SR flew in from the States to meet me in Amsterdam, so we are starting out in the Netherlands and making a more or less southbound path to Italy over the next month.
As mentioned, the design of this trip revolves around visiting friends and friends of friends. And thanks to Peace Corps Morocco friend L's very international wedding a few years ago, I have a very sweet Dutch contact, J. In a stroke of timing both unfortunate and perfect, J was leaving for a week of summer holiday shortly after our arrival in her native land. Not much time to spend with her, but the offer of her apartment to use for our week in NL was priceless.
So we arrived to her hometown of Utrecht and had one evening with her to get the nitty gritty of locations of grocery stores, laundry, the bikes she had for us to borrow, the route to the town center, and to share a drink at one of her preferred spots...
...before she went off on vacation, and SR and I began doing as the Dutch do, hopping on bikes every day for the 20-min ride into town.
More on Utrecht itself later, but the train station gave us insanely easy connections to many iconic places, so let's start there. First:
AMSTERDAM!
Such a fun city. My feet were exhausted after we'd made tracks through Vondelpark, Museumplein...
...Rijksmuseum (with its most famous painting, Rembrant's "The Night Watch")...
...and, my favorite part of the day (not only because it was a rest for my tired feet), a small boat tour of Amsterdam by canal.
We got to see a ton of the city center this way...
...plus hear great stories from our guide about Amsterdam's history and character. And characters. Oh, and check out the tiny little bright red house in the middle of this picture. One of the smallest houses in the city, which is saying something since people were motivated to make their houses narrow and tall thanks to a property tax system that went by how much street front sidewalk your building covered.
We'll be spending a bit more time in Amsterdam before we head south for good, but for now we took a break from that overwhelming mecca to check out Den Haag (aka The Hague). Den Haag has an even more international, though slightly less frenetic feel to it than Amsterdam. Its Mauritshuis Museum features Vermeer's masterpiece "Girl With a Pearl Earring," which was beautiful to see in person.
And I enjoyed just wandering the city, with its buildings and people of every size and color.
We were definitely still in the Netherlands, though, as evidenced by the typical bike parking outside the train station. #($^%&*#^%#*#! I guess it's WAAAAAYYYY better than this many cars would be! But still overwhelming.
As chance would have it, a South Pole friend, M, just arrived in Den Haag on a new work contract, so we got to have dinner with him (and a couple of his very sweet housemates, not pictured--but a shout-out to you, K&N!).
They took us to the city beachfront for eats and fireworks. It was quite a scene, both without the crowds and then, later, with people blanketing the place.
We also got to see the rock garden in front of the Peace Palace (with a stone or rock contributed by every country in the world placed in this little sanctuary)...
And the Escher Museum, where I learned a lot about fascinating artist M.C. Escher...for starters, that he was Dutch! Who knew?!? This is why I love traveling, folks. Gotta beat the ignorance out of me somehow.
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