Holiday in Netherlands, pt 1
We flew into Eindhoven, which is a cute little airport. Not much to say about the city, at least from the bus. Managed to miss both the bus from the airport and a train to Breda by scant minutes. As a result, we were almost an hour late getting to Breda.
Martijn was kind enough to meet us at the station, which turned out to be a 10 minute walk across downtown from his flat. Downtown was lovely and his new flat (as in newly built) is excellent. Sadly, I thought I had forgotten to pack my camera, so there are not photos from this day or the next.
Dinner was in Rotterdam at what Martijn rates as the best Chinese restaurant in the Netherlands. Met his friend who is dead smart and a world class economist. He's leaving academia for the excitement of Rand corp. But he didn't feel at all like talking shop. Which is fine, because we had some excellent food, instead.
We had a lazy night and lazy next morning in Breda. That morning was market day on Breda's Groot Markt. I was made very sad by the availability of a wide variety of fresh fish and vegetables at reasonable prices. Czech farmers' markets are pathetic beyond words, and other than farmed freshwater fish, fish is far too expensive in CR.
We took the train to Den Haag and checked into the Hotel Corona on the Buitenhof. Long story; we were in the Hague en route to bishopjoey's wedding reception, Martijn had different plans for the evening, it was too far to visit friends in Bilthoven, and our friend in The Hague was out of the country for the weekend. Anyway, we got a great deal on this room. Best of all, there was an exhibit on the Buitenhof square of sand sculptures of famous Flemish paintings, right across from our hotel.
The weather was sweltering and we were going to go to the beach, but there was a very pleasant sea breeze in the city and we ended up just walking around until it was time to freshen up before catching the train to Leiden and visit our friends. While we were freshening up, the streets outside our window exploded with cheering, as the Netherlands beat Brazil 2:1 in the World Cup quarter finals!
The reception was extremely pleasant. The food was first rate--always my number 1 concern--and we got to see oldmotherchaos, whom we hadn't seen for years! That was fabulous. Rachel's parents and the other guests at the reception were extremely good to meet, as well.
That night we got back to The Hague and completely failed to find a jazz club that Martijn recommended. We got back a lot later than we expected, too, so wouldn't have seen much of it. Oh, and it was pouring with rain. The big pubs downtown were just closing, but we found a "brown bar" where the party was still going full blast. People getting down to fun, cheesy Dutch pop music! The crowd was, well, perhaps a bit dodgy. The place looked like Jack Regan, or perhaps Van der Valk was going to come in and arrest someone. He'd probably start with the guy who put his arms around us and welcomed us. He had that kind of emaciated, heroin look, and had "PSYCHO" tatooed across his neck. But he was super friendly to us. So we stayed for a couple beers (certainly far cheaper than in respectable Dutch bars) and might even have moved about a bit, if not exactly danced. But then the music switched to bad electronica, so we retired to our hotel and crashed.
To be continued...
Martijn was kind enough to meet us at the station, which turned out to be a 10 minute walk across downtown from his flat. Downtown was lovely and his new flat (as in newly built) is excellent. Sadly, I thought I had forgotten to pack my camera, so there are not photos from this day or the next.
Dinner was in Rotterdam at what Martijn rates as the best Chinese restaurant in the Netherlands. Met his friend who is dead smart and a world class economist. He's leaving academia for the excitement of Rand corp. But he didn't feel at all like talking shop. Which is fine, because we had some excellent food, instead.
We had a lazy night and lazy next morning in Breda. That morning was market day on Breda's Groot Markt. I was made very sad by the availability of a wide variety of fresh fish and vegetables at reasonable prices. Czech farmers' markets are pathetic beyond words, and other than farmed freshwater fish, fish is far too expensive in CR.
We took the train to Den Haag and checked into the Hotel Corona on the Buitenhof. Long story; we were in the Hague en route to bishopjoey's wedding reception, Martijn had different plans for the evening, it was too far to visit friends in Bilthoven, and our friend in The Hague was out of the country for the weekend. Anyway, we got a great deal on this room. Best of all, there was an exhibit on the Buitenhof square of sand sculptures of famous Flemish paintings, right across from our hotel.
The weather was sweltering and we were going to go to the beach, but there was a very pleasant sea breeze in the city and we ended up just walking around until it was time to freshen up before catching the train to Leiden and visit our friends. While we were freshening up, the streets outside our window exploded with cheering, as the Netherlands beat Brazil 2:1 in the World Cup quarter finals!
The reception was extremely pleasant. The food was first rate--always my number 1 concern--and we got to see oldmotherchaos, whom we hadn't seen for years! That was fabulous. Rachel's parents and the other guests at the reception were extremely good to meet, as well.
That night we got back to The Hague and completely failed to find a jazz club that Martijn recommended. We got back a lot later than we expected, too, so wouldn't have seen much of it. Oh, and it was pouring with rain. The big pubs downtown were just closing, but we found a "brown bar" where the party was still going full blast. People getting down to fun, cheesy Dutch pop music! The crowd was, well, perhaps a bit dodgy. The place looked like Jack Regan, or perhaps Van der Valk was going to come in and arrest someone. He'd probably start with the guy who put his arms around us and welcomed us. He had that kind of emaciated, heroin look, and had "PSYCHO" tatooed across his neck. But he was super friendly to us. So we stayed for a couple beers (certainly far cheaper than in respectable Dutch bars) and might even have moved about a bit, if not exactly danced. But then the music switched to bad electronica, so we retired to our hotel and crashed.
To be continued...