Kings Day

We didn’t know it when we booked the trip, but April 26 is King’s day in Netherlands. This is the King’s birthday or an excuse to wear orange and drink beer in the street. 

We started out pretty mild at 8 am by walking over to a children and family celebration in Vondelpark. We got some strawberries covered in orange chocolate on the way.

Outdoor peeing is also one of the pass times. This was our first encounter in the park with the temporary urinals and they turned out to be everywhere.

We saw this sign as we started walking the surrounding neighborhoods early in the day. No one paid any attention - we have never seen so many people urinating in the streets and off boats into a canal.

The streets were pretty crowded with people drinking beer - and loud music is allowed (or encouraged) from the boats and canal houses. Normally no music is allowed on the canals.

We found a relatively quiet place at the bar at the Doubletree

We rented a private boat and then experienced it from the water. We were like celebrities since we were about the only group of two on a 100 year old boat. Our captain was Joost and he was great. He kept checking on us to make sure we were okay. We assured him we were fine. We had been warned to either escape it or put ourselves in the thick of it - so we chose the latter.

A boat next to us ran out of alcohol and convinced us to give them a bottle of champagne for a girl’s birthday who just turned 21.  At first there were a lot of hand gestures we did not understand. The boats were really crammed at one point so then we conversed in English and got the gist of what they wanted. We became the popular Americans because they wanted to pay us for the champagne and we said it’s on us.

The boat dropped us off right across from our hotel about 8 pm so we didn’t have to walk back through what had become an even more rowdy street and canal party. Overall it’s in a way good clean fun - just a lot of heavy drinking, loud music and dancing. No protests. No fights. And we didn’t see anyone fall in the canal - which came as a huge surprise!

Back to Volendam

Yesterday, while dining on eel, we observed Mike’s favorite grebes in the harbor. They were exhibiting some fancy courtship displays.  It was rainy and we didn’t bring our birding camera. After the Van Gogh, We grabbed an Uber and returned. They weren’t quite as amorous as the prior day, but left plenty of opportunities for photos of them building nests, sitting on nests, and just swimming around.

Chris was nice enough to get takeout lunch while Mike was photographing. She didn’t realize that french fries were included with the burgers so we got two burgers and three large orders of fries..

We finished the day with more pancakes.

Getting to know Vinny 🖼️🎨🎨

Chris was reading Lust For Life as we were heading into the trip and it was such a good story about Vincent Van Gogh she felt close to him and nicknamed him Vinny.

We had a really great private guide for our 2 1/2 hour tour of the Van Gogh museum yesterday, and our guide, Victoria, brought Vinny to life for Mike as well.  This is her favorite Van Gogh entitled Undergrowth.

Chris liked this one that van Gogh painted for his mother.

She also explained that he had a box of yarn he used to experiment with combining colors.

His art is one thing, but the story of his life is quite amazing- so much so that now Chris wants to read even more about it and explore some of the other opinions on certain “facts” that circulated. Victoria our guide studied art and psychology at UCSD, so she had a wealth of background facts on whether he took his own life or not.

They do allow photography in the museum so we took a few. Victoria explained they loosened up the rules on that after Covid. In the past she said the guards were walking around repeating “no photography” and it was a constant drone in the background of your visit.

Some people are serious Van Gogh fanatics and some come completely unprepared- apparently to the annoyance of the educated ones. One visitor interrupted us with our guide to “vent” for a few minutes about something he overheard or that someone pronounced Van Gogh incorrectly. We found this a little strange but he did apologize for interspersing himself into our experience. 

We were both surprised by the young lady who kept photographing her doll with all the art - I guess each generation has their own thing.

Victoria told us we were her first guests that had also come here for birdwatching, and she thought we had gotten a lot accomplished overall during our visit.  She thought we were well prepared and that we even asked some questions that have given her some new things to explore herself. It was a really fun morning!

Here’s a Monet from the same period,more representative of our trip

Third visit to Keukenhof

No, just kidding! 😂🌷🌷but I’m on my second cup of coffee this morning (only my first strop waffle) and I’ve been thinking again about how struck I am with the gardens. Many people we have spoken with say the photos just don’t capture the feeling. I have been disagreeing with that perspective, and it just occurred to me that OUR PHOTOS do capture for me the experience but if I attempt to buy a calendar or some similar souvenir or look at another person’s photos it does not move me in the same way.

I’ve decided that any time I have a low feeling I can just pull up our photos and feel joy. The rest of the trip is great as well - but these flowers, well, “and the flowers were beautiful.” Thanks mom 😉❤️

Anne Frank house

We went to the Anne Frank house. Chris had just re-read the diary so it was particularly meaningful. No photographs are allowed inside, but here’s the house from across the canal

We went earlier in the day to make sure we could find it at night, and had delicious pancakes, next to it. 

Tourists today

Today we had a private driver take us out to all the typical tourist must do things. The day included windmills, clog making, cheese making and then an old fisherman village, Volderdam.

Initially Mike was thinking we would sort of skip the clog making part - and that turned out to be the most fun!

We thought the cheese making and tasting would be the best part, but the tasting room was packed with large groups of tour buses. Our guide explained that last year he convinced the cheese maker to open his unused restaurant area for more private tasting like we would have preferred- apparently they tried it and found it to be too much of a bother so they stopped.

But the cow part of the day was interesting- it is all completely automated with machines for everything!

Obligatory windmill photos.

Clog making demonstration 

They even made wooden shoes for horses!

Automated milking machine - cows wear a collar and machine knows their name and everything about them and if they are not supposed to be in yet - sorry, no treats and gate opens and out they go again.

Even a machine for dropping fresh straw.

And my favorite since I love my robotic vacuum and mop; this is a robot that cleans the whole area up.


But look at this cute cow - who was not supposed to be in for milking - she says she would rather be at Ann and Jack’s farm instead of with robots!

This was the best part of the cheese making demo because there were no people - just us. Then when we walked into the tasting and sales room we were shocked.

We stopped at a restaurant famous for its smoked eel. Yes! We tried it! It was good and the folks who run the place were super friendly and we got the behind the scenes tour of them skinning and gutting the eel and how the smoking is still all done by hand.

And what kind of day would it be if we didn’t end it with more pancakes! They are delicious and addictive.

Second Visit to Keukenhof