Another Hague trip... but first, Amsterdam!

I've been thoroughly chastised by my wife for not posting pictures, so to keep the house a little calmer, I've decided to start adding pics to the blog. I'm not the photographer in our family, so if you're planning on complaining about the subjects of the pics, (or telling me that there are too many or too few pics) I'll save y'all some time and just point you in the direction of the manager. "We" have evidently made an executive decision. Now, on to our irregularly scheduled blog post.

So, I know we just got back from Ireland, but the wife needed to make a quick trip to The Hague, and asked me if I wanted to go along, or just stick around the house. She was planning on traveling Monday, working Tuesday, and returning Wednesday. I told her that for such a quick trip, I didn't see the need to go, and could take it or leave it. She suggested leaving on Saturday and driving to Amsterdam, staying in Amsterdam on Saturday night and Sunday night, then driving to The Hague on Monday afternoon. 

Looks like we're going to Amsterdam!

We drove in on Saturday and checked into our hotel. To save money, we stayed out past the airport - only about 15 miles out of town, but around 45 minutes out via bus and tram. After we checked in, we found the bus stop and figured out the "best" way to get into town. We caught a bus to the airport, then switched over to the subway / train system and got out at the central station. We wandered around for a while, eventually finding a street with bunches of restaurants on it. We picked an Italian restaurant.

Fun thing we found out about that specific restaurant - our waiter (might have been the owner, not sure) was an Italian immigrant, from Rome. We talked with him a little bit about that, and our time in Rome. Also... the boss discovered that the napkins at this place had translations for common Italian phrases. Interestingly enough, though... they weren't translations to Dutch... or even English... but German! We thought that was pretty odd, and the wife kept (an unused) one as a little souvenir.

I'm gonna go ahead and mention this now, so I won't have to bring it up in each separate paragraph: there's a lot of pot in Amsterdam. On the more populated streets, you can almost see clouds of smoke wafting through the air, and the smell of marijuana permeates the whole (tourist area of the) city. We talked with our tour guide a bit about the legality of pot... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

After dinner, we wandered around and explored a bit, with the wife taking pictures of the picturesque canals. We managed to find the big town square that we'd need to get to the next day for our tour.

On our trips to The Hague, there's one specific cheese shop that we usually visit, and while wandering around Amsterdam we found a massive store from the same chain - about 5 times the size of the one we go to in The Hague. So, of course we went in. They had a lot more to choose from, so we bought a bunch of stuff from there that we couldn't possibly live without.

Also took some of the standard tourist pics...

The wife insisted on taking some selfies next to one of the canals, and shared it with the daughter. Daughter showed it to one of her coworkers who was standing next to her, and the coworker said that I'm "old man cute." I'm not sure what that means, but I'm morally outraged nonetheless. I've never even met that coworker, and I've already called her a record number of names in my head.

In our wandering, we passed by the Anne Frank house. Evidently, it's one of the more popular tourist sites, and our trip was too last minute to be able to get tickets, so we didn't get to go in. We'll try to plan better next time. Wife snapped a pic as we walked by.

After that, we continued wandering... I have to share this part - sorry. On the banks of some of the canals, they have outdoor urinals. They're just a metal spiral shaped fence with a metal grate on the inside.. if you look at it from above, I guess it'd look a bit like a poorly drawn number 6. The fence starts at about knee height, and continues up to about shoulder height, with a screen that extends a couple of feet higher. I'd assume that it's mostly for guys to use, but who am I to judge?

After wandering some more, we walked back to the train station and took a train to the airport. While waiting for the bus, we saw a shuttle bus for the hotel, and hopped a ride with him instead. Little bit less walking for us, since the bus stop was around a 15 minute walk from the hotel.

Next morning, we caught a different bus into town - it dropped us off right next to the Van Gogh Museum, which we'd be visiting later in our trip. This day though, we caught a tram back up to the more touristy area, and went for breakfast to a restaurant that the wife had heard good things about: The Happy Pig. The Dutch are pretty serious about their pancakes, and this was a restaurant devoted to just pancakes. Not American pancakes, but a little thicker than French crepes. Rolled with your choice of filling and topping (sweet, savory, or some combination of the two). The boss had lemon juice and powdered sugar (for an old twist on Dutch Babies, that I have fond memories of in Texas), and I had bacon filling with caramel syrup on top. Both were delicious.

After our late breakfast, we wandered for a bit, then stopped on the main square for coffee. We finished our coffees just in time to meet our tour guide for our walking tour - funny how the timing worked out, huh?

Our tour guide's name was Phillip, and he was outstanding. He was from Brazil, but had lived in Amsterdam for 5 years, and gave us all kinds of information that we wouldn't have stumbled upon ourselves. We talked about the history of the city (including the famous "Red Light District") and the history of the tulip, and its importance in the history of the city, among quite a few other topics as well. Quite entertaining and informative 2 hours.

We were looking for something to do next, so we (the wife) decided to do a canal cruise. 

The canals weren't too busy, but even outside of the main tourist season there were quite a few boats touring around. I tried to imagine what the canals would look like if all of the boats were in operation, and I can't even picture it. We saw a dock where 15 or so boats were tied up, unused. As it was, our boat was following 2 or 3 others, and we had a handful behind us as well. All the boats had to slow down at every corner because the boats are pretty long, and they take a long time to turn those sharp corners.

I decided that I wanted some of the famous french fries for dinner (healthy, I know!). I waited in line for my food while the wife went next door to a restaurant that sells their food out of vending machines. Real food, cooked by real people, just in vending machines. All sorts of foods. The folks in the back cook them, then put them into the vending machines from the back. She got something called "Bami," that was a vegetarian, vaguely Indonesian noodle dish, served inside what appeared to be a fried spring roll wrapper. I didn't try a bite of that - I was too into my fries at that point. She also got something called "kaassouffle," which was basically an extra thick slice of cheese that had been breaded and fried. Now that - I had a bite of that. Pretty good as well, especially to have come out of a vending machine.

We wandered around for a while longer then made our way on foot back to the Van Gogh Museum, and caught a bus there that took us all the way out to our hotel (still with the 15 minute walk on the end, of course).

Next morning, we woke up and packed everything up, loaded the car and walked to the bus stop. For some reason, it was incredibly windy that day. I have no idea how hard the wind was blowing, but the boss had a hard time walking up the stairs to the bus stop - the wind was blowing hard enough that she was having trouble keeping her feet under her. The wind was trying to blow her faster than she could walk. We agreed that that was the hardest wind we could remember being in. 

We rode the bus to the area with the Van Gogh Museum, and went to the pancake restaurant that's rated number one in the city on Trip Advisor, The Pancake Club. It's basically a little hut on the banks of one of the canals, with seven tables in it. I know that there are seven tables because there's a sign on the door with a light on it; if the light is red, all seven tables are full, so please wait outside and they'll come get you when there's an available table. Cue the jokes about eating in a 'Red Light District' - you know I couldn't let an opportunity pass without taking a few swings at a softball like that!

The pancakes were pretty good. I got lemon and powdered sugar, the wife had ham and cheese with mushrooms - both were excellent.

After breakfast, we had a little while before our reservation at the Van Gogh Museum, so we walked over to a street with a lot of antique stores on it that the wife had found the previous evening. Turns out, in addition to a well developed taste for Westerwald Pottery, she's working on a thing for traditional Delft porcelain as well. I've really gotta stop letting her go to antique stores so often, huh?

She didn't find anything that she couldn't live without at those stores, so we walked back down to the Van Gogh Museum in time for our tickets.

I've mentioned it previously, but the boss has developed an appreciation for Van Gogh's work. Since there's an entire museum devoted to him in Amsterdam, there's no way she'd let me leave town without going through it. We learned more information about Van Gogh than one of us was interested in, and he (your oh-so-reliable narrator) tapped out after an hour and a half. The wife stayed for a while longer, then we stopped at a grocery store for munchies for the road, and rode the bus back out to the hotel. 

After battling the wind to get down the stairs at the bus stop, we hit the road for...... The Hague.

This was just going to be a quick trip, so not much was on the list. Our next morning was a little yucky, so I didn't wander around too much while the wife was working.

We'd found a restaurant that we wanted to try (The Big Green Egg), so we'd made reservations for that night. When the boss got done with work, we took off walking, and stopped by the Hat Lady - I got a new hat, because of course! The wife finally got to meet the Hat Lady - one of them at least. Turns out, "my" Hat Lady evidently doesn't work on Tuesdays; at least, this is the second visit in a row that I've gone on a Tuesday and talked with the other Hat Lady instead. I need to start scheduling it a little better... or maybe I just need to acknowledge that I have two Hat Ladies, since I've gotten 2 hats from each of them.

We wandered our way up to the Big Green Egg restaurant, and had dinner. The wife had a rib eye (and a little bit of my grilled shrimp), I had grilled shrimp (and a little bit of her steak). Pretty good, but I have nothing to compare it to, since I've never had anything else cooked on a Big Green Egg.... (hint, hint to the boss!).

On the way back from The Hague the next day, we stopped in Delft, so the wife could take a factory tour of the Delft Pottery Factory. We've always enjoyed factory tours, so to combine a factory tour with the boss's latest obsession seemed like a no-brainer. They had a couple of movies and presentations on the history of the pottery and how it's made, then a display with hundreds of years of pottery represented. Evidently, in the past, there were around 30 different pottery makers in the city, and now, there's only one - Royal Delft. They've been running for around 370 years without interruption, and are the official pottery manufacturers for the Dutch Royal family.

The displays were..... cool, but didn't do much for me. Whee, old pottery, right? When we got to the actual factory tour, I really enjoyed that part. There wasn't an actual tour, just taped off lines on the floor with arrows, and an occasional TV monitor with a video that displayed the steps that were going on around you. We were walking right beside where the work itself would actually be done, with the racks of half finished pottery waiting for the next step:

The painted lines guided us right next to the artisans themselves, for us to watch while they worked. The only person who was working next to the tour area was this lady, putting the final touches on a tulip vase:

The design on the items in the foreground is black right now, but after being fired in the kiln, it'll change into the blue that you see on the pieces in the background (technically called "Delft Blue").

Additionally, we learned that all of the pottery that comes from the factory isn't hand painted; some of it is created with a simple transferring process. If it's hand painted, the mark on the bottom (or back) will look like this:

Just the portion inside the red outline - this is just an example, part of a larger display. The trademark for their hand painted stuff has a vase, with the initials of one of the guys who helped reorganize the company and keep it afloat, and the word "Delft" in cursive underneath. Interestingly enough, the company was started in 1653, and Joost Thoof bought the factory in 1876... but those are his initials that are on the trademark symbol, with the J and T superimposed on each other. 

After spending way too much money in the gift shop, we caught a bus back to the hotel area, battled the wind for 15 minutes to get to the car, and hoofed it home, arriving around 8:00 last night.

So... what lessons did we learn in this latest installment?

1. Driving to The Hague lets us stretch it over a weekend and add other cities to the front or back of our itinerary. Probably cheaper for multiple people to travel there too - HINT, HINT!
2. Amsterdam smells like pot.
3. Amsterdam has lots of canals, and urinals on the sidewalk for guys (and adventurous ladies).
4. If the boss says "I'm not planning on spending any money in this shop," don't believe her, and hold onto your wallet. Exhibits A & B: The cheese shop and the Delft gift shop.
5. If the wife shows interest in pottery, immediately redirect her attention in a different direction.

TTFN, and stay tuned for our next adventure!