Day Twenty-Three: Amsterdam/Rotterdam with Dave and Andrea

YAY! Dave and Andrea have landed in Europe and take the place by storm for 5 weeks. We worked it out that we could meet up with them at the airport and show them a little about how to get around in Holland, get them to their hotel safely, went out for dinner, and generally got to fill them in on how much of an awesome time we've been having in Europe so far. Also, they were able to tell us a little more about their plans while they were here.

So, we made our sign for them, picked them up in the rain, and got on the bus route that the directions from their hotels' website told us to take. Eventually, however, and with no help whatsoever from the driver, we got off the bus (realizing it was taking us way in the wrong direction) and walked in the on/off showers the 45 minutes to the hotel. Of course, Dave and Andrea were carrying all of their luggage, so we stopped at this wonderful little cafe where we had some Magners cider and introduced Dave to La Chouffe, our new favourite Belgian beer. The cafe was wonderful and so homey! Then the hotel... It wasn't in the most convenient location, and it was a little sketchy, but we saw it was a bit of a diamond in the rough... clean, affordable, and comfortable.



From there, Rob, Dave, Andrea and I ventured off to try and find food. The hotel was no where close to downtown Amsterdam, nor any kind of tourist activity... but we were fortunate to stumble upon a wonderful little Indonesian place that had some great rice, curried beef, vegetables... and of course, the customary Heineken. We were really impressed with it and it's affordability.

Rob left us at this point since he had to go to class in the morning in Rotterdam, and Dave, Andrea and I went back to the hotel, stopping for snacks, beer and wine at the convenience store. Dave also bought his first souvenir of his trip. The three of us then had a good nights' sleep in their hotel bed ready for our trip to Rotterdam together this morning.

It was interesting being in Amsterdam the second time around, because we didn't spend much time downtown at all. We did, however, take a 2 hour walk from the hotel to Amsterdam city centrum, which allowed us to see the REAL Amsterdam, stopping at a Turkish bakery for spinach and cheese flat breads and fresh strawberries in the market. We even found Dave some coffee to go. Saw some interesting buildings and people, completely avoiding the city square. We then took the train down to Rotterdam which I thought would be a great way for Dave and Andrea to see more of Holland since they're only here for three days.




We got into Rotterdam and I showed them some of the cool architecture there, and slowly made our way to de Dijk, a pub where they had a deal on all you can eat racks of BBQ pork ribs, salad, and fries for the obscenely cheap price of 9.50 Euros each. Had a great time talking and catching up, and then walked up to Rotterdam Central Station to send them off back to Amsterdam. However, just before that happened, we were sidetracked by McDonald's. I noticed while watching TV a few days ago that the Dutch McDonald's had STROOP WAFFLE MCFLURRIES!!!!! So of course we had to stop and try them. They were just as delicious as I had hoped they would be!

Day Eighteen: the Blijdorp Zoo

Well, I meant to post this blog yesterday, but while I was writing it last night, the hydro went out from about 8-12. We didn't know how long it would be out for, so I didn't want to use up my battery life on my laptop in case I needed it later. Plus, obviously our internet wasn't working so I couldn't have posted anyway.

However, it's morning and we have power, so I will post my WONDERFUL experience at the Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam.

Jos and Anne's son, Raymond, is a volunteer at the Zoo on Wednesdays and is placed at info centers to answer questions and give tours to groups (mostly children) throughout the day. He also helps facilitate summer camps as a kind of camp councilor where they sleep over night at the zoo. SO COOL! Anyway, since he carries a set of keys, he was able to show me some behind the scenes stuff that most zoo-goers wouldn't get to see.

We got there for opening time (9am) and Raymond said it was his favourite time of the day because the animals are just waking up, doing their stretching, and being fed, so they're pretty active. Or, in the case of this ostrich, still sleeping. I know, he looks dead, and the zebras look a little guilty... like they know something. But no, I assure you, he's just a lazy, snoozing ostrich.

We got to see the polar bears eat breakfast. The polar bear habitat is fairly new to the Zoo, it was built about a year ago with money raised by volunteer-run fundraising group "Friends of Rotterdam Zoo". Jos is a member of the group and that's how we got the free tickets to visit the zoo. I've noticed that a lot of things like galleries and the zoo depend on volunteer work in Holland. I don't know if I'm assuming a lot here, but I don't think Canadians volunteer as much as the Dutch. Maybe we depend too much on government subsidizing? Anyway, back to the Zoo stuff!



The Polar Bears were SO CUTE, and I sat for a while watching Eric, the male bear, eat his succulent ribs.

We also saw the Buffalo, and the big guy in the middle of the pack is Clint. Apparently his last name is Eastwood. I asked Raymond if all of the animals have names, and he said no, only the big ones, because the kids would always ask what their names were! I thought that was kind of funny. Sometimes they get animals on loan for breeding projects from other zoos and they come with names, or else the caretakers will give them names.

We got to see the elephants, too. One of the females had a baby girl elephant about a month ago, so we wanted to see the baby of course. Apparently there's been quite a baby boom at the zoo this year with 2 tigers, a hyena, a zebra, giraffes, a pygmy hippo, birds, gorillas, and the list goes on. Whatever they're doing over there at the Rotterdam Zoo, it must be working! Anyway, the elephants were a little shy and I only got to see the baby from a distance. Still cute, though. Also, the male elephant had these rings on his trunk. I asked Raymond what they were for, and he told me that sometimes elephants both in domestication and in the wild deal with tusk splitting. When I got home a did a little research on the subject and found that when elephants rub their tusks on trees or walls or other tusks (as they are known to do naturally), they risk wearing down the outer tusk and exposing the pulp inside. Just like with a cavity, the pulp can become infected and could spread to both tusks, continue splitting the tusks all the way up into the skull,and in some cases, cause death. So, to keep the tusks from splitting and opening up new infection, they have formed special metal bands around the tusks. So far, it seems to be working.



Raymond also took me to the behind-the-scenes area of the elephants training and care area, where there was a set-up for kids' group tours. There was a massive elephant skull where I got to see how cool elephant teeth are! Aside from their tusks, they go through six sets of large, brick-like teeth that grow in at the back of their mouths and slowly move to the front as they are worn down. Each set of elephant teeth that grows in is larger than the last. The final teeth are over eight inches long (21 cm) from front to back and weigh more than eight pounds. SO CRAZY! I also got to put my arm up a pregnant elephants' bum. Well, not a REAL elephant bum, but it felt pretty real and I could feel the baby's feet covered by the protective embryonic sack. (see first picture)

I also got to go in a different behind-the-scenes area and hold a Rat Snake. He was super cool and totally wanted down my shirt. Raymond said it was because he was looking for somewhere warm to curl up, but I think he just wanted to get fresh with me! He ended up settling on the left pocket of my hoodie.

At about twelve, Raymond had to leave Jos and I to our own devices as he had to go man his station in the aquarium. First, though, he showed me the monkey named Niko. He was Totally putting on a show for us, and would swing right into the glass to try to touch us and let us know that he knew we were there. He was a real joy to hang around with!


We visited the tigers to try and see if we could find the babies, but alas, only the mom and dad. This is obviously a picture of the daddy!





After walking through more of the zoo, I realized how BIG it is. I've never been to the Metro Toronto Zoo, and apparently it's great, but this is definitely the coolest zoo I've been to. There's so much to see and a lot of activities for kids as well, including a HUGE jungle gym play structure with a giant tube slide and swings and monkey bars. I mean, it was HUGE. I saw the vultures, which were weird and cool all at the same time. they were fighting over a carcass... and there were these Marabou storks that totally looked like ugly old men to me... like they were cranky and wanted to yell at me to get off their lawn or something.

Later on, we went to the aquarium and watched the penguins being fed... what a frenzy! I was a little afraid for the caretaker. She was throwing fist fulls of fish out into the water, where we could see above and below water level on our side of the glass, and the penguins were not only diving in after the fish, but ganging up on the woman and her big dirty bucket of fish... but she would just shove them back into the water and everything was okay.



We also got to see the really cool underwater tunnel where sea turtles, sharks, and shoals of swirling silver fish glide over and around you from all directions. Really makes you feel like your watching them from under the ocean!

We found Raymond in the Coral Lab, an area that shows how the Zoo has been researching the growth of Coral. It's very difficult to stimulate the growth of coral, which is part of the reason why reefs are having such a hard time in the ocean right now as well (and we're not helping matters). However, in addition to all of the many breeding programs that the Rotterdam zoo has going on, they're also trying to 'breed' coral. They've developed these grid-like tiles that stimulate the growth of coral, and apparently these tiles are being used all over the world for coral research and efforts for coral growth in the oceans. Exciting stuff!

After more exploration, I settled in with the giraffes and drew a quick portrait of one of the females who was licking the door frame for salt. I gave it to Raymond as a thank you for the personal tour and I hope he likes it.

It's too bad Rob had so much school work to do that he couldn't come. He would've had a ball.

Day Seventeen: Scheveningen & Museum Beelden aan Zee

Today was Rob's first official day of class, so I had a day to myself to get a few paperwork things done this morning for our art show in November in Mississauga. I still have at least two more pieces I'd like to get done for that before the end of September. With all the traveling around for the past couple of weeks, I haven't had much time to think about my pieces.

This afternoon, Jos thought he'd give me a little inspiration and bring me out to Scheveningen, which is a beach off of the North Sea. Very beautiful, lots of wind and waves, but a very nice place to walk along.



Also, along the beach, built into a sand dune, is Beelden aan Zee Museum (which translates to "Sculptures by the Sea"). The museum has a huge collection of sculptures from many different artists in many different styles. I was very pleased to find out that I could take pictures in the galleries, as there are many galleries that don't let you do that. So, of course, I went crazy taking pictures.

I'm no expert on Sculptors and the sculptural art world (i'm more of a 2-D person), but it seemed to me like a great collection of pieces spanning the second half of the 20th century to the present day. What I really liked about the museum was architectural layout of the building, as it was itself almost a sculpture. There were a lot of outdoor terraces and areas to walk, and the corridors told a story as you moved through them.

This was work from a collection called Ghost Riders by Nicolas Dings:





I hadn't heard of any of the sculptors (which is no surprise since my knowledge of sculptors is limited to the Classical Sculptors, Henry Moore, and Matisse.) I have no real grasp on modern sculpture. BUT, that being said, this collection was lovely, playful, and fun to explore. The collection of work by Gooitzen de Jong was quite interesting, as his work reflected figure painting in a loose three dimensional way.

My favourite work was in the outside courtyards, though. You can see the Sea from up there, and the rest of the city, which is pretty cool. This is the outside of one piece:



And now from the inside:



There was also a special exhibit called Father and Son, where a handful of artists born between 1910-1930 were each asked to select their favourite artist from the generation that followed them (1930-1950), and they in turn chose five more (1950-1970). This results in a large variety of work.



After the Museum, Jos took me down to the Water Front, which was wonderful. The strong gusts didn't hamper anybody from coming out and enjoying the sun and the warm breeze. I even made a new friend!

Tomorrow we go to the Rotterdam Zoo. Very excited!

Oh, by the way, There is a lot of construction going on right now to reconstruct the water front in Scheveningen, and Jos sent me this you tube video of what the project entails. Because the Beelden aan Zee museum has a permanent collection of scupltures that had to be moved inside during construction, they have become sort of mascots in this little animation of the plans. check it out:

Day Thirteen, Fourteen & Fifteen: Belgium

Greetings from Bruges (also known as Brugge). I’m writing this blog post from a very cute little hotel called the Martin’s Relais Oud Huis Amsterdam situated right beside a canal that runs through the city.

But before I get into that, let me back track for a moment and talk about how we got here.

We got up early Friday morning to take a train from the Hague to Brussels, Belgium. The train was fun because we got to ride in the first class car. It was about a two-hour ride and we got into Brussels at about 10:30am. Across the street from the train station was our hotel, which we couldn’t have asked to be in a better location. It was right in the middle of all the action, so to speak. Minutes away from the city square (the Grand Palace), a number of beautiful churches and all the museums that Brussels has to offer, basically, it was a short walk from anything that we wanted to check out. Brussels is a wonderfully old city, and as long as you stay in the right areas, it’s gorgeous; full of old statues and architecture sprinkled with modern design. For example, their shopping mall looked like this:



We couldn’t check into our room at the hotel until 3:00pm, but we were able to leave our backpacks with the concierge, thankfully. Traveling with a laptop is heavier than I thought! We set out with nothing but a map and our camera, which had suffered a fall coming home from Delft and has since then become a little finicky. Can’t afford to buy a new one, however, so we’ll just have to adapt to it’s new eccentricities.

We wandered through the streets, stopping and marveling at the various statues, monuments and old buildings. I spotted a cool looking statue of Bela Bartok, a Belgian composer who’s early 20th century music I learned through the Royal Conservatory Piano music books. Brings me back to my younger days.

Stopping in the Palace Square for our first Belgian beer, we studied the beautifully royal architecture lining the square full of tourists. Rob and I couldn’t help thinking about what it would look like in an older, more regal time, when the king’s court would be milling through the square on their daily business, the royal finance ministers working out the taxes of the kingdom, the chamber maids doing the royal clean-up… There’s something so cool about seeing history right in front of you. I’m not used to that in Canada.




Wandering out of the city square, we took a winding side street that led to less tourist saturated cafes. We picked out a cute little café for lunch and I enjoyed a salad with warm goat’s cheese and Rob had Lasagna, while sharing a bottle of wine served to us in the best portable ice bag ever!

After lunch, we found a gallery that had an exhibition dedicated to the costumes for Brussels’ favourite bronze baby, the Manneken-Pis . This peeing baby is the heart of Brussels’ folklore and is loved by the entire country. The lore is that a man lost his son, and he vowed that when he found him, he would had a sculpture created of his son doing whatever he was doing when he was finally found. Apparently he was relieving himself.




Belgians have taken it upon themselves to create outfits to dress the baby and over the years there have been hundreds of costumes created for him either commemorating holidays, seasons, parties, or just plain fun. The exhibition marked the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and displayed costumes made in a variety of countries including Spain, Malta, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Ireland, and many more. Although it wasn’t on display this time around, they have one from Canada… and of course it is a hockey uniform! We bought postcards with the picture of the Canadian outfit.

Brussels also has a number of big old churches. We took a few pictures of some of the more interesting ones, but this was my favourite relic (and the best picture we got, considering our camera was not co-operating).



On the second day, we went to the Bozar Museum of Art with free ticket vouchers from our hotel. The voucher allowed us free admission into one of the three exhibitions there. We chose to check out “A Passage to Asia”. It portrayed, through various artifacts, 25 Centuries of Exchange between Asia and Europe. It was actually put together for a Asian/European Trade Summit, and it was very interesting to keep this in mind as we went through the gallery. Very cool statues, textiles, drums, jewelry and other artifacts from Japan, Korea, China, Myanmar, Mongolia, and India. My favourite was the room of artifacts collected from sunken trade ships between Asia and Europe. Some of these artifacts even had coral or shells still stuck to them! Super crazy!

We also went to the Musical Instrument Museum which was SO much fun! It was this Museum of all kinds of instruments from many different cultures, times, countries, and styles from accordions to bagpipes to pipe organs to pianofortes to glass horns to African drums to two-necked clarinets. And the best part was that they provided you with wireless headphones that picked up different frequencies tied to specific showcases throughout the museum. As you walked from showcase to showcase, the headphones would play a selection of music that corresponded with the instruments you were looking at. Absolutely wonderful! It would be a great place to take kids to teach them about music. There's even an area on the bottom floor where you can play some instruments and experiment with different string tensions and wind instrument dynamics. I don't have any pictures, but maybe if you ever find yourself in Brussels, you should give it a go.

We found a groccery store and bought some sandwiches and salad and fruit and beverages to have a picnic in the park, which was fun. We fed the birds, these little sparrows who flocked around our feet like ravenous vultures. They were really cute... I wish we had gotten pictures of them.

For dinner we had the Belgian specialty, mussels. Not something I'd want every day, but surprisingly good. I've never had them fresh before.

On Sunday morning we took the train into Bruges. Our Hotel was closer to the Northern side of the city while the train station was on the South, so we had a little while to walk to finally get there. It gave us a chance to see some of the most beautifully maintained old buildings I've seen yet in Europe. I haven't seen the movie "In Bruges", but now I feel like maybe I should see it, just so that I can point at things in the movie and say "I WAS THERE!!"



We found the main cathedral in Bruges which was very pretty. They had just finished mass so there was still the cloud of incense hanging in the air and mass-goers filing out. The church was lovely and they also have an original Michelangelo sculpture there, one of the very few that exist outside of Italy.




We found our way to the old city square, and stumbled upon a grand stand facing a full orchestra. It was free and open, so we climbed up and listened to the orchestra for a while, which was fun. (video coming soon)

Later on, we were walking through the streets and a motorcycle tour of epic proportions passed us by. We took a video of it, just to show the scale of the tour... there had to be well over a hundred bikes and scooters riding through the narrow streets of Bruges. The video I'm posting is over 3 minutes long, so if you're not super interested in watching the whole thing, that's okay. (video coming soon)

We passed this Modern art gallery called the Absolute Art Gallery which had some great stuff in it! Especially liked the sculptures and this artist who made large scale high contrast monochromatic portraits. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the gallery, but I did get this picture from through the front window. I like how it looks like a double exposure because you can see the reflection in the window.





We also walked to Van Eyck Square, which was interesting (especially because I like Van Eyck and we saw some of his work at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam). We found some info on the square and the architecture around it, which was cool. I was able to take pictures of all the buildings it was talking about so I've organised it here for your viewing. Click on the image to see a larger size.



I finally finished the blog post on the train (in first class) on the way home from Belgium. Rob took a picture of me to show just how hard I've been working on the blog. It certainly takes time! This week should be a little easier because we won't be traveling again until Friday. But we DO have the Zoo on Wednesday. YAY!!! ANIMALS!

Day Twelve: Day off in Den Haag

Rob and I decided that with all this traveling around we've been doing the past two weeks, we needed an off-day to just hang out with each other without being uber-stimulated by the new and the old and adventures.



We decided we needed a date night. A good old dinner and a movie kind of deal. It was perfect. We spent the morning and early afternoon working on planning out our trip to St Goar, Germany in a few weeks to meet up with our friends Dave and Kirsten. And catch up on my Cafe World game on Facebook. This afternoon we took the tram to Den Haag to see Inception. We'd heard some great reviews, but some people said it was a little too hard to follow. However, we found it to be very very interesting and intense, and no, the story wasn't TOO hard to follow, you just had to pay attention. I found it to be very similar to The Matrix. Ellen Page was great in it, I thought. Definitely a movie worth seeing the theater, and I think I'd need to see it again to fully follow the little details.

Two and a half hours later, we got out of the movie and made our way through the narrow, winding streets of the center of the Hague. We were surprised at how pretty the area was and it had some great architecture and the crowds were fun to watch! We went to this Mexican restaurant called Popocatepetl which Jos had recommended to us and let me tell you, we were PLEASANTLY surprised. We opted for the fajitas for 2, and they brought out two iron skillets filled with vegetables and goat cheese, lamb, beef and chicken, and 4 warm tortillas for each person with sides of guac and sour cream, tomatoes and lettuce. We got to build our own little fajitas and it was SO tasty. Would definitely go back there again. And if you bring your ID and it's your birthday, you get everything for free. So cool.

I have been missing date nights...

Day Eleven: The City of Delft

Today Rob and I met up with our friends Margaret and Yoni for a day trip to Delft. Our first impression was that Delft was kind of like Amsterdam (in terms of the houses and canals) but was INFINITELY nicer. It was still touristy, but in a more local kind of way. You could still see people who lived there on their ways to work or going about their daily routines. Everyone rides a bike and the downtown has no sidewalk so bicyclists and pedestrians have to be extra aware of each other as they share each others' turf.

There were a couple of things that we wanted to see while we were there. Delft is the home of the famous Delft Blue ceramics, obviously, but it's also the birth place of Johannes Vermeer and the death place of William of Orange, the first king of the Netherlands. It is home to two very beautiful churches, an interesting war and artillery museum, and a number of adorable cafes and restaurants that line the city market square.

We arrived by stoptrein to Delft and walked from there into the city center. The first this you see is the incredible Nieuwe Kerk (new church), but we wanted to see the Oude Kerk (old church) first, in order to compare the differences. Along the way to the Oude Kerk, we saw some wonderfully old houses and mansions running along the canals. And there are ducks, too. Yoni liked the ducks.

We arrived at the Oude Kerk and paid 3.50 Euros each for a ticket to view both the Old and New Churches. It a bit of an odd concept to me to have to pay to go inside a church... but to each their own I suppose.

The Old Church wasn't much to look at from the outside, apart from a wonderful steeple with a clock tower. But inside, my goodness, was it ever beautiful!

The entire floor was full of these large, carved tome stone-type slabs (about 400 people are burried there) which made walking a little difficult if you weren't watching where you were going. Which was sometimes a problem, because all I wanted to do for the first five minutes was look up at the huge, wooden vaulted ceilings. and the stained glass windows (which unfortunately aren't that old... circa 1950's. Apparently there was a mishap where the explosion of the town's gunpowder store in 1654 shattered all of the original windows. The stained glass is still gorgeous, though. And the organ! There was someone playing hymns while we were there, which was pretty awesome. There were a few monuments of buried Dutch notables, some of which were very beautiful, and also the tomb of Vermeer, which was kind of cool to see (he's one of my favourite Dutch painters).











After that, we left the church and looked at the City Hall building. We couldn't go inside, but the outside was pretty. The City Hall building faces the New Church across the Delft Markt in the center of the city. On either side are cute little shops selling all kinds of things, but mostly food and souvenirs. There was a very cozy antiques shop with old Dutch skates and Delft tiles, and there was a Gypsy band busking outside of it. I bought a pair of bright orange Holland slippers that look like klompen (wooden shoes). They are VERY comfy.


We made our way to the Nieuwe Kerk, which was stunning from the outside. It had gone through a few building projects where new steeple additions had been made, as well as additions to the outside walls as well. It's very easy to see the three stages of building on the tower. Once we got inside, however, I was surprised by the fact that I didn't like it as much as the Old Church. It was obvious that the church had been built in the wake of the Reformation, when opulence and significant decoration was more frowned upon and design was more about function than fancy. However, there was a beautiful modern stained glass window that had been installed in 2006 which was breathtaking. In the design you can see a face, two hands, and a butterfly. We managed to get quite a beautiful picture of it.





Also here is the tomb of William of Orange. There is an absolutely wonderful monument showing two different depictions of him, four different cornerstone statues depicting Liberty, Justice, Religion, and Fortitude/Strength. In the middle, standing over the dead body of William, stands Fame who is blowing the trumpet of good fame and holding the trumpet of bad fame. William's dog also made it into the monument. The story goes that after William's death, his dog refused to leave the foot of his bed, not eating or drinking, and eventually dying from starvation and dehydration. The monument itself is pretty awesome, but there is also a vault in the floor under a great big stone where the mausoleum for the royal family is and this is where his body lies.




After the churches, we had lunch at a little cafe in the square and then walked to the Legermuseum. This was a museum that portrayed Dutch army and munitions history since the medieval times. I've never seen so many weapons in all my life. But it showed this really interesting progression of warfare and weaponry from medieval to modern time, and the most striking thing I think that I realized was the shift during the Industrial revolution from artistic, beautiful weapons that were unique to the owner, and mass produced weapons of destruction. Don't get me wrong, all these weapons were made for the purpose of killing, but I found it fascinating to consider who the people behind these gorgeously crafted weapons were as opposed to the mass-produced guns of today which are issued to soldiers rather than created for them.









It was a pretty cool museum, and if you have a student card, you get in for free.

From there we walked to the Royal Delft Works, which had a lot of beautifully hand painted ceramics that none of us could come close to affording.

Rob and I left shortly after so that we could make it in time to head with Jos and Anne to their son Raymond's for birthday coffee and cake. Raymond is a volunteer at the Diergaarde Blijdorp (the Rotterdam Zoo) and has promised us a personal tour through the Zoo next Wednesday. I plan to take my drawing stuff there and do some sketching.