Tuesday/Wednesday, July 28/29

Tuesday: We started the day with neighbors, Margaret and Andy, coming over for coffee. This is the first we had seen them this trip. They lived in Alberta, Canada when Andy was working and we talked a bit about where Kees and Joke had been traveling. 

Later we decided to drive over to Spakenburg to see a ship that I had been told about. It had just been restored and put back in the water. It had originally been built by the Nazi, Goering, during the war. It has sailed to Florida in the past. Well, I was expecting a large "ship", but what we eventually found was a large version of the traditional working boats that line the Spakenburg harbor. A single mast, but much taller than the surrounding boats. We walked past it twice and Linda had said she thought that might be what we were looking for, but I wanted a larger ship. I think crossing the Atlantic in this would be quite a feat.

As you might expect from the Germans, the woodcarving was detailed and beautiful.

And then this lovely bear on the tiller. It reminded us of our visit to Bern, Switzerland, in 2007.

Spakenburg is a fishing town and here I am with a fisherman and his catch.

It seems that every time we go to Spakenburg, I am in the mood for fish and chips and this trip was no exception. Since it was not market day, it was easy to find a place to sit and eat. We chose a place down by the information office, close to our ship. 

We shared a raw herring with onions and a large order of fish and chips. They are served with mayo and a really good tartar sauce. We ate all the fish and drank all of the beer and left some of the chips.

I guess we liked the herring. It was all gone before we thought to take a picture of it.

Linda tried this beer with a touch of lemon in it and really liked it. It tasted like a really good English Shanty.

And the only regular beer they had was this Heineken, a Dutch beer, and it was just fine.

The town is very picturesque.

We walked around a little searching for something to take back to Doug. Its easy to find things for girls, but guys are harder. And, don't you know, we found the perfect thing, but I'm not telling.

This is where many days end.

And this is in the kitchen. 

Wednesday: Another rainy day, so it was an excuse for a slow start. Eventually, we walked downtown to do some shopping. We stopped at Lenscrafters and the owner fixed Linda's sunglasses. The pin had come out of one of the hinges. He told us his family lived in Alberta and he was getting ready to leave for a visit. What a coincidence.

This is where the Queen's Tree was before the storm. Its all gone now. And, it was very large.

Its late July and notice how she's dressed: sunshine but a bit nippy. But don't get us wrong, its just fine, sweater weather for a good portion of the time we have been here. Nothing like what much of Europe and the US are experiencing.

The bag is from the Rijksmuseum.

Back to the house for a really great lunch/dinner: fried calf's liver with bacon and onions, fried rice also from the butcher, and a salad that I fixed. All yummy.

It started raining again and we stayed in for the rest of the day.

Monday, July 27

I think it may be time to start building the Ark. No, that's an exaggeration. But, we are getting a lot of rain and wind, but the temperature is still in the 60's and that's good.

We ate lunch at the house and later, when the rain stopped, walked to the Proef for a coffee and some of their really good truffles. We actually sat inside, not something we do very often. When you order a coffee their "tapas" which are amaretto flavored meringue balls automatically come with it.  Let the sugar flow.

We stopped at several shops looking for those little eyeglass fix-it kits that we could use to replace a pin in Linda's sunglasses hinge. Not successful.

Linda spent most of the day at the dining room table trying to perfect a drawing of my sister. Its coming along, but the artist is never satisfied.

I tried to read outside, but only lasted about 30 minutes before it got too cold. But, we are talking about 6:00 pm, so not so bad.

We had picked up some pre-cooked shrimp in a nice red sauce at the Proef and put them into a salad for dinner with a little wine on the side. Very nice.

Saturday/Sunday, July 25/July 26

Saturday: It was stormy and very windy. In Amsterdam trees were falling and hitting cars. We learned from Kees (who is in the American West, but knows more about our news than we do) that one person was killed. It was clear that we should just stay inside. 

Late in the day, we discovered the pilot light had been extinguished, probably by the wind coming down a vent, and we didn't have any hot water in the bathroom. Early, the next morning, I used What'sApp on my iPhone to contact Kees before he went to bed and he told me how to relight the pilot and all was good.

Sunday: The day dawned bright and sunny and we needed to get out of the house. We settled on visiting the Kroller-Muller Van Gogh museum at Otterloo. Peter, next door, had told us about this place last year and complained the other night that we had not been there and we really needed to go. It's about 50 minutes away and we were off.

We called it our Sunday drive. Years ago, when we didn't have much money, we would bundle up the kids and go for a drive through the country on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. 

To do it right, we needed to take secondary roads instead of A1 and the others. Linda used her iPhone navigation app to get us through some beautiful countryside that we had not seen before. Our general direction was east toward Germany.

There were not many, but you always see a windmill somewhere. This is a very Dutch countryside.

Its farm country with lots of cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and

Alpacas, no less. What in the world are they doing here? And not in  just one field, but three or four down our road.

The chicken farmers proudly advertised what they were raising. At one point we saw 50-100 real "free range chickens" wandering around a field. Linda loved it.

Continuing down the road, we came upon many very well-maintained, brick houses with manicured front yards and things like these straw birds for decoration.

Free-Range Chickens

Some of the chickens were kept in conventional houses that looked a lot like those on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but better built and maintained.

This is what our roads look like - well paved and maintained and plenty of room for bikes on both sides, but not much for cars in the middle. This is a two way road.

This is to show the names of some of the little towns we passed through.

We arrived at the town of Otterlo and just outside of it the national park: De Hoge veLuwe. We used our museum cards to defray part of the cost. The museum is in the middle of this very large park (over 10,000 acres) and is about 3 kms from the entrance, but they provide 1500 bikes free of charge. The bikes are very basic, single speed with no cross bars. 

Linda decided to try it out and made me very nervous. The last time she was on a bike was here in Holland in 2011 and she fell off and broke her elbow. But these were like old Schwins that she had as a kid and she felt more comfortable with them.

We biked about 3 kms and came upon an area with a large playground, restaurant, and gift shop. We thought we had arrived. Not the van Gogh museum. We were told we were close and just had to cross the road and go about 100 meters. When we did that, there was a gate that you couldn't take a bike through. So, we just parked our bikes and moved on.

Surrounding the museum is a very large sculpture garden with mostly new stuff (late 20th century).

These were grouped under a pavillon. Many others were scattered throughout the garden.

This massive piece of art was a butterfly maybe emerging from its cocoon. Not sure. The artist is Jean Dubuffet and the piece is called Jardin d'email - 1974. There was a sign that invited visitors to walk on it.

This piece was just outside the museum building bordering a large grassy area. I liked it.

After about 1/2 hour of strolling through the woods/garden, we found our goal. This is the second largest collection of van Gogh paintings in the world. They were collected by the couple whose name is the museum's. I guess the largest may be in the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. Van Gogh is probably the artist that we are most familiar with. We have seen his work here in Holland and also in Provence multiple times.

This painting reminded Linda of the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C.

This is Heidi's favorite van Gogh.

After viewing the pictures, we had an espresso in the garden before heading back to the car park.

We asked several people which way to walk. As we started, we had to walk through a very large parking lot for the free bikes and Linda decided she could handle it again. I adjusted her seat and we biked off for only about 2 kms, back to the car park.

As we drove out of the park and into Otterlo, we found these houses proudly displaying van Gogh themed work. I think they are very proud to have the museum near them.

Sunflowers everywhere.

We parked in the town and found this restaurant on the corner that had umbrellas to protect us from the threatening clouds and schnitzel on the menu. Very appealing for me. Linda ordered a stew that was almost all chunks of meat in a dark sauce with a few carrots in the bottom. My schnitzel came with a mushroom sauce and we shared fries, baked potatoes, broccoli, and a salad. They sure don't skimp on the food.

Flowers on the table and hanging behind her.

Across from us was another restaurant with hay stacked in the upstairs loft.

And a new beer to us.

Otterlo traffic.

As we walked back to the car, there was this weird truck that a woman was using for catering. It contained a built-in kitchen.

It had started raining toward the end of our meal and continued most of the way home. We used some of the backroads we had used earlier and then onto A30 and A1.

I think we made the best use of that day.

Friday, July 24

Linda has been wanting to see a temporary exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - our objective for the day.

I think sometimes we really act like we live here permanently - we started by picking up our cleaning and then over to Baarn to pick up custom cut curtains with a tulip print that we had ordered for our DC condo.  Then, since we were already in Baarn, we drove over to the train station and parked and into the city.

At Amsterdam Centraal we caught the #5 tram and took it to the museum. Feeling like a real native.

Into the museum with no line and no paying because of our museum cards (thank you Kees). Unlike all of our other trips, this was only to see one exhibit that we couldn't find, even after asking. What we did find was a display on women's fashions throughout the years (16th century to 20th century) and fashion magazines. Mostly the prints used in the publications.

In the 1500's, good posture was very important for both men and women. They pushed out their chests and sometimes padded their bellies to exaggerate the effect.

And, then there were the hairdos and hairdresses that got more and more ridiculous. We saw one that included a sailing ship at the top of her "do".

Couldn't resist this. He seems to be getting to know her better.

And, in the 20th century the ladies were a bit modest, especially at the beach.

After the museum and the museum gift shop (can't miss that), we walked over to the Hans and Gretel Cafe for lunch. This is a regular place for us to eat. While we were eating this cat came by. It reminded us of Gretchen's cat, Wilma. 

We found ourselves sitting next to two young men from California and joined in their conversation. They both work for separate IT companies in San Francisco and have traveled all over the world. We compared notes, but what was the most interesting were their comments about Singapore. Its a very regulated place. If you want a car - you have to buy it there and it has to be new and there are huge taxes and you can only keep it for 5 years, maybe 7 if you have special permission and there really is no place to drive it. But, there are a lot of rich people who buy cars like Ferraris and race from one traffic light to another. Sounds really nice - wow.

We were eventually joined by an American couple who consult on healthcare systems and compare other country's system to ours. So, the discussion went in that direction. They stated that only England and Sweden have a real national healthcare system and that others in Europe have something much more like our Affordable Healthcare Act. We mostly listened.

Amsterdam remains a cool city and you see these types of things along the way. As we walked along, it started to rain, so we ducked into a cafe with big umbrellas (a place that we have used to get out of the rain before) and had our espressos.

Took the tram back to the station and got on the train with 5 minutes to spare.

Back to Baarn, then to Albert Heijn to get some groceries. Peter and Liesbeth leave tomorrow for their 3 week vacation and we invited them over for dinner (tacos and nachos and wine). 

Everyone seemed to like the meal and ate almost everything. We expected lots of leftovers, but not a whole lot. And, of course, as we sat around after dinner there was some reflexology for Peter and each of the kids.

We won't see them again until next year. It makes for a really nice visit to have this relationship with the family.