Amsterdam House boats

Mothers restaurant Amsterdam

Foodhallen Amsterdam

More house (million euros +) boats Amsterdam

Canal Houses (2million euros +) in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Flower market Amsterdam

Services connection Houseboat Amsterdam

Amsterdam

We’ve been a bit quiet here, mostly because of awful internet access. The Airbnb place we stayed in in Wormerveer near Amsterdam was marketed as a ‘business listing’, but their wifi was terrible. We complained a few times, they claimed that no one else had ever complained, they turned the router off and then on again and so it went on.

It’s the last day of our trip today, we’re starting the long journey home from Amsterdam tonight. We have about 20 hours in Dubai between flights and we’ll get out and do some stuff, then do another overnight flight home to ADL.

We were lucky that we had lovely weather for a couple of days in Amsterdam, not too cold with blue sky and sunshine. We drove into the centre of AMS on Tuesday and walked and walked and walked. Greg had done some research and paid EU10 to park in a parking station for the day – a bargain as everywhere in the city charges EU5 per hour. I’d noticed when we used a parking station in Rotterdam that our car’s number plate was on the ticket we took out of the machine … and that’s how it all works. Number place recognition. So we drove into the AMS parking station, then when we got to the boom gate to leave, it just magically opened up for us after the number plate had been scanned.

We spent the day walking along the canals and streets and lanes. I had read about a colourful street, Wijdesteeg, so we went to find it, but it’s been demolished! It had been taken and ‘decorated’ over by squatters a few decades ago and I guess someone decided it was time it all went. There were other tourists standing around looking puzzled when we were there, so the tour guides haven’t caught up with the news that it’s gone.

Next day we drove to Haarlem, west of AMS. Lovely old town square and we sat on the edge of a canal and ate lunch in the sun, then drove to Edam, north east of AMS, because …. cheese!

Thursday we had a ‘home day’. Greg went to try and find a laundromat, then we did a big walk along the Zaans River and streets near the apartment, and walked through Wilhelmina Park, where there were more hints that Spring is on its way. All the snow from last weekend has now melted, and we don’t need to worry about slipping on icy footpaths.

Yesterday, Friday, we drove across the whole country  – 140kms,  it took just over 90 minutes! – to Nijmegen, to catch up with our favourite Dutch people, Mickey and Jaap. We had dinner at their place and caught up on each others’ lives since we last saw each other a few years ago. I can’t think of a nicer way to finish our holiday.

Applebol – cooked cored apple covered in puff pastry

Lunch on the canal in Haarlem

At the Foodhallen with Bitterballen

On our way north, we visited the Windmills at Kinderdijk, just east of Rotterdam.  It’s the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands, and we really enjoyed seeing them and having a look inside the 2 mills which are now set up as museums. The 19 mills at Kinderdijk were all used to pump water, as opposed to the sawmills, oilmills, dyemill and grainmill that we saw the next day at Zaanse Schans, just down the road from where we’re now staying.

The older of the 2 museum mills, the Blokweer, is also the oldest mill of all the Kinderdijk mills. Built sometime in the 16th century, exact date unknown. The living quarters inside the mill are as they were in the 1950s. When we visited, the mill was working and it was quite noisy both inside and outside the mill. I commented to Greg that industrial deafness must have been a family affair back when each mill had a miller and his family living in them. In fact, the mills do still have millers and their families living in them, but the area isn’t reliant on these mills to pump water as there now are 2 huge diesel pumping stations to do the work. As well as seeing inside the mill, we wandered around the snow-covered small-holding, where the miller and his family raised livestock and grew fruit and vegetables for their own consumption.

From the postcards in the gift-shop, I gather the fields around these windmills are full of flowering tulips in Spring, but they were all looking very white and bare when we were there

The rest of the mills were built in the first half of the 18th century. We also visited the Museum Windmill Nederwaard, which is a ‘ground-sailer’ that was built in 1738. The last inhabitant left the mill in the 1950s, and the living quarters were preserved, with lots of earlier memorabilia and photos also on display. One family who lived in that mill had 13
children! There were alcove beds tucked into corners on 3 floors of the mill. The ‘master bedroom’ was an alcove bed in the living room, which had the mill’s only source of heating, and there was a built-in cradle at the foot of the bed. The mother cooked and washed in a separate brick building. She was tragically killed by one of the windmill’s blades when she got too close to it trying to keep one of her kids safe.

The closer we got to Amsterdam, the more snow there was on the ground. It had snowed up until sometime on Sunday morning, and even now there are still patches lying mostly in shady areas. We’re staying in an Airbnb apartment in Wormerveer until Friday. It’s right on the Zaan River and our apartment is right across the river from Olam Cocoa, one of the largest cocoa processing factories in the world! We can smell the cocoa when we’re outside.

On Monday we visited Zaanse Schans, which has a great collection of windmills and historic buildings from the late 16th century onwards. Some of the buildings were moved from elsewhere in the 1960s & 70s, and in addition to the mills and museums, there are shops and residential houses. We walked around the area, still very snowy in parts from the weekend’s snowfall. There were a few people like us, wandering around looking at things, plus locals going about their daily business. The nearby high school had just finished for the afternoon and there were lots of kids riding home, plus a few walking home.

Kinderdijk windmill built in 1600

Kinderdijk windmill

Kinderdijk windmills

Climbing down one of the Kinderdijk windmill

The Cocoa processing factory opposite our AirBnB apartment

Zaanse Schans windmills

Zaanse Schans windmills

In side the Bakery at Zaanse Schans

Zaanse Schans

We went back into Rotterdam on Sunday, so that we could have a walk around the centre of town, find some lunch and have a look at some of the interesting buildings that this city is famous for. We parked in the Markthal carpark again and headed to the shopping mall nearby. Fine day, but cold, and this time we’d brought our gloves and hats, so it was quite nice to walk in the 7C weather. It was the final day of the Rotterdam International Film Festival and we wandered into the Imax theatre, but they were just showing non-Imax films for the festival, so we kept on walking … to the beautiful modern Central Station, then to Witte de Withstraat, a street full of restaurants, nightclubs and a ‘coffeeshop’ or two or three. Then back to the Markthal, with a few stops to look at the 2-level bike parking near the metro station, and the Cube House and the outside of the Markthal, and a visit to one of the many bakeries inside for afternoon tea. This article has some great photos of the Markthal.

We drove to the Hook of Holland yesterday to have a look at the Maeslantkering, the storm surge barrier on the imaginary dividing line between the Nieuwe Waterweg waterway located at Hoek van Holland and the river Scheur, and one of the largest moveable objects in the world. Then to the coast to look at the beach and the North Sea. Not many people around on a chilly February day, but if the size of the carpark is anything to go by, it’s a popular place in summer.

And then on to Gouda, which is a bit north-east of where we’re staying. Greg did a very impressive parallel park along one of the canals, and we walked to the town centre to find … cheese! Of course. We tried a lot of different cheeses in one cheese shop and bought some smoked gouda and some farmers cheese with holes.

Central Station Rotterdam

Light-ship Rotterdam Harbour

Two storey bike racks at Rotterdam Metro Train Station

Cube Houses Rotterdam

Outside Rotterdam Markthal

Drying our washing in the AirBnB barn

Boat repair yard on the Canal

Driving to Hook of Holland we saw dozens and dozens of large greenhouses covering many acres

Maeslantkering, the storm surge barrier

Gouda Town Hall

Gouda Square

careful parallel parking in Gouda

Behind the property is a canal, the Delftse Schie, across the canal is the Hoftwijk Crematorium, and in front of the property are more farmhouses and fat, woolly sheep. To get here, we have to drive along a single lane road for a few kms. The road is also used by cyclists, walkers and horseriders, but there are small ‘pullouts’ every half km or so for cars to pass each other, no one is going fast and it all just sort of works. We’re close to Rotterdam Airport and can hear the planes taking off.

Yesterday, Saturday, we visited Delft and Rotterdam. There’s a Saturday flea market in Delft, in the streets around the old town square, so we went to have a wander and a look. First stall we spotted was selling stroopwafel and other sweet Dutch treats, but rather than jump right in and buy some, we walked for a few blocks to build up an appetite. Oh, the cheese shops! and the flower shops! and the smallgoods! Some of our Facebook friends are either Dutch, have Dutch relatives or have visited the Netherlands and liked the food,  and we seem to have crowdsourced lots of recommendations on what to eat while we’re here. We popped into a bakery and tried a couple of sausage rolls – one with minced meat, the other with sausage. We ate half of each one, then swapped.

We didn’t find anywhere else selling stroopwafels, so went back to the stall and got a Super stroopwafel each, hot off the griddle, and a pack of smaller ones to take home. 2 layers of thin waffle with syrup spread between them. Delicious!

Then we headed to Rotterdam. Greg had read about the Fenix Food Factory in an old warehouse on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas River, so we went to find some lunch. Great variety – Moroccan, Asian, bakery, cider, microbrewery, waffles, cheese. We had pork belly rolls from the Asian stall and they were delicious. This area of Rotterdam looks like it is being trendified, but I imagine in the not-too-distant past it probably went through a long phase of being the dodgy part of town. Just across a footbridge is the New York Hotel which is located in former head office of the Holland America Line. The HAL moved its head office to Seattle in the 1970s, and the hotel was opened in the early 1990s

We drove and parked in the Markt carpark in the Rotterdam CBD, so we could have a look at the Rotterdam Markthal  Market Hall, a new building which opened in 2014. It has amazing artwork on its arched roof, and in addition to the food stalls and other shops on the ground floor, it houses offices, apartments and the city’s largest underground carpark. We found a stall selling hot chips friet in paper cones, so we shared a large one and watched the chips being cut from whole, peeled potatoes while we ate.

There’s a well-stocked kitchen shop in the Markt and we wandered around it for a while and  found an electrical brand we had never heard of before – Expressions of Australia. There was an interesting-looking slow cooker / sous vide machine, some coffee machines and a portable grill all with this Expressions of Australia brand. Some online searching and it seems to be the Sunbeam brand, renamed.

By then, it was around 4pm and raining so we came back ‘home’, stoked the fire and settled in for the night.

I’ve just found a website called Stuff Dutch People Like and I think Greg is going to apply for Honorary Dutchman status – top of the list is Bicycles, and number 3 is Hagleslag chocolate sprinkles!

Rotterdam Markthal

Some of the roof of the Rotterdam Markthal

Ordering pork belly buns at Fenix Food Factory

Canal in Delft

Another canal in Delft

Sprinkles or Hagleslag choices at the supermarket to put on your bread

Ordering a Stroopwafel

The delft flea market

The Barn we are staying in and the canal

The other side of the Barn we are staying in

Bikes are are parked everywhere

prepackaged ingredients at the supermarket