Adam and Cat's Blog: Long Weekend in the Netherlands

Saturday, 3 May 2008 - Monday, 5 May 2008

We arrived at Schiphol airport shortly before midday on Saturday, picked up a hire car (a ridiculously huge black Volvo thanks to a gladly accepted upgrade), and headed south towards the small town of Zierikzee, where my grandfather, Wally, had lived before his death in 1995.

We arrived in Zierikzee within a couple of hours, following a great drive through the Dutch countryside on a day of perfect sunshine and mid-20 degree temperatures. The scenery was beautiful - little inlets and harbours with lots of sailboats with their white sails against a rich blue sky. We checked into our hotel in Zierkizee - a cute little place called the Hotel Zierikzee (all decked out in blue and white to bring out Zierkizee's nautical past) - and then went for a croquette lunch at a nearby restaurant. I do seriously love croquettes. Sadly, Cat did not share my enthusiasm for them, but at least she gave them a try. We then met up with my father's cousin, Otwin, and his girlfriend, Rennie, and spent the next couple of hours exploring Zierikzee. I had not been in Zierikzee since 1995, just before Wally died, and it was great to see it again, especially in Otwin's company, he having been so fond of Wally, and being so knowledgeable about Zierikzee and its history. After our tour of the town, we went for a delicious dinner with Otwin and Rennie, before they had to depart for Rotterdam.

We were up early on Sunday morning, and after a typical Dutch breakfast at the hotel (bread, chocolate sprinkles, cheese, cold meats, honey cake - all the health and nutrition you need for a day of sightseeing), we visited the graveyard where Wally is buried, and I left my Wallabies scarf at Wally's grave. We then headed back in the direction of Amsterdam, stopping at the Keukenhof Gardens, near Lisse. Keukenhof is the world's largest flower garden - an enourmous display of beautiful bulbs (mainly tulips of course) that is in full bloom between March and May. Although there was quite a crowd on the day we were there, the whole place was still quiet and relaxed and everyone was moving about slowly, enjoying the sunshine. After a couple of hours at Keukenhof, we drove the short distance to Schiphol (ignoring our satnav's best efforts to make that short trip a long one), where we dropped off our hire car and caught a train into Amsterdam. Despite some dodgy navigating from me (which led to us having to drag our wheelie bags noisily through the cobbled streets of the Red Light district), we managed to find our hotel - the Sofitel Grand Amsterdam - which was superb, and really well located. We checked in and then spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling through the streets of Amsterdam. We stopped for a beer near the Nieuwmakt, and watched people wandering past... and also urinating at the outdoor public urinals. You do see everything in Amsterdam. Afterwards, we went for dinner at a brilliant little restaurant called Hemelse Modder (Heavenly Mud) - exceptional food at very reasonable prices and in a really nice location. During our entree, we were asked very politely by the waiting staff to observe a 2 minute silence, as 4 May is the Dutch remembrance day, and a 2 minute silence is respected at most places around the country at 8pm. It was really quite a moving experience - no fuss or fanfare but just an unexpected quiet moment of reflection.

We checked out of our hotel fairly early on Monday morning and did a canal tour, which was quite good fun (although would have been better had an American bloke decided not to come and stand right next to me and record the entire tour - yes, all 60 minutes - on his video camera, with his arm extended out the boat's rooftop while he kept gazing at the floor, trying to ignore the pain of keeping his arm raised in that one position for that length of time). It was another glorious sunny day and the sun through the window and the gentle rock of the canal boat had us both asleep at various points of the tour. Given the amazing weather (and the lack thereof in London recently) we decided to spend as much of it outside as we could. We spent the day walking alongside the city's canals and along its narrow streets and tiny lanes. We had a coffee at a place by the King's Canal that was so popular we had to circle around it for a table for twenty minutes with some other table vultures. After a delicious lunch in the Jordaan area, we walked up past the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum to Amsterdam's largest park, Vondelpark, and spent an hour or so relaxing in the sun by a small lake (complete with duck activity). It was then back to our hotel to collect our bags, a short train ride back to Schipol airport, and within a couple of hours we were home again in London.

It had been a great taster of the Netherlands, and we are really keen to spend some more time there before we finish up in the UK.

Zierikzee