April 29, 2006

I haven’t had much time to write during the last several weeks, and we’ve been busy beavers. We headed to Holland on Easter Sunday for a week of touring, biking, and flower viewing. Our initial concerns that stores and museums may be closed on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, both celebrated in Germany, were quickly allayed. The Dutch didn’t seem to notice the holiday much at all. That may well have just been the case in Amsterdam, but it was certainly unexpected to some degree. In any case, for once we had wonderful flights and no problems at the airport, and were in Amsterdam by shortly afternoon on Sunday.
In my other stays in Amsterdam, I had found that you can have a convenient hotel, convenient to the train station in particular, but with high odds of a noisy night. We were lucky to find a hotel, hotel New Amsterdam, about 10 minutes walk from the train station and along a quiet canal. It was very nice, with friendly staff, and free flowing cappuccino machine. We had a mini-suite, which meant two beds crammed into two connecting rooms, but if you were only two people, you would have had a good amount of space for a European hotel. The suite was at the very top of the narrow building, with a final set of stairs once you opened the room door that were steep enough to easily walk up with hands and feet.
We took Kenai to his first museum, the Rijksmuseum, on Monday. The museum is under renovation so most of the exhibits are closed, but they had several rooms on Rembrandt and his students, as well as a room on “fake” Rembrandts. In each room I had Kenai pick out a few paintings and then we’d talk about them: What is happening? How do you think the man feels? What are the various objects in the painting.. that kind of thing. His favourite painting was of some ships caught in an incredible storm. Then he found a painting, I think by another artist, of ships in a harbor, which showed to him that the ships had made it through the storm. He was also quite taken with the still life pictures in which there were lots of bugs crawling around on the fruit. We did a few more museums on the trip, one was a 17th century home and another was an exhibit on Indonesia with artifacts. He liked the home, as I expected, because he could pick out the beautiful furnishings, and the other exhibits we saw where there were lots of jewels or otherwise sparkling items were a hit, as well.
Amsterdam has two large churches in its town center: the old church and the new church, the latter probably being from the 17th or 18th century. As far as I can tell, both are in State hands, though I’m not completely sure of it. From all evidence, neither is used for religious purposes. The new church is used for long-term exhibits, and while we were visiting had an exhibit on Indonesia. I tried to capture a photo with the juxtaposition of Buddhist art and Christian architecture. The side chapels have been converted to rooms with glass showcases for artifacts.
The old church sits on the edge of the red light district, and if approach from the East, you’ll find a row of windows filled with women in waiting facing the church. On the other side of the church, you’ll find a few sidewalk bar-restaurants. No street divides the church from the rest of Amsterdam, it’s church square is pedestrian and filled instead with the encroaching modern life. The church still contains a prized carillon instrument, which is automatically played a few times an hour and during Saturday concerts, but no one can see the instrument, which resides up in the Church tower. There is also a large organ in the enormous main hall of the church, and I believe they have regular organ concerts. Beyond that, the church interior is somewhat empty and cavernous.
The square near the new Church is open and was filled with people and a decent number of pigeons. Kenai spent quite some time chasing the pigeons with great enthusiasm and optimism that he would eventually capture one. Street artists performed in several areas as we waited. At some point, a man came up with his daughter and pulled out a container of pigeon food. As you can imagine, Kenai wasted no time before asking the man for food so that he too could feed them. What happened then was just fascinating to watch. While the young girl, just a bit younger than Kenai I would guess, calmly held her hand out and the pigeons enjoyed a good meal, Kenai was overcome with joy. He was filled with delight as the pigeons came to land on his arm, and his laughter spread in the square. People, lots of people, took out their cameras and start snapping shots. Each time his food was gone, he asked the man for more, in spite of gentle admonishing from his parents! He really enjoyed the pigeons flying down and being so close, and through the trip he kept wanting to feed pigeons on the streets with anything, to include rocks, at hand. He was encircled for photo taking again in the Hague when he began playing in the fountain in one of the squares. I returned from checking on some information across the street to find him the center of attention, with Japanese tourists framing photos of themselves and the giggling boy. You just wish you could bottle part of that energy for yourself.
On Tuesday, we joined our barge for a four-day bike-and-barge tour around the flower growing region. Each day we went some distance on the barge and then biked to meet the barge in the evening. There were only eleven people on the boat, and Kenai became fast friends with an eight-year old Canadian living in Tunisia. The tour was pretty good, though not perfect. It was really very affordable, and included full board. The food, particularly the suppers, were really very good and plentiful. Some of the biking was through certainly less than scenic areas, to include some industrial portions the first day, but the biking through the countryside and flower fields was amazing. Kenai had a tagalong, which was a half bike connected to mine, making it almost a tandem bike. He could pedal and had handle bars. He absolutely loved the biking, and sat merrily for hours singing songs and telling stories. He loved the flower fields, as I had hoped, because the big swaths of colour are pretty awe inspiring. Mostly, though, he loved being on the bike. Lucky for me, the country is flat and the biking with him was easy. His pedaling helped move the bike along and it was only on the rare hills that I had to work hard. He and his friend Adam always wanted to be at the front of the pack, of course.
Our first day ended us at the open air museum of Zaanse Schans, which was essentially a tourist trap. It did have a lovely setting with windmills and some beautiful Dutch homes, but basically the appeal ended there to us. We finally hopped on the bikes and took a ride while we waited for the rest of the group to finish wandering the area and shops. That was the disappointing day, as the bike ride was through not the best part of town and the town we were parked at was not very interesting. We had expected to be at Haarlem, which is a well-known town, and instead were in a more industrial area. On another day, the captain parked the boat a few miles from the historic center of the town, in that case, Leiden, making it more difficult to visit the sites.
The flower fields of the second day were really lovely and the bright colours filled your vision. The tulips were running late this year, but we were still able to see many of them during our visit. We biked to the famous Kuehkenhof Garden, where they have incredible displays of the spring flowers. The garden is only open during the spring and was wonderfully laid out for wandering. Indoor areas included an enormous display of orchids and another of tulips. Outdoors they had a great playground for children and a hedge maze, in addition to the paths wandering through the woods and around a lake. We saw some fascinating varieties of tulips that I hadn’t seen before, and the variety of orchids was breathtaking. We also visited a cheese farm on the final day of riding, which was interesting. A calf had been born the night before, so Kenai enjoyed seeing the baby, large as it was! The town of Leiden was quite lovely, and we had a few hours to wander the streets and canals there. We saw swans all over the countryside pastures on one of our rides, but these were unlike swans I’d ever seen. They were absolutely enormous and when they flew they had the presence of birds of prey, with huge wing spans, more than birds of grace. The wing-span had to have been four or five feet, and the birds probably sat two feet high at their back. I never got a photo of one in flight, which was a shame because it was so dramatic.
In the Hague, we were able to get a weekend deal for a room at the Sofitel hotel just next door to the central train station. For under 100 Euro a night, we had a lovely room in this five star hotel: very comfy. The Hague itself had very austere architecture, and while we were in the town center, it was still a good 10-minute walk or more to the real pedestrian area and tourist sites. We didn’t do much in the way of sightseeing while we were there, but instead mostly wandered around and visited parks. They have a lot of parks there, and I was able to run in one on Sunday morning that had wonderful crushed stone paths that ran for miles and intertwined through woods and along pastures. The last day, we took the short tram ride to the seashore, where Kenai immediately ran to the beach. In spite of temperatures in the low-50s, he took of his shoes and socks, rolled up his pant legs, and ran to the waters edge. He created a human sand shovel and tried to make a ditch across the length of the beach, a few hundred feet. Then we hit the aquarium for a few hours, which was of a good size and had some very well done exhibits.
Our friend Andrea accompanied us for the visit to Holland, and she and I ate at the hotel restaurant the last evening. What a feast. They had a “surprise wine menu”, in which you chose the number of courses you wished, and if you wanted, you could choose the wines. We let them choose the wines and create the menu; it was amazing. We had a gourmet three-course menu running three-and-a-half hours and three glasses of wine. The courses were loosely described, as we had a “pre-dessert” of strawberries and cream and a dessert of chocolate lasagna and ice cream. The appetizer was a “cream of tuna” and creamed pea soup, followed by little shrimps rolled in slices of squash and grilled. The helpings were all small, but still quite generous in aggregate. Our main dish was duck. The whole experience was tremendous.
On Saturday, we went to see the flower parade, bloomencorso. The parade route is a 40km trip along the flower viewing road and takes a full day to cover. We took a train to a point part way along the route and watched. The floats are completely made of flowers or plants, and they are huge. It really is amazing the level of detail that they could achieve with the blooms of hyacinths and tulips, among other flowers. And the work that goes into changing the blooms into floats must be tremendous. I took photos of each of the floats as they came by, which was easy since there was no police holding you onto the sidewalk as you’d find in the states. Before the parade came past us, the local children (well over 100 of them!) road past on their bicycles, tricycles, and other riding toys covered in flowers. It was really cute. Some of them were in costume, and others just had arrangements on their bikes. Kenai loved the parade, and stood on top of a gate post the whole time so that he could get the best view. I’ve sent out an Ofoto link with many of the photos and I hope you enjoy.
Right after we returned Sunday night, we settled down to sleep, and I left the house at 5:30am the next morning for the 3-1/2 hour drive to Garmisch. I had the second in our three-part leadership course series out here. We haven’t been to Garmisch before, and sadly I didn’t have any free time. It was really beautiful. We stayed at the Marriott up on the hillside, away from the town, and on the edge of a lake. It was pure heaven, and I’m sure without the government special rate would have cost a pretty penny. The mountains loom over the town, which lies in the valley. I was able to go running in the woods straight out of the hotel. The course itself was in the military lodge Edelweiss, which was very similar to the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disneyworld. Everything was very well appointed and it looks like a great place to stay. I think you have to get reservations months in advance, but the room rates are extremely cheap. In any case, the class itself was fine and I made the drive back on Thursday. Just over a week, and we have the final course at a castle just south of Stuttgart, and then the week after that we head to Turkey to visit the moonlike terrain of Cappadocia. We’ll take a breath in June, I think.