Category: 2024

After a week in Amsterdam we decided it was time to get on the road, so we moved all of 70 kilometers south to Delft in South Holland. Our first stop was back to the Asian Grocery we had gone the first day as Ton wanted to stock up on some more goods for our trip. After stocking up with good noodles, some nice Thai sauces, and spices, we jumped on the freeway and turned south.

We also needed propane as we have used quite a bit so far on this trip. Daytime highs have been in the low to mid 50’s and overnight lows in the low to mid-40’s. The first night we tried to tough it out without heat, but after that night we both decided that we would run the heat at night. On the way south on the freeway we saw a Shell station that sold LP so I pulled in. François has a refillable gas system that is compatible with the LP gas pumps in the gas stations here. The only issue is that there are three different ways to connect those pumps to the fill point. I have used the French and German systems in the past, these have adaptors that I screw onto the connector permanently attached to the bottles, that connector is known as the English system. The Netherlands uses the English system, which theoretically should be the easiest as it is the one permanently connected to the bottle. Just to be safe I looked at a youtube video on how to do it, and thought I was ready as propane is self service in the Netherlands.

But despite my homework I could not get the hose connected, even with another look at youtube. I finally gave up and went looking for help. A nice gentleman named Andre came out to show me how to do it, but he could not get it connected either. Together we finally figured out that the screws they had used to mount the fill point to the door on the propane locker was interfering with the hose connection. We temporarily backed the screws out of the way and the hose attached properly and we quickly filled the tanks. Once we were done filling. Andre helped tighten the screws back so that the fill point stayed in place, and we were on our way. Once again, a complete stranger bent over backwards to help us out when we were in need. Many thanks to Andre as we now have plenty of gas to keep François comfy at night.

About 20 minutes later we arrived at the campground in Delft. Despite the propane mis-adventure it was still before noon. When I went into the reception I heard one of the receptionists telling someone on the phone that they were completely full. As soon as she hung up I asked if we could stay, and she said they were full, but she then said something to the other lady in Dutch and after looking at the computer for 30 seconds or so she said she could give me a spot for tonight. It turns out that business is unexpectedly good, they have a caravan of 14 RV’s coming in today, and the very wet spring has caused them to close a few spots that are too soft to use.

After settling François in his spot we headed to Delft. Delft is a relatively small city, but has produced more than its fair share of famous Dutch people. The one they seem to take the most pride in is Vermeer the artist as his name is all over the town.

As we were walking to Delft the sky let loose and in addition to the rain the wind was blowing enough to try to pull the umbrella from our hands. Ton saw a lot of good photo opportunities so she was pretty much ignoring the bad weather. I ended up recommending that we go into a coffee shop and see if we could wait out the rain. She reluctantly agreed.

After about 45 minutes the rain stopped and we continued our walk around Delft which is a beautiful city. The center is pretty small, but there is a lot to take in, and we enjoyed ourselves.

Ton had handed me a list of key places to see in town, and all but two of them were with 100 yards of the market square. The other two were about a 10 minute walk away.

Our last stop for the day was a short detour to a grocery store to pick up a couple of essentials, the primary one being a bottle of wine for dinner. We then headed back to François, and just as we arrived the sun broke thru and the rest of the day was beautiful and sunny.

Mother nature pulled an Aprils fool joke on us today. The weather forecast last night was pretty terrible for today, so we decided to use it as a wash and clean up day. Of course it was one of the nicest days since we had been here, no rain, and not super cold. By the time we realized it was a going to be a good day it was too late to plan something. Tomorrow we are heading south to Delft.

I woke up early to watch the Timbers game on the computer. The game was supposed to start at 4:30, but when I turned it on it was half time. It was just as well as they had played terribly and were down 2-0. I almost went back to bed, in addition to them being behind it was pretty chilly in François. I gave them a few minutes and they played themselves back into the game and eventually tied it up. But being the Timbers they gave up a bad goal at the end of the game to lose. I crawled back into bed to get another hours sleep. But, when I woke up it was 9:30. I thought I must have been more tired than I thought as that is really a late wake up for me.

After Ton and I got going we decided to head into Amsterdam to take in the sites. Ton had picked out a small pub in one of the neighborhoods near the train station that specialized in Dutch beers so we headed there first.

When we got to the pub, we noticed one of the bartenders was changing the time on all of the clocks in the pub. That’s when it hit us, today was the day to spring forward in Europe, which explained why we “slept in”, and I had missed the first half of the game.

We noticed that the Danish Brewery Mikkeller had an outpost in Amsterdam. We had visited their San Diego location, and for a short time they had one in Portland, and since we did not have a very solid plan for the day we decided to head over to Mikkellers for a beer.

After Mikkellers we were a little hungry so we headed over to a food hall nearby that is on the tourist trail. We took a slow pass thru it to see if anything tempted us, but in the end none of the cool places in the hall struck our fancy and we ended up in a little Donner Kebab shop on the main street. Sometimes the best food is cheap and simple. Well fed, we headed back to François and arrived home just as a big thunderstorm rolled thru Amsterdam.

The weather which has been pretty mediocre since we arrived took a turn for the worst last night. The temperature fell a bit more into the low 40’s and it began to rain. We had seen the forecast so had set today aside to visit a couple of the prominent museums in Amsterdam.

Our first planned stop for the day was the Van Gogh Museum. At about 11am the rain had let up, so we headed over to the metro stop. Once again, the extremely efficient Amsterdam transit system had us at the museum in under an hour. When we got to the museum we noticed a long line waiting to get into the museum. I looked for the ticket office, but could not find it, but I noticed most people were using their phones to get in the museum. I went on line to check on tickets and saw that the museum was sold out everyday for the next two weeks!

Because we do all of our travel in the shoulder seasons, we rarely think to make reservations, and this is one of the few times it bit us. A little disappointed, I was also worried that the other museum we had planned on visiting might be booked so I quickly looked at the web site for the Rijksmuseum to see if they were sold out also. The website showed that there were no tickets available to purchase today and tomorrow on line. Now we were really stymied as our whole plan for the day was to visit these two museums.

Since the two museums are adjacent to each other we decided to walk over and get a couple of pictures of the outside. As we got closer we saw the entrance to the museum store. Ton suggested we go take a look at the store and as I walked up I saw what looked like a ticket office dispensing tickets. I told Ton to go in the store while I checked the ticket office to see if we could get in the Rijksmuseum. When I got to the front of the line and asked for two tickets, the lady said of course and gave me two tickets allowing entrance in 20 minutes.

It turns out that it was a good thing we did not get into the Van Gogh Museum, as we ended up spending over 4 hours in the Rijksmuseum. And after 4 hours we did not see everything in the museum.

The Netherlands was one of the major centers of the art world for over 300 years, and this museum is full of examples of the development of Dutch art over that period. It is one of the most extensive art museums we have ever seen.

Because the weather was poor, and it was easter weekend, a normally busy museum was exceptionally busy. But unlike the Louvre it was not overwhelming. The only place that reminded us of the Louvre was in front of Rembrandts The Night Watch. There was a pretty good crowd like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. The difference is the Night Watch is 20×20 feet, and the Mona Lisa is 20X20 inches, so it was still possible to take in the Night Watch over the crowd.

Surprisingly we later found a small room off a main corridor that was full of Rembrandts that was relatively quiet. We were able to spend quite a bit of time taking in some of Rembrandts other art without being pushed around by a crowd.

There were several portraits in the Rembrandt room that both Ton and I recognized, as well as art by artists that influenced Rembrandt, or he was influenced by. It was the highlight of a very nice visit for me.

They also had a fantastic library you could go in and view. There was one person inside reading, while 3 floors up about 50 people looked down on her and took pictures. I’m not sure I could learn in that environment.

Several people had told us we had to visit the two museums. While we missed the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum was fantastic, and they even had a few Van Gogh’s including the self portrait I used above and the wheat field below.

After about 4 hours we were getting hungry as we had missed lunch. We sat down and looked at a couple of food options, but when we went out it was raining again so our motivation dropped off and we decided to head back to François for a home cooked dinner.

Once again the Amsterdam transit system deposited us quickly and comfortably back to our campground at the end of the line. When we got to François he was quite cold, so after we ate our meal, I cranked the heater up and warmed us up to a comfortable 70 degrees for an hour or so until the heat starts to escape from our poorly insulated RV. By then we will under cover and will stay warm for the night.

Today we decided to head north of Amsterdam to a village that is reported to be the most beautiful in the Netherlands. The village in addition to being beautiful also has the very nice name of Broek in Waterland. Our metro pass got us to the end of the subway line in North Amsterdam where we planned to transfer to the bus. When we got to the bus it turns out it is a different company than the one in Amsterdam, so we were back inside to get tickets. We ended up with all day passes that would allow us to explore the province of North Holland.

The bus ride to the village was short and we found ourselves in a very picturesque village. The town was originally a port, but due to a change in the course of a river it became landlocked. But it was close enough to Amsterdam that the merchants of the city kept their summer homes there.

The village was exceptionally clean and all of the homes were well maintained. There were many gardens facing the roads, and while they were nice now, we thought they would be exceptional in a couple of weeks adding to the beauty of the village.

While Broek in Waterland is beautiful, it is also quite small. We took a couple of passes thru the village. But after an hour we had seen all of the village. We decided since we had all day passes for North Holland we would visit one more town.

Monnickendam was one stop up the road. It is a larger town and is still connected to the waterway system so it has a small port. We walked from the main highway down to the port. The town was bustling compared to Broek in Waterland.

Monnickendam also felt very prosperous. Several of the businesses were closed today because of Good Friday, but there were a couple of restaurants open that seemed to be doing good business.

After a turn around the town we decided to head back to Amsterdam. The public transportation in this part of the Netherlands is the best we have ever come across. We have never waited more than 15 minutes for our train, bus or tram to arrive, even out in the countryside. It has allowed us to get around very conveniently.

We decided to head back into Amsterdam and check out a plaza we had seen yesterday with a couple of interesting statues. The plaza is dedicated to Rembrandt, and has a statue of him, but we were more interested in a new statue showing a gold Astronaut posed like Rodins The Thinker.

The city center was even busier than yesterday, but Ton had one more place to check out so we headed to Wijnand Fockink Proeflokaal a name that doesn’t get any more Dutch. They have been producing liquor there since 1679. It is located down a small road off one of the canals.

After a short quiz by the bartender on what we liked she recommended a ginger liquor which we both enjoyed. We ordered two glasses, mine was cut with some lemon juice, but Ton ordered hers straight. The tradition here is that they fill the drink to the rim, so that you have to bow to take your first drink.

We headed back to the campground and when we arrived we were startled to see a line of about 15 campers in the parking lot next door waiting their chance to register. The place is really hoping tonight. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day so we are planning on indoor activities. Hopefully, every other visitor to Amsterdam isn’t having the same thought!

Today was another recovery day. Last night at 2am Ton and I were having a nice conversation about something as we were both wide awake. We both finally nodded off about 4 am. Needless to say we ended up sleeping late.

After we got ourselves going we decided to use today to get François fully stocked for the trip When I googled groceries near me, in addition to all of the normal grocery stores an Asian Grocery popped up that looked interesting. We decided to start our day there and it was a good find. In our travels in Europe we never have come across an Asian grocery, but this one was giant. It filled a good sized warehouse, the front was individual servings, but in back there was a large section with large bulk items to purchase. Ton really enjoyed shopping and we walked out with a good amount of “luxury” items to consume on this trip.

We needed some meat and other basics, across the street was a giant grocery called Makro, we went in behind another customer, but I thought it was weird that he needed to scan a card to get in. When we got inside the interior was very similar to a Costco, and then it hit me, we had gone to one of these in Thailand before and the one in Thailand required a membership. We saw someone who worked there and I asked him if this was a membership store, and he said yes. I apologized for breaking in, and he laughed, but said to come with him and he would ask if we could get a one time membership. In the end we could not, so we ended up in a Lidl.

We also saw a small deli next to the Makro that sold Surinamese food. Ton was curious so we poked our head in. We both realized that we were hungry as we had not had lunch and only a very small breakfast. We got a couple of interesting dishes, and fried bananas which I loved. The food was tasty.

Tomorrow we are planning our first excursion into Amsterdam.

Today is going to be a short one due to jet lag. Over time we have learned to plan on a couple of easy days at the beginning of our trips to get over the jet lag. While everything went as planned yesterday and we were well settled in at our campground by 1pm, we had been more or less been going steady for over 24 hours. We both slept in this morning, and were not fully functional until noon today.

One of the reasons I picked this campground is that it is close to a metro stop and it was supposed to have good free wifi. We are struggling to connect to the campground internet. We have a very weak signal, we can connect outside of François, but as soon as we step in and close the door the signal drops. While the campground is pretty busy, it is only about 70% full so I went to the office to see what the options were. When I explained the problem I was told very bluntly that the internet was fine and the problem was with my phone. When I pointed out that we tried to connect unsuccessfully with 4 different devices, she responded that the problem was with our devices as they had checked the internet and it worked everywhere and no one else had complained. I then showed her that my phone connected to the internet fine in the office so my device was more than capable of connecting and that the issue was that in my space the signal was too weak to connect to. She took this information in stride and told me she would send some one to check. As I am writing this no one has come. The Dutch have a reputation of being blunt and stubborn, this woman is doing her best to live up to that stereotype!

After that I relaxed for the rest of the day while Ton prepared a nice meal. While preparing the meal Ton discovered the small meat balls we had bought yesterday were actually small round sausages, part of the perils of shopping in a new country!