Mijn vakantie begint

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Geo: 52.3795, 4.63772

2:00 a.m. -- BONG BONG

3:00 a.m. -- BONG BONG BONG

4:00 a.m. -- BONG BONG BONG BONG (I think)

I somehow managed to miss 5, 6 and 7 a.m., but I did hear 8 and 9. Also what sounded like a cat in heat somewhere outside my window around 6:30. Otherwise, I didn't sleep too badly.

The shower was ... not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The water only got a little outside the curtained area, and the drain works so it didn't puddle up at all. There's no fan, though, so I must remember to leave the door cracked a bit so that everything doesn't steam up and get all condensationy. (What? It's a word.) Even the water pressure was reasonably good, although there's that strange empty space in the middle of the spray. If you were skinny enough, you could stand under the showerhead and not get wet at all.

On another happy note, the wi-fi seems to be working today. Not sure what's different from yesterday, but I won't question it.

I had bought a flapjack at Boots yesterday, so I had that for breakfast. I left the hotel at 9:30, even though I knew nothing would be open yet. I walked along the Spaarne, the river that runs through Haarlem to the sea, and admired the little "ja/nee" stickers on people's mailboxes. The "nee" means that they don't accept junk mail. If we had something like that at home, I'd probably never get any mail!

Haarlem is very quiet on a Sunday morning. I encountered very few people and saw very few cars. Quite a lot of the people I did see were carrying cameras, and I would wonder if maybe they're part of my tour group. But then I would get closer and hear them speaking Dutch.

The first bridge I passed by looks like one that would be hand cranked to be opened up, and the second bridge, which I crossed over, rotates to open up a passage for boats to pass through. There were bridge tenders in little huts at each bridge, and some extremely noisy and cross-looking geese hanging out on the pilings in the canal.

Anyway, the reason I crossed the canal was to see the De Adriaan windmill. There has been a windmill on the spot since the 1700s, though the last one burnt down in 1932. It was not rebuilt till the late 1990s. The mill does actually work, though it doesn't produce anything (it originally produced flour). There are still four or five working windmills on the Spaarne, some of which produce Oil of Haarlem, which sounds like the duct tape of oils: you can use it for anything and everything.

You can only see the windmill with a guide, so the lady who took my money sent me upstairs to watch a little video until a guide arrived. By the time the video was done, the guide was there, along with an Italian couple. The Dutch guide spoke both English and Italian, the signora spoke Italian and some English, and the signor spoke only Italian. The guide did a great job of switching between Italian and English, though I was pleased to find that I was able to understand (get the gist of) most of what he was saying in Italian.

We went up inside the mill -- very steep ladder-like stairs -- and saw scale models of working windmills. It was a Dutch idea to create a windmill with a rotating top so that the mill can always catch the wind; windmills had always been entirely stationary, so if the wind was coming from a different direction, you were out of luck. From the highest floor that we were able to get to we could see the shaft of the windmill and where the millstones would be, as well as the blades moving past outside of the window. They were going pretty darned fast too! Out on the deck of the mill, a "molinaro" was working the mechanism to move the top. It's pretty simple, really, and it didn't seem difficult for him to move. There are even little anchors that go between the planks of the deck to keep the top in place once it's positioned.

After leaving the mill I strolled back the way I came, but continued on in the hopes of finding a place to get a mocha and a croissant or something. I eventually settled on a place just a few doors away from the hotel. I ended up with hot dark chocolate and a little dish of whipped cream that I could add as I liked. Very tasty and just the ticket. As I was leaving, I noticed a little cat curled up on one of the banquettes, and he was not averse to a little chin scritch.

I've come back to the hotel room to rest a bit and kill some time before the Teylers Museum opens at noon ... oh, it's 12:30 now. And it's raining. C'est la vie! (Oh, wait. I'm in the Netherlands. In that case: Dat ist het leven!) More later ....

LATER: Well, things pick up on a Sunday afternoon. Apparently the shops are closed most Sundays, but they are open today, the first Sunday of the month. The rain has also picked up; had to break out the umbrella.

I went to the Teylers Museum, the oldest museum in the Netherlands. It's a combination of geological museum, science museum, art museum, and numismatic museum. The building itself is quite pretty on the inside, with lots of lovely old display cabinets and beautifully carved pillars and railings. The older rooms are also without electricity, so if there's not much natural light coming through the windows, there's not much light shed on the displays. There's a load of fossils and bones, and a room full of old scientific instruments. I had no idea what most of them were (not a lot of English explanations), but they're definitely beautiful in their way. I thought that on a Sunday afternoon this museum wouldn't be very busy, but it was doing a brisk trade. I like to see that, even though it would be nice to be able to just swan through the rooms and stop for however long I like in front of a display. One room had a display of florilegia (beautifully illustrated books about flora, most of them rare) with a special emphasis on Prince Charles's gardens at Highgrove.

After the Teylers, I wandered back to the town centre and got a cone of french fries at a stand. I was pretty hungry, and they were soooo good ... though I think the Eiffel Tower fries beat the Haarlem fries.

The rain and the wind started to get to me (it's quite cold), so I've come back to the hotel before meeting the tour group at 5:00.

EVEN MORE LATER: We have a full group of 28 people. Mostly couples, a few single women traveling together, some other single women, and one single guy who turns out to be the talker of the group. Lots of us are from the Pacific Northwest, but there's a couple from Canada, some women from Richmond, VA, and even a couple from New Zealand. I'm dying to ask them how they latched on to Rick Steves. Surprisingly, only a few other people have been on Rick Steves' tours before, and there are actually quite a few people for whom this is their first trip to Europe. It looks like it'll be a good bunch. (When we all introduced ourselves, we had to say what we're most looking forward to on the tour. I said I was most looking forward to gelatoing my way through Italy. That got a laugh.)

Our guide is Reid, who looks a bit like Kevin Kline. He's been a guide for 15 years, and he's also the first male guide I've had. He's definitely going to be strict. And his mantra is: Go when you can, not when you have to. Words to live by.

We had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant a few blocks away. Generally, pretty good, but a few people thought it was really spicy. I didn't. I had a hard boiled egg in a spicy tomato sauce. Surprisingly not as weird as it sounds. There was also yellow rice and two kinds of satay, so I was happy. I sat with Bob from Big Bear (the talker), Katie from Oklahoma, and Jim from Keizer, OR. Nice people, and I told Katie (who's traveling as a single) that if she ever needs a dinner companion, I'm her girl.

After dinner we had a little walking tour of Haarlem with Hans, a local guide. Unfortunately, it was raining and there was a wicked cold wind, so it wasn't as pleasant of a walk as it might have been. But Hans showed us some beautiful old buildings that still have shop symbols in the bricks in front of each door, and we were joined by a cat looking for some affection. (He might actually have been the same cat from the cafe this afternoon, now that I think about it.) We learned about the "fake" tower on the roof of the church. The original one was built of stone, but it had to be hastily demolished (in the 1500s or something) when it proved too heavy for the roof of the church. The "new" one looks like stone, but it is made of wood. Also, when Napoleon visited Haarlem (uninvited, of course; did anyone actually invite Napoleon anywhere?), he turned the church into a stable and the tower into a lookout. He then turned the tower over to the city. To this day, the city owns the tower, while the remainder of the building belongs to the Church. The Church has no problem with this because guess who gets to pay for renovations to the tower.

The tour ended at the Corrie ten Boom house, where Hans gave a brief rundown of Corrie's story. He also said that his own father had been forced to hide during the war because the Nazis were going to conscript him to work in the ammunition factories.

Must be up early tomorrow for our day into Amsterdam. No sleeping in till 8:00 tomorrow!

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Photos

Atop the windmill
My guide (with the silver hair), the two Italians, and the miller going about moving the blades.

Bridge across the Spaarne
This is the bridge that looks like it would be hand cranked. Note the ubiquitous bicycle.

Doorway in Haarlem
I saw this doorway to what seems to be an apartment building while i was strolling. It sits on the Spaarne.

Comments

[madeira vakantie]

nice blog