Al Zylstra

Our last full day in the Netherlands led us to Leiden – a wonderful little community with a huge Botanical Garden! Alex was in his glory!

On our last trip to the Netherlands back in 2018, we visited Sneek, a small town where my mom grew up. It is such a great little town that we decided to go again. We were not disappointed.

Our second museum that we visited in The Hague – Naturalis

Another museum which far exceeded our expecations. 7 levels of everything related to the natural history of the world with specific information about the Netherlands

Our next stop was Madurodam – a park filled with the most iconic buildings in the Netherlands! https://www.madurodam.nl/en/the-park

Louwman Automative Museum

In a decidedly different thing for us to do – Alex and I made our way to the Hague and picked the first museum that we googled – the Louwman Automotive museum. The history of the automobile in Europe is showcased in a massive building.

We actually enjoyed every bit of the museum and marvelled at some of the vehicles.

Saturday, September 9 saw us hit the Amsterdam suburb of Amstelveen. Another beautiful community. Little fact: Our airline that we used, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has their international headquarters in Amstelveen!

Our next stop was Haarlem. The capital of the province of North Holland,

We spent an afternoon just touring around exploring this quiet city with its amazing architecture.

Our hotel is more like a long term stay facility. When we were there in 2018, we had an amazing time – in no small part due to the on-site 24 hour grocery store located on the main floor. There, we could buy fresh groceries including dairy, baked goods, fresh fruits and vegetables. There was a convection over that you could flash cook as wide variety of frozen meals. This proved to be a bit of a life saver for Alex due to his dietary issues. It was also very cost effective.

This trip, the hotel was under new management and we were disappointed that the grocery store now stocked more beer and wine than anything else. Gone were the dairy, fresh fruits and veggies and baked goods. Replaced with alcohol. It made us sad. Our room was also disappointing in that we had no kleenex, face cloths and only one small package of shampoo and conditioner. So, we had to find a local grocery store to purchase those items along with some food such as milk, fresh fruit, sandwich stuff and the like.

This proved to be a bit of a life saver as Alex had more than his usual stomach issues. Our first meal out resulted in Alex being up most of the night with stomach distress. Fortunately, we had the foresight to bring along a variety of stomach remedies. *Whew

Anyway, outside our hotel was a beautiful canal with some amazing Houseboats – we were suitably impressed with a number of them.

Today was the second time in two trips to Central Amsterdam that we got lost! *sigh*

I cannot seem to grasp the concept of North, South, East and West in Europe. Each time I think I have it figured out, I am wrong… much to the chagrin of Alex… But, eventually we found our way back from the centre of Amsterdam intact…

What a beautiful city and so insanely busy! People flying every which direction with little to no regard for pesky things like cars, buses, trucks, bicycles and other pedestrians. Still, we managed.

Alex has been jones-ing to check out the flower markets that we saw (briefly) on our last trip. So, this time around, we made that our primary mission…. to find the rare, the unusual and exotic bulbs and seeds that we could bring home to Canada.

Rather than drive to downtown Amsterdam – the thought of that sends me into a low-grade panic mode – we took the tram. We parked our rental at a parking lot close to the tram station and headed downtown Amsterdam. Within 20 minutes, we were downtown and making our way to the flower market.

Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful cities but, it can be dirty. We saw a lot of the downtown core and it certainly is a place everyone should visit at least once.