The Netherlands

So I think I've at least alluded to my first three days in the Netherlands, which involved a botanical garden, a canal tour of Amsterdam, and seeing the sights in Haarlem. Moving on to the post-Czech Republic part.

We got back to the Amsterdam airport early in the morning and took the bus to Haarlem, and from there the train to Zaandvort. At that point we were so exhausted that we just decided to go to sleep. Upon waking, we ventured to the supermarket, where fun with bizarre dutch products ensued.

The next day we got up at a semi-reasonable hour and took the train to the Haague, where we saw the Escher museum (his early woodcuts I thought were much more interesting than his playing around with perspective) and then took a long walk to the modern art museum, which was pretty amazing. There was a temporary exhibit on Picasso and an artist from De Stijl, as well as a permanent collection and a very technologically based (but all in Dutch) interpretation of their design collections. After that, some more strolling, including a view of the outside of the Peace Palace, and then we met back up with Sahar's mom in Haarlem, where we ate tapas.

Thursday we woke up early and caught the train to Amesfort, in central Holland (which actually involved taking two trains), and then a bus to a town just outside of a National Park. From there, we grabbed some free bikes (that were one-speed and only had foot breaks) and had a nice ride through some fields and trees until we came to the coolest playground ever. There was a ton of different climbing structures, including a treehouse that involved some serious work to get into and a zip line. From the playground, where we ate lunch, it was only a short walk to the Kroller Mutter museum's sculpture garden, which had some nice stuff but unfortunately was very covered up for the winter. Then we went to the museum, which featured a cool, temporary, contemporary exhibit, some classical Dutch art, and a lot of amazing Van Goghs (as well as some other impressionist and post-impressionist paintings). It was great!

After the museum, we made our way out of the park, deciding to wait half an hour for a bus rather than biking all the way back to where we starting. Luckily, some other Dutch visitors to the museum helped us out, because it turned out we had to take another bus after the first one to get to the Appeldorn train station. From there, we took the train to Urtrecht, where we changed for a train to Rotterdam. By then it had started raining, so we decided to take the tram (are you sensing the public transportation theme yet?) to the hostel I had booked. Unfortunately, they didn't have any record of my booking (though they were temporarily convinced I was a Spanish person who had booked for the next week), so after consulting their free internet, we decided it would be cheaper to take the train back to Zaandvort and stay there for the night than get any other hostel. To console ourselves, we decided to stop and getting a nice dinner, so we went to Look, a garlic restaurant. It was delicious (and not even that expensive)! I had garlic soup and agglio olio and Sahar had a tasting menu that involved the same soup, garlic roasted chicken, and chocolate cake with garlic ice cream. Plus, I remembered that going to nice restaurants (at least outside of Prague) means they give you a lot of free things, too, so we got bread with really good aoili, salad, and two kinds of potatoes to dip in more garlic flavored things. Unfortunately, that meant I was too full to get my own dessert. Then we got the train back, which, after much confusion, involved taking the train to Lieden, changing there (but the connection was timed so that we literally walked off of the first train and on to the second), and then changing again in Haarlem.

So, for those of you taking score, the day involved:
7 trains (three separate trips)
3 buses (two trips)
1 bike ride (well, two really, but one we just rode out to the bus stop and then back)
1 tram ride,
or 12 forms of transportation in all, not counting walking. (If you add the plane and boats we took earlier in the trip, we traveled in almost every possible way on our holiday.)

Friday we woke up and got ourselves to Rotterdam again. It was raining on and off, so we decided to take advantage of a temporary stop to do a tour of the architecture. Then we went to Kunstwork, a contemporary art museum, which had a cool building and (unfortunately for us) exhibits only in Dutch. We also ate lunch at their (equally interesting) cafe, before we made our way over (through another sculpture garden) to the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. By that point we were a little museumed out, so I sped through the classical Dutch and Eurpoean art and most of the 20th century art as well, but I lingered in their temporary exhibitions that featured a wide range of things, and almost fell asleep in these four, themed, exhibits/ rooms that featured benches, beds, couches, technicolor fertilizer crystals, bones hung with watches, and other such amazing things. Then we had another snack and went to check out the Netherlands Architecture Institute, which was unfortunately closing. We decided to go see some of the older architecture on our way back to the train station, but made a stop in H+M so I could buy some kids jeans (because they fit me!), and just saw the town hall. Afterwards, we met Sahar's mom and one of her coworkers in Haarlem, where we ate dinner and went to a few bars, just catching the last train back to Zaandvort.

Saturday, my last full day, I picked Lieden over Delft for spending the day. Mostly we wandered around, exploring the Saturday market. Lieden has a self-guided walking tour, but we kept getting confused and walking in circles, so I don't really know if we saw everything. We did see their old fortress, which gave us nice views of the city. And we ate some delicious falafel (there is apparently no falafel in Blois, so I try to eat it as much as possible when I leave). Then back to Zaanvort, where Sahar's mom fed us, and we went off, back to Haarlem, to see Block Party do a dj set. It took us a while to figure out where it was, and then another while for the show to get good (about midnight) but it was pretty fun and pretty crowded. We had just decided to leave (after a series of bad songs) when they played a series of really great songs, so we didn't end up leaving until about 3am. Then the bus that was supposed to come didn't, so we ended up taking a taxi back (the driver was really nice and had worked in Blois putting up roller coasters, and luckily it wasn't too expensive), so we fell into bed, and I made Sahar promise she would get up early, since I wanted to spend some time in Amsterdam on my last day.

She did get up, as promised, and we made our way into the city, where I dropped my backpack off in the lockers. We starting walking towards Vondelpark (since it was a nice day), but eventually decided we needed to take a tram or else we would just get there and have to turn around. The park wasn't packed, but there were quite a few people out, and it was warm enough that I got some gelato, and we saw some flowers blooming (!) and then took the tram back and Sahar got her train and I got mine, and then ended up in Paris with plenty of time to get my train back to Blois (which was packed with boarding-school kids coming back to school).

Whew. Now that that's done, maybe I'll finish up Morocco.