you get in you're dying to just lie down.

Ronnie and I both got a bit of sleep on the flight, which kept us from being completely miserable the moment we got here. Nonetheless, I've spent more enjoyable times on my vacations than waiting in a lobby for a room to become available. The Hotel Pulitzer, recommended by a friend, is a very nice hotel, and we were able to pass the time in not too uncomfortable circumstances.

I was concerned, though, because, as we Jews are inclined to forget, there's a segment of the population that thinks the Sunday after the first day of Passover is special in some way. And when we asked the concierge at the hotel, he thought that most things would be closed today. So the combination of no room and nothing to do was not too palatable. But was it turned out, there were a pretty decent number of things open. The Dutch are definitely not what you would describe as a devout people. In fact, when looking into what you could do on Easter, one thing I saw that you almost certainly couldn't do was go to church. Most churches here have been closed and put to other use.

So we got a canal view room

and took a nap, and it took me only about 10 minutes to find something that looked like fun. There's a Sunday market the first Sunday of each month, and they had lots of special activities planned, as translated from Dutch inimitably by Google,

Inside:
Making Easter workshop Candy Cottage at The Bread Art Club 
Easter workshop Chickens Hooks "and" Chick PomPom tinkering 'at Mill Girls 
Eggs painting in the kids corner 
Chocolate egg hunt over the terrain 
3D printing of egg cups at Foundation CRE8 
Free Buttons the designs of Nik-Nak design 
Live draw Luigi Jansen 
Let portraits in manga style signs in Tokyo Doll 
Have your face painted at Nida Jut 
let you predict future Karin Rabbit 
Let your funky cut by Judith 

Let feather extensions in your hair put in Feathers by Marieke 

Yes. Hairstyling. But ultimately, it was a big  indoor/outdoor street market with a least a couple of hundred stalls selling everything from kids' clothing to lamb skins to Tupperware to glassware and pottery and a bunch of food stands, which featured foods from around the world. We each had a plate of pinxtos, which are the Basque version of tapas. Very yummy. And we spent a very pleasant hour walking around the market and adjoining park.

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel and strolled around the neighborhood, which was about 50-50 open-closed. It was chilly out, but very pleasant. Back then, for another nap, after which I went for a long walk, past lots of Coffee Shops, which were 100% open. It ended up being a very nice day for an arrival day after an overnight flight that I'd expected to be nightmarish.

Dinner was at a local joint that we'd seen recommended that offered typical Dutch food. This, of course, brought up the inevitable question of what the actual name of this country is. Apparently, it's The Netherlands, which is a kingdom, of which North and South Holland are part. Amsterdam is in North Holland. Why the people are then called Dutch is another matter and far too confusing for this writer after this particularly long day.

So I had that typical Dutch main course, spare ribs, which by the way, was by far the most popular dish in the place based on what I saw the waiters carrying. They were fine. I also had a Dutch shrimp cocktail (hey, it's Easter, no kosher stuff for me) which was quite good and made up of a couple hundred of the tiniest shrimp I've ever seen. And of course, an indigenous beverage served in its indigenous flagon.

So all in all, a pretty decent day for a first day in Amsterdam. Off to the museum tomorrow.

Off to Amsterdam

Of course we got to the airport too early. I always do that. I don’t like missing flights and I’ve never arrived at my originating airport too late to make a flight. I read something recently that said that on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, if you never miss a flight then you are getting to the airport too early. On one hand, my family is consistently annoyed that we get to the airport and are then sitting around for up to an hour. On the other hand, on the occasion that we hit traffic or a long line at security, we’re always happy that we had the cushion.

This time, we definitely got to the airport too soon. Maybe it was the time I decided to leave, maybe it was the total lack of traffic, maybe it was the Jesus-loving fast-driving cabbie, who so doused the cab with odorizing spray that you could see the droplets hanging in the air and forced us to ride the whole way on the expressway at 70 miles per hour with the windows open. Or maybe it was the fact that, in spite of all people’s bitching, airline check-in is much quicker and more efficient than it ever was in the so-called good old days. Bur we got to the airport and through security an hour before your flight began boarding.

This really wasn’t so bad. It gave us an opportunity to sit in an unused and uncrowded gate area close to our actual gate and consider our food options. We bought sandwiches at a place called Guava Java, a nonsensically named airport stand that I’ve never seen anywhere else just to ensure that we didn’t starve to death between here and Amsterdam.

Our flight, which was mercifully not very full, left right on time and will deposit us in Amsterdam just around the time we would normally go to bed. This is always a difficult problem with overseas travel and I’m surprised more hotels have not taken advantage of the opportunity to make rooms available in the morning. Only one hotel I contacted had that kind of thing, and we opted not to stay there. Hopefully we can find a place to lie down at the hotel we’ll be using. I may try to sleep a bit.