The Smoly Adventures

One of the great benefits of living in Europe is the ability to maximize your time. When one travels from the US to Europe, time is your largest constraint and visitors are forced to blitz through the major cities in order to squeeze in the most possible. A little less than 2.5 years into our grand European adventure, we have now spent seven days in the Netherlands.

We once again took advantage of accrued hotel points and stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott, Amsterdam Airport. The hotel was in the midst of a large expansion, adding over 100 additional rooms, but was fully accessible during our stay. While this trip was scheduled around a return visit to the Keukenhof Gardens, we were able to visit multiple museums, as well as a couple of additional fun activities.

Our first stop was the Clara Maria Cheese Farm and Clog Factory, located southeast of the airport in Amstelveen. Founded in 1859, this working farm is open for tours of their traditional methods of producing cheese and clogs, and has a gift shop with dozens of flavors of cheese available for purchase. They'll send the cheese home with you in a traditional cheese bag, or they'll throw it in plastic wrap, that enables it to be shipped.  We sent several cheese wheels (small ones mind you!) back to family in the US.

Museum Hopping

Unlike our trip last year, we purposely stayed a few extra days so that we could visit some of Amsterdam's museums. First up on Friday was the Rijksmuseum. Located in museum square, it is a Dutch national museum focused on art and history--this was by far my favorite of all that we've been to thus far (Official Tip: Purchase your tickets ahead of time!). Our combo ticket got us into the museum as well as the special Rembrandt exhibit that was then on display. What we most appreciated about the Rijksmuseum was not only did they have the audioguides (all the major European museums do), but they had a specially developed kids-guide that takes you to the highlights of the museum. Will had a blast being the official leader that morning! Seeing Rembrandt's The Nightwatch ranked up with seeing the School of Athens in the Vatican. Janet and I's favorite, the museum gift shop. We're both always on the lookout for a good book, and the Rijksmuseum had them, and in English to boot!

A ten minute walk from the Rijksmuseum is the Van Gogh Museum. Substantially smaller than the Rijksmuseum, it was none-the-less an amazing museum, and moved a visitor through Van Gogh's life. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted so I'm unable to share any. With the proximity of the museums, it is easy to see both in the same day.

After our fill of museums, we set off for the city of Haarlem. Haarlem is most known for having the Corrie Ten Boom house. For those unfamiliar, Corrie Ten Boom's family were Christians, part of the Dutch resistance, and housed Jewish people in a hidden room in their residence. For more information, you can read her autobiography, The Hiding Place. We also were able to visit the cathedral prior to its daily closing. Before returning to our hotel, we stopped for dinner at a great burger place, the Thrill Grill. The food was superb, prices were reasonable, and even had locally-brewed beer available.

Keukenhof

Saturday morning was spent at the Keukenhof Gardens. Having been disappointed by the lack of flowers in bloom last year, we were determined to have a different experience this time and were not disappointed. What a difference a year and four weeks makes; though in hindsight, we should have gone the week prior. Many of the blooms were at, or past their peaks, however, the weather was mostly warm which made the experience more enjoyable, even if we dodged some passing rain showers.

Following the Keukenhof, we decided to travel about 40 minutes south to The Hague. Naturally, the many international institutions that call The Hague home were closed for the weekend. We traveled a short distance to the coastal town of Scheveningen. Though it was incredibly windy, we all enjoyed being on the coast and strolling the expansive boardwalk. Once we were all sufficiently cold--which took about 15 minutes--we ducked into an open restaurant for a plate of Dutch pancakes. 

Rotterdam

Sunday morning we set off back to Germany, by way of Rotterdam. We surprised the boys with a 1.25 hour harbor tour. This was incredibly informative and the boys thoroughly loved being on a boat! Setting off from the Erasmus bridge, the tour worked toward the North Sea, and after about half an hour, turned around and started back, detouring into several of the channels where cargo ships of all sizes were moored. The tour culminated by taking us past the SS Rotterdam, the former ocean liner that is now a high end hotel and restaurant.

The harbor tour complete, we made the 15 minute walk to the Maritime Museum Rotterdam. The Maritime Museum had both indoor and exterior components, with the exterior being preserved boats and ships that are able to be explored, some with interactive demonstrations. We grabbed lunch at the museum cafe, and then toured the facility. Overall good displays throughout, and they even had a children's play area on the 3rd floor.









As with our first trip, we enjoyed our time in The Netherlands. The sights, the people and the easy use of English throughout the country always makes for a great trip.

To close out the month of March, we ventured north, northwest for a three-day whirlwind trip to the Netherlands; and the drive was a long one.  Passing through the Ardennes was interesting and we passed numerous locations made famous during the German counter-offensive in December 1944. We didn't stay in Amsterdam proper, but rather the Courtyard by Marriott out near the international airport. The Courtyard was in a great location, a mere 15 minutes from our primary destination for this trip: the world-renown Keukenhof Gardens.

When many people think of the Netherlands, three things typically come to mind:  Wooden shoes, windmills and tulips.  We came for the Tulips and saw the windmills as a bonus.  The challenge with the tulips is that due to the popularity of the Keukenhof, you need to book your trip many weeks/months in advance, not knowing whether or not the weather is going to cooperate to allow the tulips to be in full bloom. We chose the opening weekend, but were thwarted by weeks of colder weather preceding our visit. Nevertheless, we saw tulips, and it was enough to whet our appetite that we're already planning our return visit for April 2019. The overall theme of the pavilions was "Love" and the arrangements were amazing. Here is a small sampling of our 

 


 

 






 

Following our nearly six hours in the Keukenhof, we realized that we were very close to the beach and the North Sea. Two beaches and close to an hour of driving later (due to not having Euro on-hand), we finally arrived in seaside town of Zandvoort. Even though it was still cooler, we enjoyed being close to the ocean again--not to mention the largest beach either of us had ever seen; it had to be close to, or exceeding 600 feet wide from boardwalk to the water at low tide. The boys had a blast running around in the sand, and we all felt the water (which was bitterly ice cold)!  We enjoyed a delicious Italian meal at the Beachclub Far Out. This restaurant was like all the other places we had visited in the Netherlands thus far, everyone spoke perfect English and had no qualms about conversing with us in our native language.

Sunday was Palm Sunday and Janet found an English speaking church in Amsterdam.  We made the 30 minute drive into the city from our hotel, lost our bearings on a narrow street and not nearly sufficient signage, but eventually got to the English Reformed Church Amsterdam. ERCA is tucked away in the southwest portion of the city and was founded in 1607 and the building is fully owned by the congregation since that year. We were appreciative of the availability of a children's church which Will was eager to take part in, as well as the warm welcome that we received via our attendance that morning.




Following church, we began our five hour drive home with a diversion to Utrecht and the Miffy Museum. Miffy is a beloved rabbit and the museum dedicated to him, inspired by the books by Dick Bruna, is perfect for kids five and under.



Seeing that is was past lunch time, we walked across the street for a quick meal at the Utrecht City Museum Cafe.  We highly recommend the cafe, the food was organic and amazingly prepared--it was easily some of the best food we've had yet in Europe and the boys enjoyed their Miffy pancakes.


Immediately adjacent to the museum and the cafe, was the Nicolas Church one of the many protestant churches in the Netherlands.  We enjoyed a brief tour of the church with our English-speaking guides and learned about the church's reformation history. Finally, we loaded up into our car and made the uneventful drive back to Germany.  The most lively moment of our drive occurred after crossing the border into Germany where we encountered a police checkpoint... which shouldn't have been there.  We were quickly recognized to be Americans, confirmed that we were destined back to Ramstein and were allowed to proceed on our way.  Later that evening, news broke that the Catalonia leader, Carles Puigdemont, was arrested when he crossed the German-Danish border.