Wonderful Weesp

 We are back home, returned a couple of days ago. We spent the last night in Vinkeveen where we had picked up and now returned our boat. The marina is filled with many boats that are permanently docked there, and what seemed like an equal number of LeBoat boat rentals. Ours, the Cirrus B, is the smallest boat they rent, which sleeps two comfortably and would work  for a family with a couple of kids.  

On our travels and at the dock we marvelled at the larger boats which hold from 4 passengers to up to 12, with multiple cabins and bathrooms. I don't think I'd enjoy being in such close quarters with so many others, nor do I think Loring would be comfortable navigating a much larger boat. Although he did well with ours, he did express a certain amount of nervousness especially while navigating locks and docking the boat, especially when he needed to back in. 

Cruising along the canals was wonderful, the experience onboard as delightful as the places we visited. It is amusing that some of the places we went are much more accessible by car or public transportation than be boat. But that was fine. We didn't even mind crusing some canals several times when the bridges weren't working and we were stuck for several days between two locations that we went back and forth between.

I regret that we didn't get to many of the places we had intended to visit, including Delft and Leiden. Amsterdam had been tentative from the start because from what I read it's overrun with tourists. (like us, I know.)  I wouldn't have minded spending a day there, especially to visit either the Rijkmuseum or the Van Gogh. But I also don't much regret not going there. 

We did visit Gouda, but by bus from our mooring in Maarssen if I am remembering right, and also the town of Oudekerk, which had been on our route but we might not have visited otherwise. Gouda is a popular tourist stop, and as you probably know, famous for its cheese. They have a weekly cheese market, which we weren't there for. I understand it involves some slapping as a form of bidding on or paying for the large rounds of cheese. I suppose I should look that up. But I don't mind that we werent there for the market. I did write more about Gouda in a previous post. 

Oudework was a treat, especially since we had no expectations of what we'd find there.

We also went to Utrecht by bus on another day, which we probably would have done anyway. Only electric boats are allowe into the city. 

And Weesp was a delight which we might not have discovered if not for the bridge closure situation. I had looked at it breifly before we left home, mostly as a possible last night and also a jumping board for a day trip to Amsterdam. It's pretty close to both. But I hadn't really looked into what there was to do there. So that was another unexpected treat.

Our passage along the Vespe river, much wider than the canals, had given us a bit of trepidation because of its size and also the amount of traffic, including a large number of huge barges. But in fact it was quite interesting,  and surprisingly relaxing,  although nowhere as scenic as the canals, . Most interesting were the many barges, to which of course we had to cede the right of way. It was hard to imagine someone piloting a boat so large, where it didn't seem like the pilot could even see over the length of the boat from the back. It wasn't clear how many crew members were on board. But some of them had cars aboard. I imagine their voyages were long. I wonder where they travelled to and from. Some were clearly fuel tankers;  it wasn't possible to discern what most others carried. 

It's hard to know what we missed by not going to many of the towns we'd planned to. I would have liked to visit them, but who knows if we would have enjoyed them more than the ones we did spend time in. We didn't see much of Utrecht when we went in for the day, but did enjoy the museum and the Miffy artist's exhibit. Who remembers Miffy and all the cute little books by Dick Bruna? I hadn't known that he was Dutch, but it was interesting to learn about him and see his recreated studio. There was also a Miffy Museum across the street, which we didn't make it to.  

One thing we did not see much of was art. There are an amazing number of artists that were Dutch, Vermeer, Van Gogh,  Hals, Rembrandt, Mondrian, many others some of whom were known to me, and many others who were not. I would certainly have  liked to see the Girl With the Pearl Earring and some of the others. Including a number of woman artists who hadn't received the attention they deserved until more recent times. Of course we saw replicas of all the Bosch paintings and much more about him including the parade and his house. That brings to my mind the question of how important it is to see the original vs. an excellent reproduction, or even an enhanced copy via modern technology. What makes it important to see the originals at all? Is it anything more than an item to check off a so called bucket list?  I don't have an answer, Let me know if you do. 

What we did gain via the extreme heat that limited our travels was to visit some interesting and less touristed towns that we might not otherwise discovered or spent much time in. Those include Maarsson, Breukelin, Oudewater, and Weesp. 

I've written previously about some of those towns. But let me tell you about Weesp, our last stop before returning to the lake and Vinkeveen. Weesp is a short distance from Amsterdam, so I would recommend it as a possible base if you are visiting the area. It is a charming and scenic town, with a number of shops and restaurants. But what really made the town for us were two sites that Loring discovered via Google maps. That often seems to identify places that other sources don't. 

First was the town museum. It is located on the second floor of the town hall which is still in use. A woman at the museum told us it's a popular site for weddings. We didn't get to see the hall, but another employee showed us the former prison cells located on the lower level.  The museum itself is small, just a couple of rooms. But sometimes these small museums are hidden treasures. Weesp was apparently famous for two things, its painted pottery and the renowned Van Houten chocolate company. The pottery preceeded the more famous Delft pottery that came later. They had a number of examples, somewhat different from any pottery that I am familiar with. Some pieces had tiny insects painted onto the bucolic scenes. A temporary exhibit featured a modern potter with some of her pieces interspersed with the antique ones. 

Best of all, in my opinion, was the room devoted to Van Houten chocolate. The walls were lined with gorgeous deco posters advertising the product, and the middle of the room was glass cases filled with other company paraphenalia, including tins and boxes and all kinds of accoutremens related to the company's products. It was visually stunning and just the kind of display that has great appeal to me. I took a lot of pictures. I'll post a few on facebook.

Our final stop in Weesp was at the Weesper Automaten Kabinet. It was described on Google as currently only open to rent for parties.  We decided to walk by, as it was not out of our way in the small town center, We thought we might be able to peer in the window. We came up to the window but before we could try to look in a man came to the door. It was the owner. He was happy to let us in. We wandered through the several rooms in absolute wonder. Ever inch of space was covered, mostly with antique arcade games. He told us this was actually just a small part of his collection. There were also pinball machines, old claw machines, carousel animals, much more. We were both in total awe. He told us that all the machines were in working condition. He had a few of them running and would probably operated more if we had asked. He also told us that this was where he lived and the room we were in was his living room. I wonder what his bedroom looks like.  I never got his name. 

I am tempted to have a party there, maybe a destination significant anniversary party. Not that I would expect anyone I know to make a trip there. But if you do happen to be in the Netherlands, I highly suggest you make an effort to go to Weesp and try to schedule a visit to the Kabinet. 

What I am going to suggest to our nephew and niece-to-be, who are planning to get married in December,  is that they go there for their honeymoon. They are both pinball addicts and would absolutely love this place. They could also visit Breukelin on their trip, the original town for which Brooklyn NY is named. They live in  New York's  Brooklyn. Or maybe they could just forgo their current plans to get married in New York and get married at the Weesp  town hall with the party at the Kabinet. Aaron and Ilana, if you are reading this, I know there are klezmer bands in the Netherlands! I am kidding about changing the wedding plans, but not about the honeymoon suggestion!

Well, this seems as good a place to end this Netherlands saga as any. If I think of anything more that I haven't described, I will add another post. In the meantime, I will post this and then post a last round of pictures on facebook. 

We arrive by boat in Maarsden (sorry, this one's out of order because I updated it. It goes earlier in the trip after the first couple of posts.)

Writing from the town of Maarsden, a small and charming place. We arrived yesterday afternoon after boating for a couple of hours from the mooring just outside of Vinkeveen, where we'd gotten the boat and our training the day before. There are moorings all over the place, some with services, others without. 

I am going to backtrack and describe some of the other things we did in den Bosch, our first location, before hopefully catching up to where we are now, on our third day out from Vinkeveen.  

Between parade viewings, we visited several other local sites. First, the Bosch museum. Sadly, most of Bosch's original paintings are not in den Bosch or even in the Netherlands. His most famous work, the Garden of Earthly Delights, is in El Prado in Madrid. As are several other of his paintings. But this museum has high quality reproductions, in accurate size. In a way, it is better to be able to view all of them in one setting, even though they aren't the originals. There are some short films, other works inspired by Bosch, and a pretty amazing clock that operates once an hour. It's not old, created in 2010, with Bosch as inspiration. There are little figures that come out of a door in a procession, and then exit throught another door. Then other naked bodies emerge in a different space and dive into what seems to be the mouths of demons. Very Boschesque. The clock face has all kinds of dials and symbols to indicate night and days, the day of the year, astrological symbol, more. You can peer into the back of the clock to see the intricate gears and workings. 

We also went to visit Bosch's house, where he'd grown up, and took a self guided tour with video stations in each room. It's pretty small, and they only let a few people at a time, which was fine. I asked where the inhabitants had slept. The man answered that they don't know for sure, can only guess. There is an elevator which I took advantage of, because the steps are pretty steep. But I did walk down the staircase that was original and hence where Bosch himself had trod. There was one small alcove above the entryway that had two lifesize figures, and I guessed that was where some of the family, maybe the parents, had slept. One of thehistorical novels I've been reading that takes place in the 17th century, a little after Bosch's time, talks about box beds. I am guessing the ones at his house may be that. I'll have to check.

We left den Bosch for Vinkeveen by private car, about an hour's drive. Distances between places here are very short by car. But much longer by boat via the canals on the leisurely boat trip we are taking. 

Eating and reading

We are coming to the end of our Dutch sojourn. Tonight we are back on the lake at Vinkeveen. At the other side of the lake is the marina where LeBoat, the rental company, is located. We plan to stay here tonite, very close to where we spent our first night out of Vinkeveen. And tomorrow night we will stay at the marina, pack up, and catch a taxi to the airport in the morning. 

All in all it's been a great trip, despite the issues with the extreme heat that totally changed our plans. But before I catch up, a little about what we ate and what we've read. We've done a lot of both. 

Whenever we travel we try to find literature that takes place in or reflects the places we are visiting. There's a lot of historic novels that take place in the Netherlands. We tried to pick a few. Most of them seem to take place in the 17th century, and most seem to feature a young woman and a painting or paintings. Maybe it's what I'll call the Pearl Earring Girl effect. You probably remember either the book or the movie or both. I loved the book, but it's also the only time I can think of that I found the movie even better. It was either Scarlett Johanssen's first film  or at least the one that first made her famous. About the famous Vermeer painting, the Girl With the Pearl Earring. It's in the Riksmuseum in Amsterdam. We never made it into Amsterdam, and I didn't really intend to, although I would like to have spent at least part of a day there to see either the Rijks or the Van Gogh museum. But it sounds so crowded and overtouristed that it wasn't high on my list. 

The books I read set here were A History of the Netherlands in Thirty Objects, a clever approach to the culture, Midnight Blue, about a young woman who becomes a painter of the famous blue pottery Delft and other places are famous for. Next, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, which takes places in modern times and the 17th century and involves the forgery of a painting. Loring is reading that now, as I write. I am currently reading a book about three teenage women who defied the Nazis called Three Ordinary Girls. I haven't read any Holocaust related books in a long time. So far this one is intriguing, because it depicts the country from the viewpoint of non Jewish citizens. And it is frighteningly similar to current events in our own country. 

I had read the Miniaturist a few years ago and recommended it to Loring. And we saw an elaborate dollhouse at the Utrecht museum that may well have been its inspiration. 

He started another 17th century romance that was so cringeworthy a romance that he soon gave it up, and I didn't even look at it. I think that one was The Colorist.  

And we both read a book called The Dutch Waterways which was descriptive of exactly what it says. 

I have probably left out one or two. 

Now, on to food. We have largely eaten and cooked on the boat, which has been great fun. We've shopped at supermarkets at several places along the way. For the first three days we were in a hotel in den Bosch, so ate in restaurants. Breakfasts were in cafes, mostly pastries and cappuccinos for me,  breakfasty sandwiches and coffee for Loring. On our boat journey, we didn't eat often in restaurants, just once in a while for lunch. Onboard, it was either granola with yogurt and bananas or bakery bread and eggs cooked on our stove. For lunches or dinners we often had bread or crackers with cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes, and either smoked salmon (more smoked than lox) and prosciutto or something similar. Our dinners onboard were most often pasta with spinach and cheese, which is what we will have tonite. This is like a dream come true for me. It is rare and startling for Loring to concede and even recommend pasta, whereas I can eat it endlessly. We've had both fresh and dried pasta, and found the dried in shapes we don't have at home. We've bought frozen spinach which here comes in adorable little cubes. And either packaged or fresh cheese or cheese sauce. I'm getting hungry as I write. 

Many have their own specialty sweets. In den Bosch it is Boschbollen, which I've previously posted photos of and maybe described too. It's a ball of pastry filled with cream and covered in chocolate. Incredibly good. Yesterday in a different town I saw them in a bakery and ordered one. It was good but not nearly as good as the ones in den Bosch. Only the top was covered in chocolate and the pastry wasn't nearly as good as in the town they are named for. Aren't I erudite? Or is it snobbish?

OUr refrigerator is filled with the things I've mentioned. We have gouda cheese from Gouda, which I have to confess we don't like as much as the cheese we got in the supermarket. Then again   there were at least a couple dozen varieties the the Gouda cheese store, so maybe we just didn't choose the right one. Even though we tried almost every one. In Gouda, in additon to cheese, they are famous for a pastry called sirupwafel, two waffle cookies with a caramel filling in between. I may have already written about them in a previous post. We have some of those, as well as delicious chocolate cookies that I am hoping to take some home of. 

I previously mentioned bitterballen, which are a kind of bar food, and really good. Yesterday I ordered a lunch of croquettes which were basically bitterballen in a different elongated shape. 

There are foods I remember from my visits here over fifty years ago, mostly for their names. There's the rijstaffel and nasi and bami goreng. They are all Indonesian-Dutch foods, from the time that the Netherlands colonized Indonesia. The rijstaffel is a spread of about 20 small dishes with rice. The nasi and bami are rice and noodle dishes, although I can't remember which is which. I would like to have tried them again on this trip, but Loring isn't as big on either noodles or rice( except for our onboard pasta/spinach/cheese concoctions.)

And then there's jenever, which is a gin-like alcohol that I am drinking right now as I write.   I have been drinking it with club soda most every night. I think I remember it originally from Belgium rather than here, but am not sure. 

Loring has tried to order his usual martini when wev'e been in restaurants, but they seem to only be familiar with it as a mixed drink it a can, and don't know how to makea it. Oh well. Beer and jenever will do.

I will stop now and cook our typical (to us) pasta dinner. 

No Experience Needed, No License Required

 

That's the slogan of LeBoat, the company we've rented our boat from. It's a large company, with locations in a number of countries, France, Scotland,  Canada, a few more. I wonder if the no license part is true in all the countries. 

Our boat is the smallest they have, the Cirrus B. It's great for two, or a family with a couple of kids. They have a number of larger boats, some of which we've seen in our travels. I'm not sure I'd recommend the trip to  someone with no experience. Loring has some, with smaller day boats like the Boston whaler we had in the Bahamas, and the one his family had in New Hampshire. That one was about half the length of this one, and much easier to manouever. Here you need to be able to navigate through bridges, and locks, and it's not so easy to dock either. And I am of little use, can barely toss the ropes ashore and only if we are very close to the dock. I am a happy passenger but not a very helpful boater. Luckily there has often been someone on shore, another boater or someone personing the lock, to help. 

And I feel like the slogan, written on the side of the boat, brands us as newcomers. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 

We are now docked in Breukelin, have been here overnight. It's the original town for which Brooklyn New York was named.  It's another charming little town, with a number of restaurants, at least half of them with Asian cuisine.   We did find one with more Dutch style food, which included a lot of steak dishes, so not exactly local cuisine. Had a nice meal of a steak salad, sauteed vegetables, mushrooms, and fries. It's actually the first time we've had fries here, although they are very popular, served in a paper cone on the street. They eat them with mayonnaise, which is the way I eat them at home too. I think the Dutch spelling is frietes. Did you know that French fries is a misnomer, because they actually originated in Belgium?  And who remembers when our over patriotic government renamed them Freedom Fries after France refused to support the Iraq war?  

Breukelin also has a number of shops, most of them women's clothing, shoe stores, etc. Outside one shoe store was a rack of Dutch souvenirs, almost entirely miniature wooden shoes. But I spied a magnet that had both Breukelin names, and bought it for Aaron and Ilana who live in Brooklyn. Do you think anyone else has ever given a refrigerator magnet as a wedding present? There are also several barber and hair salons, which seems to be the case in evert town. And wellness spas seem common too.

We will soon leave Breukelin for Weesp, which will probably be our last stop before returning to Vinkeveen and returning the boat on our last night. I think we have three nights left. It's hard to keep track.  Loring had plotted out our route back to Vinkeveen from Weesp, before he called the leBoat office this morning to reserve a taxi back to the airport. Lucky he asked them about the route, because they told him that the planned route was impassable because of weeds, and that there was an X on the map they gave us to indicate that. The online app he's mostly been using  doesn't indicate that, although it's got lots of information. So it's certainly a good thing the subject came up or we'd have been in for a very long and frustrating last day. Of course, who knows what's in store for us for the next few days. One thing we've learned on this trip is to be very flexible. Although I doubt that the recent heat wave has been much of a problem, if any, in the past.