Last day!

Okay so Here are the pictures of our last day. In the morning/early afternoon I bought a "walking tour" book of architecture - showing off some of the best architecture of Den Haag. Then I met up with Harland in the afternoon to go to the Mauritshuis which is hands down the best museum I have ever been to. I mean really the building is amazing. Just walking in it is amazing - then the paintings! Oh my God! They were amazing and you can walk right up to them. Rubens, Vermeers, Rembrants, you name it. It was hands downt he very best museum experience I have ever had.
Here is a picture of the outside.


What I love about Den Haag is that the old next to the new:


Here is a picture of the old gov't buildings:


Here is a picture of the Prince's Palace:


Here is some beautiful gargoyles on one building that caught my fancy:


This is the smallest home. Do you see the section where the window is open? Well that is an actual townhome. Apparently at one time people were taxed by the width of the buildings, so this one was made really narrow. haha.


I had a wonderful trip, and I have so many more pictures. But these are the best of the best. I actually took a picture of every bulding in the walking tour for Halrand so he wouldn't feel like he missed out. But I don't have the room or patience to post all these and I already think my blog readership of 4 have dimmed to 2 or so people. :) So I am going to end my posts here.
It was a great trip. I'm so lucky to have had the chance to go.

Day 6

Okay - sorry I didn't post for two days - I had my 1st Chinese class on Thursday night (I'm having a hard time learning my numbers, so we'll see if I ever learn anything!) and yesterday I worked late and after a big bowl of chili that Harland made, i was wiped out!

Anyway - Here are the pictures from Delft. It is a village about 1 hour away from Den Haag. I took a train down while Harland worked. I don't really know what things are, so they are mostly just pictures that I thought were visually interesting.

Well that and a yarn shop. ;) Here is the Yarn store. I didn't buy anything there, but it was fun to browse.


And here are some pictures from the village Delft.











Then at night I met back up with Harland for some pancakes at the pancake house. Pancakes are fun and tasty. They are a little thicker than crepes and they are huge and at pancakehouses you can have about 1 of 1 zillion types of toppings. We got pancakes once in Amsterdam and Harland got cherries, ice cream, cherry liquor, and whipped topping. While I had a pancake with Indonesian chicken and peanut sauce. This time around I had ham and egg and cheese while Harland had goulash pancake. I wish I could import a pancake house to here.




And here is the picture of our hotel at night - it is along the boardwalk kind of area. The pancake house we went to was beneath the hotel on the boardwalk.

Day 5

Well, only two more days of this and we'll be back to the regular blog.
This is technically partial day 6 since all the beach pictures were taken on day 6 but I have so much else to talk about day 6 tomorrow I know I won't have enough room.

SO anyway - we left Amsterdam and headed to Den Haag. Specifically the Northern part at the North Sea - it is called SCHEVININGEN.

Here are some pictures:

Our hotel and view from the window.




And here are some pictures from the beach itself.
I did put my feet in, it wasn't so cold.

Day 4

Here we go - some snapshots from day 4. We didn't really have a plan for day 4, we just wandered around because it was the last day in Amsterdam.
Here is me in front of a clock tower. For somereason this is the the only picture of me we took. Well besides a silly picture at the North Sea of half my face that I took.


How to look like you are Dutch (people always spoke Dutch to me when Harland isn't around, he was a dead giveaway I was American. But it is very simple - first have light brown hair. second - wear the color orange. That's it).

We went to a yarn store on Day 4. I didn't take a picture of the store (whoops). The woman who rant he store was very nice. They only sold one brand of Yarn - Regina. So that is interesting - I thought I would see a lot of different brands. There was a sweet hairy dog in a basket just inside. I asked if the orange yarn I had would need 3 skeins to make mittens and the woman didn't understand the word for mittens so for some reason we started talking German and we figured it out. Turns out she spoke better German. Which is odd, since most people in the Netherlands speak English. But maybe the German translates better to Dutch for knitting terms or something. Anyway it was fun to pull out my rusty German.

We walked all the way out of the town of Amsterdam to see the last windmill of the area. I'm glad I didn't tell Harland you can't go in it... I'm not sure he would have walked all the way there if he had known. One of the funny things is that it POURED, just absolutely poured cold cold rain and had a the darkest of clouds when we were about 3 blocks away. But after we waited it out under a tree (between the tree and our raincoats it wasn't so bad) we walked the rest of the way there and facing this direction it made a beautiful picture. If one turned the other way it would look like crazy rain was coming.



Here are some pretty buildings:



Here is a Herring stand. Herring is a popular lunch and snack you pick it up byt the tail end let it dangle over your mouth and take bites, eating up!


Here is a fun Houseboat with Grass for a roof!


There is this beautiful old church in the Red Light District:

And here is a picture of the Erotic Museum (but I hear it is silly and lame, so we didn't go).

As everyone knows - the red light district is where the prostitutes are, we went on a weeknight after tourist season, but still there were plenty to choose from if that is what you wanted to do. It was surprising people were walking around there even with their kids! It is kinda weird - just these windows with red lights everywhere.

And just to leave you on a better note, here is a beautiful night time picture of a canal.

Bike Tangent

Okay so I was getting bored posting what I did each day (but don't miss tomorrow's installation of day 4!) so I thought I would take a little break.

Susan commented on my bike picture and it took me a while to figure out what she meant. I think with all the bikes in Amsterdam I became blinded to them! Biking is a way of life in the Netherlands and I can see why - especially in Amsterdam. There are trams and taxis but both are fairly expensive especially since the distances in Amsterdam are very low. For example to walk form the museum district to Anne Frank House, it only took us about 30-40 minutes. Why take the tram that costs almost 3 Euros?

So today I dedicate an entry to the bikes.


Here is an example of the bike lane, see the brick sidewalks in the picture above and below? That is actually the bike lanes. I never saw such fantastic bike lanes as I did in Amsterdam and Den Haag. Also of note - you can see the tram in the bottom picture as well. They are very skinny trams.




In the picture above you can see a whole mess of bikes parked as well as an itty bitty truck that litterly is the size (well at least the length) of a bike. Too Cute! Can you imagine getting a sandwich delivered in that in the U.S.?


Here is a picture of a bike crossing. These are set up along major roads and people on the bikes press them to get the go ahead to cross. They are usually near a pedestrian crosswalk. Although one does see a bit of Jay-biking mostly people wait for the lights because it is too dangerous. We did see one guy (who was walking his bike) jay-walk with his bike and his bike was hit by a car. It made a loud noise but it didn't seem to faze him one bit - he just kept walking and rolling his bike along. Any accident that involves a bike and car - it is automatically the car's fault. Keep that in mind if you go driving there.

There are also a variety of shapes and sizes of bikes. Here is one I call the minivan of bikes. it looks like a wheelbarrow but when it is uncovered (they cover them because of rain, it rained a lot while we were there) there is usually a bench seat at handlebar side and little kids sit there while there mom pushes them around... sometimes with groceries at their feet. Also some bakeries make deliveries in these types.

(note the name on the building with the arches, pretty clever - ArchAngel).



And when we were in Den Haag at Scheviningen (it is a beach resort area) they had these "team building bikes" that could seat 7 or 8 people (only one person steers while everyone peddles) These people were having a real good time. The were so loud we looked out our hotel window to see what the fuss was about.



Well Harland is calling me to help him set the camping gear outside to dry - we went camping last night in Prince William Forest Park again. It was nice, my feet were a little cold... but I love waking up in the woods. We saw a mushroom that was red on top and white on the bottom like the kind you see next to Ceramic Gnomes which was cool, I didn't know those were actual mushrooms i thought they were just make-believe. We didn't stay very long since we still are unpacking here and have all the sunday errands to run (ie grocery shopping, cleaning).

Day 3!

Well, I have no idea if you're all asleep or what by now, but here is our adventures on day three. I took a lot of pictures of buildings and canals... but I'll just give you a ataste here.

1st place we headed was the Anne Frank House which we had read gets very crowded (it does, if you go try to get there at 9am).





Then we walked around



Went to the Flower Market



and at dusk saw some cats guarding pastries.

Day 2!!

Here is what we did on day two!
First (after breakfast in the hotel - yummy bread, eggs, bacon, fresh squeezed orange juice and fruit) we went to the Concertgebouw to listen to a Tchaikovsky concert consisting of Cappriccio Italien and Symphony #5. It was an hour long and the acoustics were fantastic. We went hoping to get tickets at the window when a man asked us if we needed tickets (he was not a scalper, as he actually asked the ticket counter if he could sell them) and so we got awesome seats in the middle row and middle seats! For 2/3 of the price we would have paid! It was amazing.
Here are some pictures:





Then we went to the Rijksmuseum. That was amazing too - lot of Vermeer and other famous Dutch Painters. The Rembrandt 'Nightwatch' which was astoundingly large was there as well as the Vermeer "Milkmaid". There was also a a lot of artifacts like old Delftware and weapons and cabinetwork. It is quite a museum. Here are some pictures from he outside.






And then later - at night we went to VondelPark which is a huge park in Amsterdam. Here is a cafe in the middle of the park. It looked so pretty in twighlight.