Amsterdam and Bruges 2005

Amsterdam and Bruges, 2005

For a change on this trip, our US Airways flight took off on time. Last fall we sat on the ground for three hours in the plane before taking off for Italy, and John and JoAnn had an hour-plus delay both ways coming from Seattle this spring. But the food, even though it is still provided on transatlantic flights, has gone farther downhill that one could believe. Dinner was gummy pasta in a solid rectangular block; the salad was a little plastic bag of carrots. Breakfast was a leaden doughnut. But we landed on time at Schipol Airport, located and got money from the “Geldautomat,” (It’s always an adventure trying to discover what they call ATMs in foreign countries—cash machines in England, bancomats in Italy, etc.) and found the train to town.

I had picked all our hotels because they were a) listed in a guidebook, b) not very expensive, and c) had an e-mail address. Made getting reservations very easy. I had also mostly picked hotels that were not far from the train stations, so we set off for the Hoksbergen on Singel Canal dragging our suitcases behind us. We were stunned by an enormous, multistory bicycle parking garage to the right of the station; we were later told that it holds something like 20,000 bikes. The hotel turned out to be a longer walk than I had anticipated, not helped by bumpy brick sidewalks and the fact that it was trash day so we kept having to detour into the street to dodge mounds of rubbish. But the canal was most interesting and we got to the hotel in due time and were greeted by the very friendly manager. Our room on the second (third) floor was spartan but quite acceptable despite extremely steep steps and no lift, and we fell into bed for a nap—an arrival habit that works fine for us though one is warned against it.

Refreshed, we went out for a long walk. The canal was lovely, lined with 17^th-century houses like the one our hotel was in. We were struck over and over by the huge windows in these houses; northern climates usually limit windows because of cold and damp, and in England windows were taxed. Here there would be two feet of wall, four feet of window, two feet of wall, another window, two more feet of wall, and a big door. The upper stories had windows just as big. And of course they had the elaborate gables in fantastic designs soaring above the roof, with a big beam sticking out for hauling furniture up.

With a map we’d picked up at the hotel we headed for the Dam, which is the central square of Amsterdam and has on it what used to be the Town Hall and is now a royal palace. The square is rather characterless, all brick or block with no clear edges—it just sort of peters out into various streets and buildings. It has a remarkably phallic war memorial opposite the palace, separated from it by a busy street that goes through the middle of the square.

Slightly behind the palace is the Nieuwe Kerk (14^th century), which is only new because the Oude Kerk was begun in 1250. You have to pay admission to enter: it’s not really used much as a church any more and is more of an arts center. We were enthralled with the pulpit, which was carved of wood with an elaborateness hard to imagine: grapevines twining the spiral stair leading up to it with grapes dangling from below, Bible scenes on all facets carved in deep relief. It was at least more tasteful than the Spanish ones we had failed to admire on our trip there. (Don says he’s never seen a surface that the Spaniards couldn’t over-decorate. I remember my beloved art professor from Hollins, who was on our trip to Spain about five years ago, remarking in his slow drawl about the cathedral in Seville: “For the lover of the pure Gothic there is much to admire.” Long pause. “And a great deal to deplore.”)

We explored further, walking down the Damrak—the street leading from the Dam to the Centraal Station. It’s very wide and pretty trashy. The bicycle lanes are separated from the street by curbs, which is a great idea when you have wide streets, but along here we learned that the bicyclists are totally anarchic. Both of us kept snatching each other out of harm’s way—they yield to no one. We spotted and made note of a couple of possible lunch places for future reference. The leaden doughnut had left us with no desire for lunch. As we retreated to a pedestrian shopping street we spotted a funny crooked, saggy archway in a recessed alley and discovered that it was the entrance to the Amsterdam Historical Museum. Too late to go today—it was five p.m. and the place was closing.

We wandered some more, finding more canals. The center of Amsterdam is surrounded by four canals that loop around it in a U-shape, marking the repeated expansion of the city from the harbor front: Singel (ours), Herengracht (gentlemen’s canal), Keizergracht (king’s canal), and Prinsengracht (prince’s canal). They all flow into the Amstel River and cross it. Very compact center, easy walking.

We tried an Indonesian restaurant, the Antelope and the Tiger (that’s translated from the Dutch), near the hotel on Spuistraat. (Spui is a major square leading off this and is pronounced Spow. Made me realize that Rembrandthuis is Rembrandthouse, and that the old Dutch guilders were probably pronounced gowlders. One learns things.) Food was good, as was beer.

Next day we set off for the Rijksmuseum. Near our hotel we encountered a parked tank truck with its hose poked into the basement of a house restaurant and were assuming it was what it would be at home—an oil delivery. Then I noticed the sign on the truck: Heineken’s. They don’t mess around with kegs.

We had read that the Rijksmuseum was under extensive renovation and it was, but they have put an amazing amount of stuff into one wing and are touting it as “The Masterpieces.” It was very crowded and the layout was confusing, but we enjoyed it. Almost missed the “Night Watch” because of the layout, and we did miss any Vermeers that were on show. Afterwards we wandered toward the Van Gogh Museum nearby, but weren’t up to it at that point. Don rejected any lunch places in the area: he wanted to go back to one we had spotted the day before, so we took the long walk back and found it on Damrak.

We walked around some more, trying to remember where we had seen the historical museum and being thoroughly confused by our inaccurate map that showed it near the Dam. Finally found it near Spui. It was much bigger than we expected: it occupies a number of buildings, the chief ones being an old orphanage and a convent. Quite fascinating. Amsterdam isn’t really all that old by European standards, but it does have a proud history, largely its “Golden Age” of the 17^th century when the Netherlands were powerful and art flourished mightily.

After a rest, we set out to find a restaurant called Memories of India, through the Spui and down past the flower market (which is along Singel canal and looks lovely from the road side but terrible from across the canal, where all you see is the plastic backs of the market stalls). Very good food, very pleasant. We walked more afterwards (it was still light at 9:30) down Reguliersgracht, a canal new to us at right angles to the others, with lovely arched bridges and great intersections where canals meet. We saw more houses that tipped like the entrance to the museum, particularly the ones at the corners, which lean perilously over the streets. I guess they’ve been there for 300 years or more, but I’d be nervous about living in one.

Next day we decided to see de Waag, or Weigh House, at Nieuwmarkt. It’s the only surviving medieval gate of the city, 14^th century. I’m sure it looks better now than when they used to hang bodies of criminals (or parts of them) from the ramparts, and certainly better than during WWII, when the Nazis had it cordoned off with barbed wire and herded the Jews there for transport to the camps. Interesting little streets lead to it.

We also went to the nearby Oude Kerk, which is a lovely medieval cathedral right in the middle of the thriving red light district. The church also charges, for an exhibit of photography which we hated, but we did enjoy the building. It’s a bit disconcerting when you come out to see the circle of nice old almshouses, red-draped windows exhibiting scantily clad ladies of the evening (or any time, apparently). They just stand there on exhibit. It’s funny—except for this slight oddity and some porn shops the whole district seems like a well-kept neighborhood along a series of canals. Not at all trashy looking.

We’d meant to see the Begijnhof near Spui after the historical museum, but it was closed then, so we headed back there now. The Low Countries provided for elderly widows and other single women by building housing for them on little secluded squares. They didn’t take vows like nuns, or only lesser vows, but they did good works. The square is beautiful, still occupied by poor seniors who are no longer considered begijnen. A crew was noisily cutting the overgrown lawn, but we still enjoyed it and could tell what a peaceful place it normally was.

We’d intended to eat dinner at Café Luxembourg on Spui, but for some reason it and every other restaurant in the area (and there were a lot) seemed to be packed. Thursday is a big night. We wandered looking for a while, Don getting very grouchy about hating to look for food, and then realized by looking in the big windows that Luxembourg was only stuffed with people in the bar and had a couple of tables free for eating, so we fought our way through and had a very good dinner.

We came out and strolled for a bit along Singel and stopped, transfixed. Across the canal a dump truck with a crane on it was disgorging into its bed a huge collection of glass recyclables from a container at least six feet by six feet. We blinked, and the container disappeared. Vanished. After goggling for a minute we walked over and looked. All you could see was a couple of discreet little containers marked for paper and glass, but then we saw that they were in squares slightly differently paved from the brick sidewalk, although still brick. The crane picks up the whole square, using the small container as a handle. Quite amazing. I then understood what I’d heard that morning, when lying in bed I heard great crashes of recycling glass and hadn’t been able to see any containers when I looked out the window, although the truck, having finished, was still there.

Next day we decided to use some of my Benelux rail pass, which allows unlimited use of trains on any four days within a month. A friend had recommended a couple of museums in The Hague, so since we had seen most of what we wanted in Amsterdam we walked up to the Centraal Station. Found that we had to take our pass up to “International” to get it validated, which seemed very complicated and had Don grumbling about what a bad idea it all was, but after a wait much shorter than we expected (there were hordes of people waiting, apparently with more complicated problems) we were taken over by a lovely woman who validated the pass, gave us a schedule for our trip to Belgium the next day, circled the trains we could take, and in general was a delight. And, as I said to Don when we got on the hourly train to The Hague, it was very good to get all that done before we actually had to go somewhere important. He agreed heartily; from then on all we had to do was get on the trains.

What we should have done at once was go to the tourist information office right next door to the station and buy a map of the Hague, but instead we relied on the map in our Fodor guidebook.. Mistake. We wandered through a huge complex of old buildings without knowing what they were, came out the other side, and finally found some signs pointing to “Panorama,” which was what we were looking for. Eventually we found it, though it wasn’t easy, and it was a very long walk. We liked the museum. Its main attraction is a huge panoramic painting—the world’s largest—of the seaside nearby at Scheveningen (try pronouncing that), with 17^th-century ships coming ashore, many people, the town on the other side. They’ve heightened the effect by piling genuine sand in dunes leading up to the platform where you view the thing. They also had a fascinating exhibit of photos taken with fisheye lenses that got a little dizzying after a bit.

We found some lunch nearby, and then Don decided that we should really go back to the station and the tourist office for a map (which I had suggested when we first got mislaid), so we did, doubling back for another long walk. We asked about Madurodam, a miniature city that sprawls over 28,000 square yards between the Hague and Scheveningen. It sounds really neat. The young man assured us that it was not walking distance and was not helpful about trams. Later we scaled it out on our map and decided that we had already walked that far with all of our doubling back—people don’t realize how much we are used to walking. Anyway, instead we went to a lovely square of old houses that Don wanted to see and found that the palace with an Escher museum was right there, so in we went. Saw enough Escher to make us even dizzier, with his prints of fish turning into birds and impossible stairs that go up and down inside out and backwards.

By that time it was almost five, so we had to miss the Mauritshuis even though we’d walked right past it twice, which made us sad later—it is supposed to have a wonderful collection of paintings. We’d spent too long wasting time, and we hadn’t really known about it because we had focused on the Panorama. So back to the station for the train to Amsterdam. Don was worried that we’d have even more trouble finding a place to eat, so I suggested that we just go straight to the Indonesian restaurant and make a reservation for later, an idea that he seized on with great delight. We did and after a nap had a good dinner in peace. As we watched large numbers of people being turned away at the door, Don kept saying, “You really had a good idea there!”

Next day was real travel, to Ghent. Back we went to the station, trundling our bags down a slightly more direct street instead of following the canal. We had to change in Antwerp and were a little concerned, but we got off the train, looked at the nearby sign, got on the train standing on the next track, and were off. Again the lousy map in the Fodor had us confused, but luckily the train station had a map out front and we found that our hotel Adoma was behind the station (which the guidebook said, but its map didn’t show). Took a rather circuitous route to get to it, but we found it and checked in, then took off toward the center, a long walk.

En route we spotted a little café that looked likely, and indeed was. The nice man who ran it gave us some excellent quiche and salad and told us he was from France.

Our first stop, and my chief reason for going to Ghent, was to see the magnificent altarpiece started by Hubert Van Eyck and finished by his brother Jan in 1432. I adore Van Eycks. We both were enthralled, me expecting to be and Don vastly impressed. We also liked St. Bavo’s Cathedral itself—a marvelous, huge building filled with artworks including a Rubens.

Next, the belfry and Cloth Hall, right across a square. The belfry has a huge carillon of 54 bells, and you can go up in it. The very friendly man outside the ticket booth told us it was a mere 50 steps up to where the lift started. Tight spiral stair, so we were glad to get to the lift level. The view on top was spectacular from all four sides; Don, who usually has to be nudged to take pictures, was enthusiastically snapping away all around. He also loved the high rooms inside the belfry and the fact that you could see bells from the lift. (I did keep thinking about The Nine Tailors.)

Next we went to the Gravensteen, the Castle of the Counts, “crouching like a gray stone lion over the city,” as Fodor says. It is impressive, though we walked very quickly past the museum of torture instruments. They were having a medieval fair inside the walls, with demonstrations of crafts and so on. We were noticing that while Amsterdam has most museum signs and a lot of other signs in both Dutch and English, the Belgians stick to Flemish. Not even French, which is, after all, the other official language of their country. Still, almost all of the people who deal with tourists speak excellent English. I’m perfectly willing to struggle along in French, Italian, and Spanish (however ineptly), but I draw the line at trying to learn Flemish.

Having seen the major sights, we just walked around and found some lovely neighborhoods. Don took some very unexpected turns and actually found the tiny street with the restaurant where we wanted to eat: Amadeus. How he found it I’ll never know—it was a maze of little alleys getting there and the Fodor map was no good at all. We were worried that it might be crowded—the guidebook said it is a local favorite—so we returned right at six when it opened and found a jolly crowd outside already. We asked the maitre d’ if he could seat two, and he said “I can give you a table, but I have to have it back at eight.” Their specialty is all-you-can-eat spareribs; if you’re really hungry you can have plate after plate. One was enough, but it was delicious. Of course we had to have beer, since Belgium is famous for it. And we finished before eight.

Long walk back to the hotel. Next morning we asked the owner if one could enter the back of station from the street the hotel is on, and she assured us one could. Half the distance we had walked getting there the day before. So off we went, entered the door, found that our train was on track 12 right at the door, went upstairs, and got right on the waiting train. Luck was definitely with us.

Next stop was Bruges. This time our hotel, the Fevery, was not near the station, so after getting a map from the tourist office right in the station we ventured on a bus for the first time. Fare was one euro. Quite successfully got to the hotel-B&B, which was the nicest of the trip. We were planning two nights, so we decided we’d just walk around today and do all the official sights tomorrow.

There are two main squares in Bruges: the Burg and the Markt. We walked through both. The Burg is lined on one and a half sides with important buildings that we’d visit the next day, on two half sides with very expensive hotels, and on the fourth with what I think was intended to be a shady area with a pond but has ended up being rather muddy and sparse with a shallow pool of stagnant, dirty water. I don’t know what they are thinking. It was on the direct route from our hotel, so we saw a lot of it.

We walked the half-block to the Markt, which is much larger and has the famous Belfry (Belfort en Hallen). This one doesn’t have a lift, so we didn’t go up the 366 steps. I wouldn’t so much mind the steps if there were a grand staircase, but they usually seem to have tight, claustrophobic spirals instead. I’d had enough of those in Ghent, both in the belfry there and the castle interior. But we did get to hear part of a carillon concert. We were also somewhat startled to see stretched across the front of the Hallen, which is now used for exhibitions, a very large sign that said in three or four languages “Between the Skin and the Orgasm.” I still wonder what kind of exhibit it was.

Bruges is a lovely town to wander through. The canals don’t seem to have a pattern like Amsterdam’s, so you keep bumping into them, and they are charming. Old stone bridges nudging picturesque houses. Again, almost everything is 17^th century in the old center. This is ragingly modern for us given the amount of time we have spent in Greece, Turkey, and Italy, especially Rome and much of Sicily. Then you think of the fact that the first English settlements in America were early 17^th century, and it doesn’t seem so very modern after all.

We did make one stop: the Straffe Hendrik Brewery Tour. This was fairly interesting. We learned, among other things, that every Belgian beer has a different shape of glass, with the brewery’s name on it. We’d noticed in Ghent the night before that the waiter very carefully turned our glasses so that the logo faced us. We saw all the tanks and learned the whole process, with an amusing multilingual guide. Anyway, part of the tour was a large Straffe Hendrik beer in its own special glass.

We also stopped briefly in the Church of Our Lady because it has a small Madonna statue by, of all people, Michelangelo. One of the very few of his sculptures outside Italy. Nice.

We found an area full of restaurants nearby, and next to one of them was a little sandwich bar with a couple of tables out front. Lunchtime, and they even had lemon Fanta, which is wonderful and almost impossible to find. We had curried chicken sandwiches on delicious baguettes. Then we explored some more and found the needlework shop Shirley had asked us to go to. She had bought a needlework pillow cover there showing a bit of the Bayeux Tapestry and wanted a second one to give to a British kinsman who, like her, is a Vernon descended from Vernons who were involved in the Conquest. (And unlike most, she has absolute documentation to prove it—she’s had fun for years doing all the research and meeting distant relatives while doing it.) We found and bought a pillow cover for her.

After a nap we went looking for dinner. Not far from the hotel was Jan van Eyck square (how nice that they name squares after artists!) with a statue of him in the middle, and at one corner a restaurant that looked likely. Gold-something, Don thinks; I forgot to write it down. Had a good meal.

Next day it was time to get down to serious sightseeing: not difficult because of the compactness of the town center. First stop was on the corner of Burg: Basiliek van het Heilig Bloed (Basilica of the Holy Blood). Forget the relic, although Fodor waxes eloquent about it; the church was 12^th century, decorated Gothic, and beautiful. The Romanesque crypt was nice and gloomy. Next, in what Rick Steves’ book calls “six centuries of architecture,” was the old Stadhuis, or Town Hall. It has a restored Gothic room (1400) upstairs and a very small museum. Next to it is Brugse Vrije, Renaissance Hall. One ticket took care of the two buildings, and you got free audio thingies at both. This one has just one ornate room, which is where the Council met. We learned more than we really wanted to know about the “Liberty of Bruges” and its honor.

Next stop was the Groeninge Museum, a rambling structure reached through a series of garden rooms. It cost less than we expected: we discovered this was probably because a large part of it was closed for renovation. The first room, however, was worth anything we might have paid: it had a very large Jan van Eyck Madonna and Child with Donors that I remembered but had forgotten was there. I was mesmerized: it is so beautifully painted. It has always been a little amusing, too: St. George is on the right side doffing his helmet with his hand on the shoulder of the kneeling donor and looks for all the world if he’s saying, “Ma’am, this is my buddy Ludovic. I’d be obliged if you’d put in a good word for him.” That room had other wonderful paintings, too. Then there were a couple of rooms of very modern art that we could have done without, and that was it. Back to the Van Eyck for another stare, and off we went.

The Sint Jans Hospital/Memling Museum was next. The earliest wards of the hospital date to the 13^th century. Nice building. Again, we were given a free audio guide, which was a good thing because almost nothing in the museum was labeled. The Memlings were lovely, particularly the big St. Catherine altarpiece with a headless John the Baptist. They even provide chairs so you can sit and look at it. Memling’s St. Ursula reliquary, a mini-church about four feet long, has beautifully detailed paintings of the life of St. Ursula all around it.

After a late lunch at the same place as yesterday we headed for the Bruges version of the Beginhof. It is larger and even more tranquil and beautiful than the one in Amsterdam. The center is full of tall trees, with high grass growing under them spotted with forget-me-nots and other flowers. We could see from the spent leaves that it had been almost solid with daffodils a few weeks earlier. The houses are all whitewashed and well kept; they are now occupied by Benedictine nuns. One house is open as a museum. The lake at the entrance, called the Lake of Love, is full of swans, and a heron posed very carefully on a stake in the water so that we could take his picture.

I read that there were windmills not far away. We had to see some windmills in the low countries. We’d seen a couple from the trains, plus quite a lot of wind turbines, but nothing close up. So off we went again. Rick Steves says 10 minutes, but I think it was a longer walk than that. Still, it was nice to climb the dike and walk along under the four or five windmills. Then naptime. We were hoping to eat at the same place but it was closed, so we picked another by a canal at random and it was fine.

We got the bus to the train station next morning. We were amused by the fact that trains from Antwerp to Bruges and beyond run every half-hour, but trains the other way run only every hour. What, asked Don, do they do with all those extra trains?

We did have to wait a brief while in Antwerp, but their trains are so frequent you don’t even have to plan—you just go. We changed again in Amsterdam to go to Haarlem, where we were spending the last two nights of the trip. The Haarlem tourist office (the VVV in Dutch) is right next to the station, so we picked up a map and were able to buy our bus ticket to the airport in advance, plus get instructions about where to board it.

Our hotel, the Carillon, was the only one I found listed in all three guidebooks. Its location right on the Grote Markt is perfect, right across from the Grote Kerk, but the hotel has the steepest stairs I’ve ever seen (about four-inch treads and nine-inch risers at least, like the ship’s ladder that leads to our roof) and our room was extremely spartan. I kept reeling every time I got up from the bed and wondered what was the matter with me until Don pointed out that the floor tilted noticeably. Downstairs in the restaurant you could see the sagging beams that caused the tilt. Oh, well, it was only for two nights.

We went out to explore. After getting some lunch at the rooftop restaurant of a department store, we headed for the Franz Hals Museum, which is in a wonderful old building and is full of great Dutch paintings. We enjoyed it very much. Didn’t notice the Rick Steves mention that there is an architectural museum right across the street from it, so we unfortunately missed that.

Don was getting a cold. He usually does on trips: I don’t know why I don’t just learn to take a drugstore along in my suitcase. I’ve learned how to ask for cold medicines in French (Avez-vous quelque-chose pour un rhum?), Italian (A qualcosa por un raffredore?), Spanish (which I’ve forgotten), and English in Egypt, where a stately, fat lady pharmacist with a deep bass voice ministered to his needs. We found a place that was like a Rite-Aid without a pharmacy and asked at the counter. Apparently in Holland they don’t get multi-symptom colds. You can get allergy medicine, or nasal spray, or cough medicine, but nothing like Tylenol Cold. We finally settled for the box that looked like the one I’d gotten in Vicenza the year before (made, we discovered, by Pfizer). It didn’t do much for him. The next day we tried an actual pharmacy, where the pharmacist said she had nothing at all, and another quasi Rite-Aid where we at least got him some little packets of Kleenex—he was using up all of mine.

He napped for a bit. We’d had a late lunch, so we figured we’d eat after the free organ concert at the Grote Kerk. The organ is astonishing: it’s one of the grandest in the world, and was played by both Handel and a 10-year-old Mozart. The pipes go right up to the roof of the church, which would make them about five stories high. (We were on the third floor of the hotel across the street, and we were only at the level of the roof over the side aisles.) The concert was really good; I’m glad I spotted the mention of it in Fodor and lucked out that we were in Haarlem on a Tuesday.

 We decided to eat at the hotel restaurant, which turned out to be delicious. Made life easier. The next morning the shower head fell off, narrowly missing Don’s foot, so we presented it to the young woman who was presiding over breakfast. I sponge-bathed. We decided to go into Amsterdam for the day, having pretty much seen Haarlem. We used up the last day of our rail pass for the 15-minute round trip.

This time we went to the Van Gogh Museum taking the very long walk down the Damrak and many other streets and past the Rijksmuseum. It was good, but strange that it costs even more than the Rijksmuseum. It’s larger than you’d expect, too, and the security was as stringent as an airport. Very odd—there’d been none at all at the Rijksmuseum or any of the others we’d been to. We’re not huge Van Gogh fans, but they did have some good ones.

After lunch in the park between the museums we took the long walk back to the canal boat dock on the Damrak near the station and took a nice hour-long trip. Very pleasant; we got to see some things we’d not been near in our walking days. Then back on the train, dinner at the hotel again, and we left the next day.