On Wednesday morning we left our motel (with a little bit of drama-- the motel insisted we hadn't paid when we actually had paid via hotels.com-- a bit of an ugly situation that did get resolved after being on the phone for a long time), and headed down the road through Belgium and into the Ardennes forest. It is a beautiful, beautiful drive. Every few miles there was a marker for some landmark or another memorializing important WWII battles. It was eerie to think about the violence that took place in this beautiful, peaceful place.
We stopped a couple of times to see WWII monuments, especially those involving tanks. Brigham was not feeling well this morning, but roused himself to see the tanks. Mosey, and especially Joseph, were very excited to see the tanks, recognizing immediately what kinds they were and rattling off various statistics about each one. Thank you World of Tanks and TankiOnline! :-)
Our ultimate destination for the morning was the Battle of the Bulge Museum in Clervaux, Luxembourg.
This ended up being a very cool place. It looks pretty small from the outside, but the grounds have several apparently important tanks on display, and the inside of the museum was really well done with lots of original tanks, weapons, uniforms, equipment, and other artifacts from the time as well as detailed exhibits illustrating what the living conditions in the camps would have been like, or on the front lines, etc. The museum was multi-level, with no elevators (of course), so Ben ended up carrying me up and down several flights of stairs. It was worth it though-- informative and educational.
On the way back we stopped at a roadside diner for a paper cone of thick cut Belgian frites. Yummy!
We then drove up through Belgium, into the Netherlands, and all the way up into Amsterdam.
The countryside grew more and more flat, and we saw a lot of this:
And, of course, these. :-)
We stayed in a nice hotel near the airport, the Amsterdam Airport Hyatt Place.
We ate in the hotel restaurant, ordering a variety of traditional foods from Holland, including bitterballen (delicious battered and fried meatballs), and pickled herring (we're not fans).
The next day was the first day that Ben had to work. So he stayed in the hotel and I took the car into Amsterdam.
Let me tell you, Amsterdam is NOT A FUN PLACE TO DRIVE. We originally wanted to find a place to do laundry, but we got into the city, finally, and discovered that finding a parking place anywhere near the laundry facility was going to be impossible. The roads are tiny and narrow and there are a zillion cars and bicycles. So we gave up on the laundry and found a parking garage to park in.
Our goal was to get to the Rijksmuseum (Dutch Art Museum), which we did with a minimum of wrong turns.
I loved the museum. I could have stayed there for hours and hours. I loved seeing Vermeer's "Milkmaid," a print of which my mom has had in her kitchen for years and years.
Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch" was really impressive. I didn't know it was so big.
The museum was pretty crowded. Some paintings were so popular, it was really hard to get up close to see them. Probably the biggest crowd I saw was for Van Gogh's self portrait.
Afterward, we walked around for a while, and stopped at a cafe for Dutch pancakes. These were delicious! They are the size of a dinner plate, thicker than crepes, but not as fluffy as American pancakes. You can get them with all sorts of sweet or savory toppings. This was probably my favorite thing to eat so far on our trip.
I guess I didn't take a picture (why not???), but they look like this:
There were more things I would have loved to do in Amsterdam, but it was CROWDED, and Ben wasn't with us which made navigating cobblestone streets not so fun. Next time I want to take a canal cruise, see the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum.
Amsterdam is so pretty, though. Tons of flowers everywhere, and lots of bicycles! This is the best picture I got in Amsterdam:
Getting back to our car ended up being a bit of an adventure. My phone didn't work in Amsterdam (the German sim card only works in Germany! We had thought it would work for the whole EU. Not so.) So we had no map. And I had forgotten to really mentally note where our parking garage was! But it turned out OK. Joseph and I have pretty good mental maps, and between the two of us we managed to find our car. We drove back through traffic and ended up back in the hotel in the late afternoon to relax.
It is awesome to see how well the boys were getting along on the trip, especially these two.
I wanted to take Ben back into Amsterdam, since that was the only day we would be there. Plus, we still had to do laundry! So he and I headed out while the boys relaxed at the hotel.
Boy, this ended up being one of the most stressful (memorable, but stressful) times of the entire trip. Amsterdam city center in the evening is impossibly crowded. The roads are SO narrow, with tiny cars (seriously-- Smart Cars are THE car to own in Europe) parked on both sides of every street. I felt like I was white-knuckling it the entire time, trying to avoid hitting cars, running into bicyclist, and running over pedestrians.
We "drove" through the city a little bit (I put it in quotes because it was more like crawling), at one time ending up on a bridge completely packed with pedestrians. I had no idea how I was going to get out. I think many of the streets become pedestrian-only in the evening, and this was one of them! We managed to get over the bridge but then got stuck when the road was blocked with a metal pole/post coming out of the ground. We had no idea how to get through, with no way to go back. Finally Ben got out of the car to try to help me navigate. We figured out how to make the metal pole retract back into the road, and managed, slowly, to make our way out of the city center.
It was seriously one of the most stressful and harrowing driving experiences I have ever had. Since then I have come to realize that driving in the city center is highly discouraged. Bicyclists get the right of way no matter what, next pedestrians, and last of all, cars. I could never live here! I can totally see why family size is so small in Europe-- it's impossible to get around in a full-size car. The only reasonable way to drive and park on a daily basis is with a Smart car or another such teeny tiny vehicle.
But we did finally manage to make it out of the city center. I drove around for a while just to get my wits back before parking way outside the Canal ring and walking into the city center, carrying our laundry. Our first task was to find a laundromat. I also don't understand how Dutch people do laundry! There are no laundromats! Everyone must have them in their apartment buildings, I guess. Anyway, our best bet was a laundromat in the red light district. Seriously. So we went there, and were happy to see only one other person inside doing laundry. That other person ended up being quite a character. A red-headed guy from Bristol, he was obviously drunk, but also a super-friendly guy. We ended up having a pretty extended conversation. Apparently he had just done mushrooms for the first time in 10 years (so he says), and sitting there carrying on a conversation with him in a laundromat in the red light district of Amsterdam was so surreal as to be almost ridiculous! He was harmless, though, and anxious for someone to talk to. So I sent Ben out to explore the city a little bit on foot while I tended to the laundry. I learned all about his life-- he'd spent the last few years wandering around Europe, but was ready to "settle down" here in Amsterdam. He was very interested in us being from Texas and we bantered a little bit about gun control. He was really concerned about the fact that he was wearing no socks. Apparently all his socks were filthy, and all he really wanted in life right then was some clean socks.
Anyway, it was an interesting evening, to say the least. We did manage to finish our laundry, after which Ben and I walked the streets of the red light district for a while before heading back to the car. It was a lot different than I thought it would be. Less seedy, but more depressing. There were tons of tourists around, the vast majority of which were not interested in partaking of the exotic wares to be found behind the glass doors lining some of the streets. We shared a dessert waffle (looked so good, but ended up being only so-so), and then searched unsuccessfully for an accessible rest room, before heading back out of the city.
Amsterdam is really beautiful at night. There were SO many people, pedestrians and cyclists, even at 11:00 PM.
We got home late, with clean clothes, and our nerves relatively intact. :-)
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