N 52
E 004

Gent to Amsterdam: 235 kilometres

We are driving to Amsterdam today to visit our friends Michiel and Fred and have some fun. The drive is not hard, and is very familiar to us. We pass green pastures of late fall vistas: grass and windmills, dotted with grazing cows and sheep, horses and some donkeys.

We have easy instructions to their apartment, and park our car there; then Michiel, John, and I grab the tram and head into downtown Amsterdam to have some lunch and to meet friends Damien, Ron, and Carlos, who have promised us a canal boat trip. Some mechanical difficulties ensue and needless to say we don’t actually get on the boat until after 5, at which point we spend an early Friday evening having drinks aboard Ron and Damien’s’ very small boat, bumping and spinning our way around the inner canals of Amsterdam. We slow down to avoid the bigger tourist boats, and sometimes head the wrong way up one-way canals. It is a very fall-like Amsterdam: people wrapped in warm clothes against the damp and chill, the last yellow leaves falling onto wet cobbles and onto the dark reflective canals.


From left: Michiel and Greg; on the Canal; Capt’n Damien and first mate Carlos


From left: the canal; Ron and Greg; one of seven in a row!

After our cruise, we head to a bar called April and enjoy their happy hour before heading out to find somewhere for dinner. Our group keeps getting bigger as Fred, Ramon, and another John join us after work. Many restaurants try to fit us all in but it is Friday night; after several attempts without success, Fred says “there’s always Le Monde!” and so we head there for a raucous dinner, complete with a new kitten named Samba who is passed from table to table during the course of the evening.

Our night ends at one of Amsterdam’s oldest bars where everyone (and I mean everyone) sings songs ranging from traditional Dutch folk songs from the 1920’s to local cheesy Dutch disco hits of the 1980’s. The bartender knows the words to all of them and serenades you with a lovely bass/baritone as he pours you yet another beer. Needless to say, we don’t get home until after three and are glad that home is Fred and Michiel’s guest bed. We have to get up early tomorrow for our drive and day in Brussels.

Today is organization and wander day. I sleep in until quite late, enjoying the time while I can, knowing that the next week will be one of constant travel until we land in St. Petersburg on July 1. John spends the morning updating the journal, editing pictures and drinking his usual 4 cups of coffee. We need to find an internet café to update and confirm our B&B bookings for Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm. We head to the centrum via the major tourist route, which is quite unusual for us and deal with the crowds of gawkers and hawkers, swarming the Dam. One would think that in a city the size of Amsterdam considering the number of back-packers and budget travellers roaming the city, one would find a selection of internet cafés competing for your web euros. But no. We wander for an hour before deciding to head back to a small café on one of the out-of-the-way grachts that we had stumbled upon the day before. The sun is out and it feels like a beautiful summer day, and we have our lunch basking like cats in the sun. Our updating takes no time at all and we continue to stroll the grachts and head for home to drop our computer bag before heading out for dinner. Michiel, Fred, Damien, Ron and their friend Ramond have suggested getting together for a drink later in the evening and so we do and toast our last night in Amsterdam.



Ahhhh, Amsterdam.

Michiel is at the corner to meet us promptly at 10:00 and we drive over to the Leidseplein and grab a coffee, get caught up and plan the day. It is a typical Monday morning – garbage trucks picking up from the week-end’s revelries, late workers hurrying to work, cafés rolling out their awnings for the day. There is talk of rain today but all we see at this point is the sunlight streaming through the enormous trees of the Leidseplein.

Our plans made, we start out of the city and into the countryside. Our first stop is the quaint rural area outside of Amsterdam known as the Zaanse Schans, an historic Dutch village on the Zaan river with several working windmills. We explore the cobbled streets and climb De Kat (the Cat) windmill, a famous dye mill on the Kalverringdijk. John and I both laugh at the sign that says “Your visit to this windmill is at your own risk” until we get inside and feel the rumble and shuddering of the ancient building, the souvenirs for sale rattling and shaking on the walls as the big sails make their passes overhead. We climb up past the gear mechanisms and step out onto the balcony as one of the four huge blades swoops past. I lurch back as the next sail comes hurtling by me. The area is gated off but I can see how easy it is to get hurt by one of the passing blades. You don’t realize how big and powerful these mills are until you are standing underneath one.

The windmills of Zaanse Schans


From left: De Kat, the village

The rain continues to hold off as we drive towards the north-west and lunch in Egmond aan Zee, a small village on the North Sea. We stop at a small restaurant right on the beach, small children, kite flyers and us, daring the gusty winds. We start outside on the terrace but it becomes quickly evident that a storm is blowing in, the rain that had been predicted all day; so we head into the restaurant for cover and the rest of our lunch. We watch the big black clouds and the pounding rain for about half an hour. We finish our lunch and beer in time for the sun to peek out and dry the footpath back to the car.

We point the car towards the east and head to the village of Volendam, a fishing village perched on the dike, just south of Edam and sitting on the man-made, fresh water lake that was created in the 1930s when the Zuider Zee was dammed. We stroll the boardwalk and laugh at the stereotypical Dutch souvenirs: personalized wooden shoes, tacky photos of your family and friends in traditional Dutch costume holding herring and wheels of cheese. Tulips and more tulips everywhere: wooden, silk, plastic. Some that light up, some that squirt water, glass ones, hand painted ones, fake-Delft ones, every variety known to man. We follow Michiel to one of the local fish mongers to buy pickled herring and smoked eel, which Volendam is renowned for.

Across the water is the small island of Marten, a Dutch village known for its wooden houses and traditional costume. We make the fifteen minute drive around the lake to the parking lot outside of town (no cars are allowed in the centrum), where we realize that we are all toured and “kitched” out and decide to return to Amsterdam. Michiel and Fred have invited us to dinner at their house with friends Ron and Damien. Hors d’oeuvres are, of course, herring with onion and pickle, smoked eel and bitter ballens. Typical Dutch delicacies we are told, that are served by royalty and at official state functions. Of course, we politely taste everything.

N 52°
E 004°
Antwerpen to Amsterdam: 265 kilometres

Happy Birthday to John Dinning on June 23!

We stayed up later than we had expected last night, sharing a nightcap and talking with our hosts Stephane and Michael, so we all sleep in a bit. After breakfast we have time only to walk into town and turn back around before we depart, a walk of about 1 hour in total. Stephane has told us of a beautiful Italianate church that we did not see yesterday, and so this is our destination. We are both glad for the exercise, having made a promise on this part of our trip to get more exercise, and glad to have seen this church. Not only is the church Italianate, the square in front has a distinctly Italian feeling, and we sit, in the Sunday morning sun, enjoying the feeling, listening as the bells call the faithful to Mass.

We drive on back roads most of the way to Amsterdam, passing cattle, sheep and goats, crossing dikes and beautiful waterways. The sky is filled with big, billowing North Sea clouds - it is the sylvan type of Dutch landscape that we were taught about as children. A beautiful stereotype.

The road eventually snakes into the major highway for Amsterdam and we have instructions to park outside the city and grab the metro into Centraal Station and then it is a quick bus ride to our bed for the next three days. We are staying on a lovely side canal, in a converted warehouse in Jordaan, and our host Stanislaw greets us with a little bit of bewilderment: he is expecting us tomorrow! I pull out our printed e-mail and sure enough we are booked for three days commencing tomorrow. Everything is fine as he explains that his last guest left this morning and he is not booked.

We get our bearings and receive a call from our friends Michiel and Fred, who live in Amsterdam and whom we met while we were in Bali. Michiel has generously offered to show us around tomorrow and, in particular, to take us to some sites outside of Amsterdam that we might not have had the opportunity to see. They refer us to a famous happy hour bar in Amsterdam, (isn’t it always happy hour here?!) and we head towards the central area, skirting the Anne Frank Huis, the Liedseplein and the Dam, crossing numerous bridges and canals before ending up near the beautiful Bloemmarkt for our beer. It is a lovely late Sunday afternoon, the sun still very high in the sky. It won’t get dark until after 10:30 p.m.

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