Alisa and I landed in Amsterdam after six and a half hours of flight time, during which I slept for probably four and Alisa slept for zero.
And guess who is driving the rental car? Thanks Alisa!
The plan for the trip is to have the rental car through Wednesday, during which we'll be touring the countryside to the south. Afterwards, we will stick to a home base of Amsterdam, though might do a day trip or two.
I had remembered (while on the way to the airport) to download Google Maps offline for the Netherlands. Once we got the car (with a very funky, manual-looking shifter that it took a few times to figure out), I pulled up the map and didn't see our GPS location. I could have instructions from point to point, but not turn-by-turn instructions. Thankfully, once we were out of the cement garage, it corrected itself, and we only did one loop before getting to our first stop, just 15 minutes away: Haarlem.
New York's Harlem got its name from this city, but unless some canals popped up in New York recently, Haarlem has a bit of a different vibe. This morning, that vibe was very grey.
A smattering of rain had accompanied us from the airport, but the week's forecast is all about as dreary, so we weren't going to stop our plans. Neither of us melt.
We headed to Grote Markt, a supposed empty plaza in front of Grote Kerk. A Ferris wheel was instead poking up from between the buildings; a carnival was in the big city "park", ruining our view! There was an octopus tea cup ride, as well as an overhang to read Rick's description of the square while out of the rain. I pulled up Google and searched for the coffee that I owed Alisa.
The cafe that I found had a father and son enjoying a quiet Sunday morning in the front window. The place was decorated with books turned backwards on the shelf, so only their white pages were visible. It was cowboy chic - some ropes and cowhide pillows with the iron and wood furniture.
It had beautifully composed breakfasts, so we relaxed in the atmosphere and chatted as our dishes came out. As we were paying up, the server asked if we were in town for the flower parade. Apparently, we were a day late for the biggest flower parade (in the Netherlands?) but lucky because the floats were on display just a few blocks away!
It was perfect! Think Rose Parade-type floats, but more reasonable sized. These were the size of a typical trailer, and they had no specific flowers they were composed of, unlike the Rose Parade. I was expecting more tulips, to be honest. Instead, it was a majority all sorts of other flowers.
I enjoyed the meta-floats: giant flowers made out of flowers. Some had bees and birds on them as well. The funniest was one on top of a car - the weird figure was supposed to be a Jaguar representing the car company but was terribly undetailed.
No one is shocked that two of the floats has bicycles made out of flowers. Rick Steves loves quoting that there are as many bicycles as people in the Netherlands.
A dragon surrounded by fairytale creatures was sponsored by Efteling, our stop for tomorrow. Royal FloraHolland, the giant flower wholesaler, had a float as well.
Intermixed with the floats were food trucks and street artists. By the time we had got to the end of the row and back, it was filling up with families out for a stroll.
On the north side of Haarlem was the Molen De Adriaan. The windmill was originally built on the spot in 1779, but burnt down in the 1940s. It was rebuilt and reopened much later, on April 23, 2002 - exactly 15 years ago today!
Instead of paying the small fee to go on an hour-long tour describing the interpretive exhibits on each floor of the windmill, we were allowed to head up the tight staircase than the nearly ladder-like final steps to the top of the windmill.
We enjoyed the view (though I was pretty concerned about the gaps in the floor and the fact that the wall along the outside learned outward) before climbing back down and heading to the car. We have more stops and not a whole lot of energy with which to do them.
Back to the car in the underground parking garage near the Teyler Museum of historical science (a spot to stop at next time), we headed off to Keukenhof.
This 80-acre garden is only open in the spring when the billions of tulips in planted in its beds by different sponsors are flowering. It was well-signed, though we had to drive to the back of it to be given a parking spot.
The drive wasn't long, perhaps twenty minutes, but my eyes were sagging. One of us suggested napping in the car, and the other agreed. Alisa set an alarm for twenty minutes - an alarm I completely missed. The next alarm went off, and the next. A rain storm rolled through and over an hour later, we got stiffly out of the car and started toward the gates.
A few stands were outside the back gates, so Alisa got some fries as I bought the tickets. We walked in and we're swept up by the crowds. So many selfie sticks and strollers.
It was arranged with an exhibit hall in each corner and along the long sides of the park. We headed to the closest one, which held the orchids.
Since I missed the orchids in Medellin last week, I was excited to see them here! Arrangements included around a couch, around a piles of books, and interspersed with mirrors. A balcony watched over all of it. Alisa and I dodged the rapid fire photographers to look at the ones that caught our eye.
Between the exhibit halls, we saw tulips of every color - Alisa liked the ombré ones with some orange and red, as well as with fringed petals. I am a fan of the classic look with solid colors. Along with the tulips - many with names on plaques near them - we saw daffodils, and hyacinths.
We saw a few small fountains, walked by a windmill, looked at a neighboring farm on the other side of a canal with fields full of tulips, and peaked inside another few exhibit halls. The educational hall taught me that it takes 25 years to go from a fertilized seed to a bulb that consistently flowers. The iteration cycle is (human) generations long!
We only had to escape from the rain inside halls once or twice. We made it across the park, and on the way back we encountered a larger lake with swans and cool "lily pads" that humans could walk along. Since some couldn't quite fit two people comfortably, there was a lot of lack of coordination that led to us retracing our lily pad steps back to shore, instead of continuing forward.
We had finished our circle of the park, which meant there was only one thing left to do - eat French fries. That was partially also because the coffee stand wasn't taking cards (and we hadn't stopped for cash yet). By the time we finished our fries, the stand was up and running again though. Thank goodness, because we had to drive the long 20 minutes to Leiden.
Leiden is a university town, and we had heard good things about the parks near it, but the lack of parking meant we started our wandering in a different part of the city. Google Maps had led us incorrectly to a non-existent parking garage, so we picked a different one (that we missed the first time again anyway).
We were by the Pilgrim museum, but we didn't make visiting it a priority. Instead, we enjoyed the sun (and the ability to sit) while on a barge on the New Rhine. We started a walking tour by Rick Steves and climbed up the Burcht, a manmade hill that gave Leiden a little bit of a lookout back in the day. Now, it is just a tourist hotspot (and a great place to kick around a soccer ball).
We walked deeper into Leiden, crossing over the Corn Bridge, where barges stopped to drop off their wares. Like most of the cities, it was mixed residential and commercial, so we peeked into a few courtyards to get the feel. One lovely green one had little paved sidewalks, where a boy was learning to be properly Dutch by practicing on his bike with his mom. He stopped, had a little conversation with us in Dutch, we laughed and smiled, and continued on to the next cobblestone street.
A plaque next to a doorframe labeled the rooms inside as the school where Rembrandt learned Latin. I wonder if he actually used it...
We found a sunny bench and soaked in a bit of warmth while trying out photosynthesis to keep us going on our limited sleep. We were right next to St. Peter's Church, where Dutch pilgrims departed to sail to America. New Amsterdam and all that, ya know. History stuff.
The photosynthesis didn't work, but it was only a few more blocks to the university, then there was a great strip of green park to lead us back to the car. The university had some great stone buildings with glass, but it was also feeling very closed, since it was a Sunday.
Walking back along the park and along the canals and streets, we saw a lot of nicely dressed young people spilling out from bars onto the sidewalks. The muted setting sun made everything feel a little golden (as did the slightly lack of sleep). The spell was broken when we crossed a street. A bike was whizzing by, and we paused our walking to let him by. "Just in time!" he yelled to us. Why us? Why English? Our pausing was "just in time?" We puzzled over this one as we walked in the greenery behind more churches and university buildings back to the car.
Delft wasn't far, but our hotel was very much on the outskirts, with what looked like a stadium next door. We tried to eat in the restaurant, but a tour group was filling the dining room for another half an hour. The hotel next door had a Chinese restaurant, so we had our first meal at the Shanghai Garden Restaurant. Not a memorable meal, except for the quantities of food (which we stowed in the car only to toss later) and the fact that we left just as a busload of Asians walked in.
The sun was set, but just barely, as we sank into bed at 9pm.
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