What I did on my holidays 2012, by Sue
Here’s Darren being all excited that we’re about to leave. Preparation for the holiday was its usual fraught thing - cleaning the house, making sure there’s enough food for the cat, organising the housesitter and so on. Anyway, we got to the airport early and settled into the Qantas Lounge and enjoyed a few champagnes before we got on the plane. The sharp-eyed will notice that we shelled out for business class seats (got the most unbelievable deal, we were only wanting to go premium economy but when we went to the travel agent she had BC for less!!!).
Anyway, we rushed our connection through Hong Kong airport and onto the KLM flight to Amsterdam. Which was not as comfortable as the Qantas flight, but the staff were really lovely and cheery, which is a distinct improvement on most of the Qantas staff. The plane was a little rickety (it’s a 747 - they are all old now), we were wondering if it would make it off the ground, but it did and all was well, and I remembered why it is I really prefer to fly on 747s - they are smooth, spacious, they don’t take sharp turns, which scare me, they need instead to make wide circles.
Anyway, we landed early in the morning in Amsterdam and headed to our hotel, who was kind enough to check us in at 6am and offer us a €20 per night upgrade, which we jumped at. Our room had the most unbelievably nice bed, it not only had a latex top layer, but also a two-inch thick feather (down, I presume) cover over that. It was like lying on your grandmother’s bosom (well, mine anyway, she was soft all over by the time I came along as a bony little kid). If you are in Amsterdam I recommend the Park Hotel, it was lovely and the location was fantastic. (our room was on the top floor under that green dome, below)
That first shower after a long-haul flight is the most amazing thing in life.
After it, we braved the freezing cold and headed out to breakfast and then to the Van Gogh museum and joined the MASSES queuing to get in. The paintings were good, but it was really ruined for me by the sheer numbers of people. Really, large popular museums like this should limit the number of people inside at any one time. In some places it was impossible to even SEE the paintings in question because of the crowds. What we did find that worked was going to the top of the building and doing it in reverse. Anyway, we did enjoy it, though didn’t see Starry Night (turns out it’s in MoMA in New York City). Later on, we did see Starry Night over the Rhone. And with our trip to the Musee D’Orsay, we saw two versions of The Bedroom in Arles. The other painting that made an impression on me was Wheatfield with Crows because it reminded me of the crow problem we’ve had near our house in Melbourne since last summer. We used to have beautiful magpies singing and sitting in the trees near our house and now all we have is horrible crows (and if you’ve ever heard an Australian Crow, you’d understand why I hate them so much - their call is just horrible). Anyway, we were pretty knackered when we got back to the hotel and Darren was exhausted (so was I, but I do shift work and generally don’t sleep as well as Darren, so I cope a lot better with sleep deprivation), so we let ourselves have a short nap, after which I dragged myself out of bed to find a pharmacy and buy a replacement for some essential kit I’d already lost (hopeless! It showed up in the change pocket of my jeans a week later
). But for my efforts I was rewarded with some lovely mild, sunny weather and some beautiful views of the canals, such as the one above and this poffertjies stand. (surely purely for tourists, but it was adorable anyway)
We stayed in the hotel that night and ordered room service, which was both tasty and decadent. Actually, we ordered room service a lot on this trip. If you’re tired, dragging yourself out to find food becomes quite a chore.
The next day we walked FOREVER looking for a particular coin market that Darren wanted to go to. We went ALL the way up the street and then ALL the way back down and found it beyond the start of the street! Luckily Amsterdam is attractive and flat, for easy walking. And we saw lots of crooked houses which kept us amused.
And then canals, when we got lost.
Luckily, getting lost in Amsterdam was also quite pleasant.
Again, we headed back to the hotel for a rest, and later we met gamiila, who was kind enough to come up from The Hague to meet us.
(you can see it was cold again, by the way we are all rugged up)
We had dinner at Bij ons, a traditional Dutch place she had found for us to go to. Darren and I had a meatball with mash potato and sauerkraut while gamiila had something called hachee (which, if I’m honest, I was jealous of and will soon make, so we can have a whole meal of it).
Afterwards, we found our way to Wynand Fockink, a very old bar near Dam Square, where they’ve been brewing traditional Dutch liquers and jenever for what seems like forever. (look at those heaving shelves!)
And despite being a little disturbed by their idea of “washing” the glasses (he put the used ones in a barrel of water which was running from a small spigot, and then when someone wanted a drink, he pulled one out again!), we were treated to a lock-in (for some insane reason, they close at 9pm) and ordered a few to try.
Darren had “Perfect Happiness”, gamiila had Heaven on Earth and I had Butterscotch. It was a lovely evening.
The next day, we went to Keukenhof, which I will blog about in the next post.