Netherlands, Norway and Svalbard

[jxv]

We visited the museum village of Orvelte. It looks like an ordinary village, but it has a number of interesting displays and demonstrations, some requiring an entrance fee. It is best to check the on-line program before visiting.


An old bakery is still in use. Some of the space is used as a coffeeshop. A souvenir shop and an art gallery are also to be found.


Alternative transport is provided for those who don’t want to walk.


The “Schoonebeker Schaap” (Sheep from Schoonebeek) is a sturdy local breed.

 

[jxv]

Leeuwarden is the capital of the province of Friesland. It is European Capital of Culture for 2018. Lots of art exhibitions, sculptures and various other activities attract tourists and as a result accommodation prices have skyrocketed. We decided to stay at a hotel in Hurdegaryp just outside the city. It is a 9-minute train ride (€2.75) or 20 minutes by bus to the city centre.


The Van der Valk hotel (Van der Valk is a large Dutch hotel chain) had a 3 nights for the price of 2 promotion.

The rooms are typical for an older 3 or 4-star establishment, but the corridors reminded me of concrete pedestrian underpasses and the attempt at “artistic” decoration has not really worked.

As usual for a Van der Valk hotel, the restaurant attracts lots of customers from the surrounding area with good food at reasonable prices.

 

[jxv]

We visited Leeuwarden (Ljouwert in the Frisian language, which is quite different from Dutch), the provincial capital of Friesland (Fryslân).

In the early 16th century the citizens of Leeuwarden demanded that a new church tower be built, higher than the Martinitoren (97 m) of nearby Groningen and preferably higher than the Dom Tower (112 m) in Utrecht. Building of the Oldehove Tower started in 1529. By the time they got up to about 25 m the builders noticed that the tower was no longer vertical. Not to worry! They just built the next section vertically onto the leaning part. Building had to be stopped in 1533 at 39 m high because the top was 2 m out from the vertical again. It still stands like that. Not only does the tower lean, it also has a kink in it!


The people of Leeuwarden had to wait a long time to have a tower higher than the Martinitoren and the Dom Tower. The Achmea office tower of 115 m was completed in 2002. Great views over the city can be enjoyed from the 26th floor, which is only open to tourists on Saturdays. Buy tickets (€3.50) from the tourist office on the ground floor. The tickets are for a particular timeslot with limited numbers.

 

[jxv]

Saturday afternoon we visited the Ceramics Museum in the Princessehof. Mrs jxv has collected quite a few Delft Blue and Chinese ceramics, so this was of particular interest to us.


Delft Blue tulip vases.


Fun artworks!

 

[jxv]

Did you know that Queen Elisabeth is Frisian?

We went on a guided walking tour (almost every day at 13:15, from Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden, €3.50) and at this mural the guide explained that Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange-Nassau, Stadhouder of Groningen and Friesland (born 1687, died 1711), and his wife Princess Maria Louise, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel (1688-1765) are the most recent common ancestors to all currently reigning European monarchs. Therefore, according to the Frisians, all these monarchs are Frisian, including Queen Elisabeth!

 

[jxv]

A few more pictures of Leeuwarden before we move on.

The town hall with the Wilhelminaboom (Wilhelmina Tree), planted to celebrate the crowning of Queen Wilhelmina in 1898, the year she turned 18. There are many such “Oranjebomen” (Orange Trees) in the Netherlands, celebrating significant events for the Royal House of Orange. This is not the original tree, it had to be replaced.


The Oldehove tower is not the only building in Leeuwarden that is not standing straight.


Many post offices around the world have been converted to shopping malls, but the Leeuwarden post office was not big enough. It was converted into a café and bar.


Extravagant architecture, housing a pharmac_.

 

[jxv]

We departed Leeuwarden on a Monday. Overnight we stayed at a Fletcher hotel just outside Epe, near Heerde, so we could visit my sister-in-law again and go out to lunch with her and her relatives. Tuesday afternoon we visited a friend in Apeldoorn, who is in poor health. We did this on the way to Nieuwegein, just South of Utrecht, where we stayed two nights with relatives. Thursday we visited friends in Hoogerheide, South of Bergen op Zoom, where we stayed in Hotel Old Dutch.

Mrs jxv and I lived in Bergen op Zoom for 7 months in the seventies, just after getting married. At that time I was doing my national service and worked in Hoogerheide. As a recently graduated engineer I got a special job with the Materiel Testing Department, playing with earth moving equipment, tanks and various other interesting items. By the end of my time there I was offered an extension, but we had already arranged to move to Perth, where Mrs jxv grew up.

On the Friday we visited yet more friends in Loosdrecht, on the way to Den Haag (The Hague) where we stayed the last four nights of our trip.

Bergen op Zoom town hall.

 

[jxv]

I had booked the Hampshire Hotel at Laan van Meerdervoort 108, Den Haag, but when we arrived it was a Fletcher Hotel! The transition was smooth though, they had my pre-paid booking. A few years ago we had a more difficult experience in a similar situation in Dubai.

The next day, Saturday, we went on an outing to Delft, about 10 km South of Den Haag. We took the tram 3 to Central Station and then a train and tram 1 all the way back.

I like visiting Delft. The old city has changed little since I studied electrical engineering there a long time ago. The university did change, it expanded into a very large new campus, starting in the late sixties. The electrical engineering building complex was completed in the early stages of this expansion. Now this campus is hardly recognisable, there are so many new buildings.

Mrs jxv likes visiting Delft too. She likes to add to her collection of Delft Blue porcelain at the source. This time she bought a small vase.

The “Oude Kerk” (Old Church) in Delft. Another leaning tower!


The Town Hall.


By the time they built the “Nieuwe Kerk” (New Church, everything is new once) they had worked out how to build straight. Building foundations have to be substantial to stop buildings sinking into the soft and soggy Dutch soil and usually involve lots of piles driven down to more solid layers.

 

[jxv]

I am shamelessly copying from my post in “The View From My Office” thread:

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, but Den Haag is the seat of government.

Parliament used to sit in the Ridderzaal (Knights’ Hall), but it is now only used for formal occasions. A new parliament building has been built hidden away behind it.


Across the Hofvijver (Court Pond) we see old government buildings. The little tower with the crane seemingly growing out of it is the Prime Minister’s office.


Just outside the old city area is the modern business district.

 

[jxv]

Another copy.

A visit to Den Haag is not complete without a side trip to Scheveningen Beach.

The summer weather has well and truly finished. The beach and the Pier are deserted.

The Kurhaus is the grandest building on the boulevard.


The beach pavilions are being dismantled and put in storage till next spring.

 

[jxv]

Some more or less random photos taken around Den Haag.

War and Peace:

Statue of King Willem II, who lead the Dutch army in the allied defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.


The “Vredespaleis” (Peace Palace) houses the International Court of Justice (part of the United Nations) and the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

The Palace was completed in 1913, and was originally built for the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a court created by the Hague Convention of 1899 to end war. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie funded the construction, costing US$1.5 million.


On Sunday we made a trip to Rotterdam to meet up for lunch with our friends, who stayed with us in Appelscha. We hope to see them again in two or three years.

From Den Haag Centraal Station we took line E of the Rotterdam Metro, which goes through the outer suburbs of Den Haag, Delft and Rotterdam. It goes underground only when it comes to the older areas of Rotterdam.

We made the return trip by train from Rotterdam Blaak station, which I mentioned in one of the early posts in this thread.

The futuristic Metro terminus at Den Haag Central Station.

 

[jxv]

Food.

We had lunch at HEMA restaurants (refer post 27) in Delft on Saturday and in Den Haag on Monday. Both times we had “erwtensoep met rookworst en roggebrood met katenspek” (pea soup with smoked sausage accompanied by pumpernickel bread with bacon), for the princely sum of €3.75 per portion. Both times I was hungry and forgot to take photos.

It was raining the first evening in Den Haag and we just ducked around the corner from our hotel into the Zoutmanstraat, where there are a number of little eateries. We selected a “Surinaams Indonesisch” restaurant. We expected the place to have both Surinaam (from Suriname, formerly a Dutch colony in South America, then also referred to as Dutch Guyana) and Indonesian dishes, but we were surprised to find Indonesian food with a Surinaam twist. To us, being accustomed to Indonesian food, it was interesting, but just not right.

Saturday night we walked 10 minutes along the Laan van Meerdervoort in a westerly direction and crossed the road at the Albert Heijn supermarkt. On the corner, just before the bridge, is Café-Restaurant Proeflokaal Bregje, entrance around the corner. It advertises a three course meal, with various choices for each course, for €14.50 on weekdays or €16.50 on weekends. It is a cosy place with good food and on Monday we went back for our last restaurant meal of our holiday!

The first time we could not make up our mind on the choice of entrée, so we opted for the entrée sampler (+€3 p.p.)

 

[jxv]

We had noticed that all our travels were catching up with us, leaving us with reduced energy! After our lunch outing to Rotterdam on Sunday we had no desire to go out for dinner again and on our way back from the station we made a little detour past a supermarket to collect a bottle of wine, cheese and some crackers. With these we crashed in our room in front of the TV.

On our day of departure, Tuesday, we rose late, had leisurely breakfast, checked out at 10:30 and stored our luggage at the reception. We were offered late check-out till 13:00, but we did not want to be tied-in to returning to the hotel at lunchtime.

We walked half an hour in the direction of Scheveningen (NW) to the “Gemeentelijk Museum” (Municipal Museum). It has some interesting collections, including one on “De Stijl” (The Style), an artistic movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. Abstract artists Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg and architect Gerrit Rietveld are its main proponents.

We had lunch at the museum café and later in the afternoon we explored the streets on the way back to the hotel. There we settled in the bar to have a drink while waiting for our Emirates Chauffeur Drive car to take us to Schiphol Airport.

The “Gemeentelijk Museum” building is itself a museum piece.


Piet Mondriaan, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930 (from Wikipedia, Public Domain).

 

[jxv]

Our flights home were a QFF J redemption with Emirates.

Our EK CD driver picked us up half an hour early at 18:00 for the 22:00 flight. He had heard on the radio that there were big traffic jams on the roads because of the heavy rain and wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be late. He took the back roads and the trip took 50 minutes, the same as my estimate for normal traffic on the main road.

Check-in and security were quick. At immigration I habitually walked in the direction of the “Other Passports” line when Mrs jxv noticed an Australian flag symbol on the sign above the automatic passport gates, which previously were only for Schengen passport holders. It worked! Another timesaver.

Not surprisingly with only two flights a day, EK does not have their own lounge at AMS. We were pointed to the Aspire lounge (lounge 41). It is a somewhat basic lounge, quite busy.

Flight EK150, an A388, departed AMS with a few minutes delay just after 22:00. I planned to not sleep on this overnight flight and only sleep on the DXB-MEL leg to get in step with the home time zone, where we would arrive early in the morning. I mentioned in my previous post that all the travelling was catching up with us. I remember having a meal, trying to read a book and watching a movie, but I cannot remember any details! I must have fallen asleep for a while.

I do remember going to the DXB lounge, having coffee and a bite to eat, and walking around. From arrival in DXB to departure of EK406 (A388) to MEL at 09:55 was only two hours, making it just a nice break.

I must have slept well, because all I can remember from the second flight is waking up, changing out of my QR pyjamas and having champagne with my breakfast.

An EK CD driver was waiting for us and took us home to Geelong. A $90 extra charge applied for going outside the Melbourne free area.

 

[jxv]

This concludes my first TR.

It required more effort than I expected. Once I started I wanted to make sure to produce on average two posts a day. It still took a month to report on seven weeks of travel.

I hope I struck a reasonable balance between the travel story, background information and practical info for those who may contemplate visiting the same places. Maybe I even inspired someone to go for an extended visit to the Netherlands!

A thank you goes to those readers who gave comments and/or pressed the “like” and other buttons. That definitely helped me persevere.

Will I do it again? Probably, but our next major trip is a long way off.

We have not been able to plan anything for next year, as we are moving into a retirement village, which is being extended. Delays with planning approvals have meant that the completion date of our house has incrementally moved from second quarter to fourth quarter of next year. Construction of the first group of houses has finally started. We may do a few short trips within Australia.

To fill the gap I could do a retrospective TR. Pick a trip from the last few years…

Merry Christmas to all!

 

[drron]

Very well done.An interesting TR and gives us a lot to think about for future trips.Thanks.

 

[tgh]

I enjoyed the TR, you did it really well , thank you !

 

[SuePa]

Thanks for your TR, jxv. I really enjoyed it and would have, even if I didn't have trip to Svalbard planned for next year.

 

[VPS]

A great TR and yes they are time consuming and that is why everyone is so appreciative when people take the time to do them. I found it interesting that you visited a number of places that are not on a regular traveller's go to list but I've saved a few details for future trips. Thanks again

 

[OZDUCK]

A really interesting Trip Report with lots of great photos.. Thanks very much for the effort involved. I am always interested to see others travels.