I made a promise to myself that I would finish the blog before I left the Netherlands. The last word would NOT be written in Chicago. Much like the promise I made to myself about actually starting the blog (which I did manage, but one month late), I broke my promise. So Rog, Andrea and Kamila (and the rest of the Moscardini/Neri gang), Maastricht and Barbara, I will give you the attention you deserve. But I guess you’ll have to wait.

It’s good to be back home.

Tot ziens!

Bonus: Barbara Turf and Marta Calle from Crate and Barrel and CB2 were in town for a meeting! We met them in front of the National Monument on Dam Square late in the afternoon. It was so weird to see them and be in Amsterdam. It was great fun, though. I wish we had had more time to spend together ‘cuz I’m pretty sure I could have filled a whole day.

We had just enough time to stop in at Wijnand Fockink so they could try jenever. I think it would be a big understatement to say that they are not fans! Neither are Zaf and Mimi, for that matter. Kevin met us there for a quick on, and thankfully he IS a fan!  

I had chosen Restaurant De Belhamel on the Brouwersgracht for dinner. I have to admit I felt a little pressure to pick the right place (thus the freak out before dinner last night), cuz, you know, you want to impress a little, at best, or pick an appropriate place at least. I think I did OK, though. It was a very small, art deco restaurant. Our table was a winner. It was up a few steps from the rest of the tables in the dining room, but shares the same warm atmosphere. Gezellig. There is a very traditional Dutch menu: We started with a rich and delicious asparagus soup, then a nice fresh salad, followed by white asparagus with ham or salmon. The capper on the night: an amazing strawberry mousse/flan with a little  flat of crispy, home made shortbread and some fresh berries. OMG it was fantastic!

Lively conversation, great company, good food. A good night!

Zaf and Lia at De Belhamel Note where Lia's hand is heading...

On the brouwersgracht outside Restaurant De Belhamel

Spring and early summer is serious asparagus time in Holland, and I assume the rest of the Netherlands. The Dutch seem to be most fond of white asparagus and you can find it in the market, at the grocery, and in almost every restaurant. If you order asparagus at the market, you will definitely get white asparagus unless you specify that you want green.

Barbara asked me how I found the restaurant. I have to admit, although I am a fan of the web (I’d better be, given my day-job, which clearly should not ever be “professional blogger”), the books that we brought with us are much easier and faster than using the web, and I’ve found them to be both comprehensive and usually accurate even though books can’t be kept up to date real time the way a website can. In the apartment in Leiden we have an Eyewitness Guide (Amsterdam), an Eyewitness Top Ten Guide (Amsterdam), an Insight City Guide (Amsterdam) and a Frommers for Belgium, Holland and Netherlands. They all feature the main sights, but often have a different take on it. Some sights are only in one book or another, and often these are real winners, smaller and less touristy. I looked through the books to find the best traditional Dutch restaurants that don’t cater to business diners, narrowed it down to three, and then checked those three out online. Spanjer & Twist, Haesje Claes and Del Belhamel.

I have since been to Spanjer & Twist, for an afternoon break. It is fantastic, especially on a nice afternoon when you can sit outside on the canal. But I think that it would have been too casual, although it is difficult to be sure not seeing the restaurant in the evening and not seeing a dinner menu. I have also since been to Haesje Claes, when Jane was here. While it is very old fashioned, like nothing has changed there in the past 100 years, I don’t think the food is as good as at Del Belhamel.

The only time I researched almost solely online was when we went to southern Belgium for the beer tour. I did try to find hotels in the Frommer Benelux book but didn’t have much luck. I didn’t expect it to be of much use planning the brewery tours. The Frommers book did, however, highlight the great country inn where I stayed in maybe, 1993 or 1994, with mom and dad, Moulin Hideux.

Sunday we went to Amsterdam. No grandiose plan, just general goofing off and wandering around. We went Dutch and brought our own sandwiches which we ate along the Rokin (one of the canals). Kevin also had a raw herring. Checked out the current assortment of Freitag bags… but didn’t see any that we had to buy. Walked along Leidsestraat and shopped a little. Walked up to Museumplein and played at the playground.

Amsterdam Central Station

Tiles on the wall in an entryway to a home.

Morning beer stop at Brasserie Luden

Canal houses showing a variety of gables

Kevin’s Herring

Herring down the hatch!

One stall at the Bloemenmarkt (flower market)

An elaborate canal house, with a garage! A garage is a rare sight.

Beer stop at Café Belgica

Lizard Garden

Lia and Kevin playing on the swings at Museumplein.

Since we didn’t go to my favorite tourist spot in Leiden yesterday, the mill, we went today. We had a long conversation about pannekoeken then mill, or mill then pannekoeken. We decided on mill then pannekoeken. We went back to Pannenkoekenhuis de Schaapsbehuis, where we ate with Cathy. We sat outside and had two mishaps: One, the waitress spilling our leftover pannekoeken and waters on Mimi, and the teenage christian rock singers on the square during our entire meal. We wandered around some more, and then, worn out, slowly headed home. Girls up Harlemstraat to the port to Herengracht; the boys back to town hall to pick up the bikes.

Lia a the mill.

Morspoort, one of the two remaining city ports

Double Bonus: Happy Anniversary to Kevin and me.

Waiting for the train to Leiden.

Our friends from Chicago Zaf, Mimi and Lia, who now live in Barcelona, arrived on May 8th. When I picked them up at Schiphol, Lia was hugging Baby Baci! How big of a “feel good” is that??!

Fois Recovery

We dropped their stuff off at the house. And they had stuff. Not a lot of clothes, but they brought us an entire pantry of food! Check it out:  A bottle of White Port, three bottles of wine, a huge piece of fois gras pate, fig marmalade (for the fois), gelée (for the fois), asparagus, salad (can you tell they emptied their fridge?), a huge piece of heavenly pecorino cheese that they hand-carried from Sardinia, olive oil potato chips, crackers, smoked red peppers, some mayonnaise for Kevin, little peppers in a jar, fuet (little sausages) AND chorizo. The works! Unfortunately there was a little accident with the fois gras: It arrived in a broken jar. Zafar painstakingly went over every millimeter of that hunk of fois (I suppose it is sacrilegious to call it a “hunk” of fois gras, but it was a big heavenly hunk), to make sure that he got all the little pieces of glass out.

We headed out for the ZaMiLia version of the “first day” tour of Leiden. Our first stop was some caffeination (for Mary) and some snackage for everyone at my favorite coffee cafe, Macchiato. I had a brownie (not that kind of brownie, a regular brownie, although I must say that it was more like eating a humongous piece of fudge, only not as sweet as fudge usually is), Mimi had mincemeat pie (we thought it was apple, whoops!) and Zafar and Lia had a muffin. Lia also got some bonus cookies with her drink, because she is so cute! We had fun with our waitress, who periodically turned into a very tall young man. 

ML&Z at Macchiato. Mom’s “Scottish friend" is in the background.

We saw mom’s Scottish “friend” there (remember the guy who talked her ear off when we were having a beer on the canal barge? That was at Macchiato, too, so this must be his favorite place for a cuppa joe, too. I took a photo on the sly, just so I could show him to you. He looked normal, today, not gross or weird. He is behind Z M & L in the photo.

Serious nappage!

We went back to the house for some serious napping. I can’t say power napping, because none of it was short. Vacation is wonderful, isn’t it? Zaf and I took a walk to Hoogvliet for some groceries, specifically for dinner because I don’t think we had anything to eat in the house except for all the stuff they brought. He was really digging all the ethnic foods in the grocery store, and started filling that suitcase right back up again!

We had white port cocktails while the chefs (that would be Kevin and Zaf) cooked us dinner and Lia was passed out on the sofa.

Port Tonic:

In a tall glass partially filled with ice add equal measures Taylor’s Chip Dry White Port and tonic water. Add more tonic if desired. Garnish with generous lemon slice or half-slice, squeezing a bit of juice out before adding lemon slice to drink. Stir. Enjoy.

Saturday morning Kevin came down for Breakfast. Sarah and Maxim were eating, and basically just cracked up for a long time. We have never met them, and even though they knew we were coming, I think meeting people with very poor German skills (enough to make us really funny, I guess) was too much and they couldn’t contain themselves.

Kevin and Nicolas

Sarah

Maxim

Sarah got a new frame for her bed that lifted it up off of ground level. Um, yeah, it took the three adults a little while to put it all together. Not because we are not intelligent (we all are) and not because we don’t have the skills (Kevin is even an engineer, so should be easy, right?)… we had trouble because… we had hardware issues!!!

Cool bed!

We went out for pizza in the afternoon. The kids were very occupied by the hundreds of corks that were “decorating” behind the benches. Later on we went  over to Olympia Park (1972 Summer Olympics). The forecast was not so nice, but it turned out to be decent weather, so we wandered around for awhile and then went up in the tower. There was an outdoor festival (think a Chicago streetfest and triple the size) called Tollwood. We walked through long enough to get kids waffles and find the blow-up-jumpy-thing. Here’s one I haven’t seen yet: It was a blow up blue cow, upside down, with blow-up bouncy udders within the jumping area. I didn’t take any photos. Should have. There also was a 24-hour bike ride going on at Olympia Park. It was a little scary walking around sometimes because the riders were not necessarily staying within the confines of the route and they would come zipping through the crowd on their way to pit-stops.

Olympia Park

Olympic Stadium

Olympic Village

Looking towards down town Munich

On the tower's outdoor platform, 191 meters high

"Sun and Sky". The official symbol of the XXth Olympics in Munich, 1972. Redesigned by Victor Vasarely and woven into a tapestry by Pierre Daquin.

The tower seen from the Tollwood festival

Post-bedtime beverage of choice was Schneider Weisse, an amber-colored beer brewed with the same recipe for more than 130 years by the oldest wheat beer brewery in Bavaria.

Today we went to Nicolas’ field hockey tournament. He had four 15-minute games. Super cute. Fun to watch.

Nicolas (left)

The team (Nicolas is third from left)

Sarah and Maxim taking a break from the games

We had a barbecue in the afternoon. Barbara prepared too much food, as most barbecue hosts do. She does have a charcoal Weber® kettle, so the Schuelers are very proud of her! 

What's a barbecue without corn?

Kevin and I had to leave in the mid-afternoon to head back to Leiden. Barbara, Sarah and Maxim gave us a ride to the airport and off we went. Countdown… I’m officially within a week of having to leave for home.

PS Nicolas is totally NOT a fan of having his photo taken. Don’t show him these. Most of them were taken on the sly!

The boys are down along the canal, sitting on a bench, on a conference call. It is a lovely place for a conference call. It is 10:40 and not quite yet dark. I’m still amazed by that.

Tonight, on our favorite bridge over the Herengracht. You can barely see the church in the background.

Oliver Belgian Beer Cafe - Leiden

It’s hard from the photo to see the great ambiance they have going. The restaurant is quite large, with a huge bar area, bar as well as high and low tables. There is a courtyard, and they have tables set up in the courtyard. Reynier tells us he was born here. It used to be a hospitial. Now there is an example of good re-use of space!

I had two beers tonight. The guys didn’t have any because they still had a call to make. If you believe that, well, good for you. First I had a LaChouffe, because, I could and because we visited the brewery. Then I had a Brugse Zot Dubbel. Great label, good color. Tasted like air. Don’t need to have that again. Good alcohol content, though, so, maybe?

Brugse Zot

Banana Split

The conference call. This one counts, not like the Friday Night Conference Call.

The view from the conference call.

Here is a cool tradition, and I think I’ve seen this somewhere else. When you finish your exams, I think when you are ready to move on to high school (at 16) you hang your backpack from the flagpole. There are a whole bunch of these in our neighborhood today.

OK, about signage…

A red outline on a sign means “don’t do this”. So then what the heck does this mean?!? It’s a big white square of “don’t do”. Don’t do any white? Don’t do any nothing?

Loose translation is bridge activity.

This was my groovy souvie from Kevin’s sign-shop visit today:

No pooping!

And lastly, this is what I had hoped the blog would be. Daily writing, when something funny happens, or something not funny happens that I can spin into funny… ah, well, I have a little more catching up to do (Zaf and Mimi, Barbara and Marta, Kevin’s Dad)… and by then I will be home.

I’ve lost a day, though, because yesterday I was a wreck. I managed to get some food poisoning. I guess you never know exactly what it is that makes you sick, but I’m pretty sure it was the frites I bought at Smullers in the Amsterdam train station. The good news? I am definitely not having frites again before I go home. I have to confess, though, that I’ve only had frites four times (I think!) In fact, this was the first time I have bought them when I was tooling around on my own. I don’t care if I ever have another frite again. I’d much prefer to indulge in Magnums anyway.

I am trying to knock items off my to-do list. I knocked two off my list today, the Willet House (an old canal house with lots of art and artifacts) and the Old Masters Exhibit at the Historical Society. But then I added one to the list.

Tomorrow I am getting my hair cut. I had a little faith in Brenda, who has done a nice job on Kevin’s hair twice, but she is not working tomorrow. So I am getting the crap-shoot hairstylist.

I  can add photos again. I added a few to the post from Paula’s wedding (see below).

I am sitting on the back porch having a lovely glass of water (I had a gin and juice the night of the attack, so I’m not quite ready to have a cocktail yet) and now that I’m working on the blog again, Kevin will call and say he’s on the way home. Mind you, it is 7:20 Leiden time… when I work until 7:00 at home, he goes nuts on me. Our friend and colleague of Kevin’s from Chicago, Mark, is here. (BTW his dad is our organic beef source, if anyone is interested in some delicious beef). I am hoping that we are going out to dinner tonight.

Mark was on my flights to Amsterdam. We had a connection in DC and as luck would have it our flight crew was late coming in from Denver. The plane left Chicago an hour and fifty minutes late which was exactly how long we had between flights. I never thought we would make it. There weren’t a lot of flight options, so off I went to DC with hope. (Oh, here’s Kevin calling!) We landed, no lie, at the exact same time the Amsterdam flight was supposed to be leaving. I thought there wasn’t a chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that I would make that flight to Amsterdam but it was worth a shot. I did the mad dash. I heard a page as I rounded the corner towards the gate, (“passenger Schueler from Chicago, oh here you are”), I ran on board and literally, they shut the door on my butt. It was a good twenty minutes after the departure time, and the only reason I made that flight was because they had to de-board the original plane (a problem with the brake fluid), and move all the passengers to a new plane. I thought Mark had ditched altogether. I didn’t see him on the Chicago to DC flight, and he must have gotten off that first plane earlier than I did because I didn’t see him running to C5 with me. I was surprised 5 hours into the flight when he walked down the opposite aisle and waved. Nice to see a friendly face on board.

Dinner time. Gotta run.

If a wedding can really display the personality of the couple, theirs truly did.

Somewhere in the world, there is a culture that has a word or a symbol that is bigger and more powerful than the word “love”. That is what Paula and Tim have.

Here are a few photos of the gorgeous and happy bride with her new husband. True love and happiness.

The next morning I took Jane to the airport. Bye!

I went into Amsterdam to try and knock off two more things I want to see before I go home: The Museum of Bags and Purses (Tassenmuseum Hendrijke) and FOAM (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam).

Tassenmuseum Henrijke in a canal house on Herengracht

The Museum of Bags and Purses was awesome even though I am SO not a purse addict. I am not sure if this museum is new or what, but it was not in any of the books we have, nor is it in any of the other literature I have picked up while I’ve been here. I saw it on the first canal tour that I took, with Eric and Melissa. The building is beautiful on the inside: Tall ceilings, old woodwork and a small cafe. The museum is really well done. It is clean. Objects are well identified. The circulation plan makes sense. It is a very nice place. You start on the third floor, where there are very very old bags. There are explanations about how they were used (man bags as well as little pouches women carried to hold their valuables, tied to strings beneath their skirts) and sometimes also explanations about how they were made. On the second floor is an exhibit of more contemporary bags, mostly from the 20th century. Space on the ground floor is used for temporary exhibits (currently Beastie Bags, bags in some way referencing an animal) and a gift shop.

The old collection is extensive. It takes up a whole floor and includes hand made bags, metal bags, lace bags, early leather bags, beaded bags, silk and velvet bags, marcasite bags, bags with precious and semi-precious stones and/or gold embroidery and more. The contemporary collection is not as varied, but is still quite large. There are couture bags, bags owned by celebrities (including royalty), and pop-culture bags. I think that interested me the most at this museum was learning that until relatively recently, women made their own handbags. The handiwork in the bags is amazing. I guess this is what the women did sequestered away while the menfolk were smoking cigars and having a nip of whiskey.

My three favorite bags in the museum were:
1. Beaded bag in progress. Beaded bags were knit by hand. You would buy a kit that had yarn, beads, and instructions for stringing the beads. You had to string the beads, perhaps as many as 50,000, in a particular order according to the instructions. Then you had to actually knit the bag. The instructions must have been good and the knitters quite expert because there were many examples of beautiful beaded bags.

Kit for making a beaded bag

Yarn strung with beads. If this was for a bag being actively knitted, the beads would be tightly strung on the yarn. There would be no yarn visible between beads.

Bag being knitted c.1800s

2. Bag made from toad skin. Really, toad skin.

Toad skin

3. Bag made from lizard skin

Bag made from lizard skin. And some other parts of that lizard. GROSS! (but cool)

PS: My favorites from an artistic standpoint. I don’t think I could carry a frog or lizard purse. Besides, I prefer to go out without a purse!

I went for lunch on Utrechtsestraat, where mom and I ate after the Van Loon museum. Around the corner on Keizersgracht is FOAM. I was psyched the two museums were relatively close to each other. But guess what? The exhibit I wanted to see, Richard Avedon, had just closed and they are setting up the new exhibit so the museum was CLOSED! Bummer. The new exhibit should be pretty cool, though. The Netherlands is celebrating the 400th anniversay of Henry Hudson discovering the island of Manhattan and founding of New Amsterdam, now New York. Four New York photographers, Gus Powell, Carl Wooley, Richard Rothman and Joshua Lutz were each commissioned to explore a different aspect of the city: the street, the night, the water and the outskirts. I’ll try to get back there and let you know how it is.

Walked back towards the train station via Kalverstraat, the pedestrian shopping street. There are all kinds of shops, many of them cheesy, but some of them nice.

Before posting this, I checked out the Museum of Bags and Purses website so I could include the link. Sounds like the museum moved to the current location around 1996.