Amsterdam: Highlights (28 September - 2 October)

There is a seven-year-old in this house! Ben’s birthday, on Tuesday, was a fairly low-key affair that included getting new headphones and a tiny Bluetooth speaker and going to conveyer belt sushi for dinner.

We also hit up the Dunkin’ Donuts, which the kids have been begging to visit for about two solid months. It turns out donuts are a fancy affair here. Ours were served on china and the shop featured a build-your-own-donut station. For Ben, this was birthday heaven.

He will celebrate in his class on Thursday and has picked out French erasers from the stationary shop down the street to give to all of his class friends.

Jeff Pollack is here visiting (hooray!) and on Wednesday, he and I took the bikes on a ride through the Waterland area, north of Amsterdam. Eli joined us for a 23k training run as well. We meandered through the towns of Zunderdorp, Ransdorp and Durgerdam which was beautiful, as usual, but also a bit windy and wet, as usual.

Going back to last weekend, it was a wet few days in Amsterdam. Not the typical Dutch drizzle, to which we have quickly become accustomed, but a lot of full-on pouring rain. We tried not to let this dampen our spirits.

Jill and Laurens recently bought a house in a town called Schiedam (pronounced Skee-Dahm) just outside of Rotterdam. The house dates from the early 1800’s (I think) and sits right on a principal canal. On Saturday, we met them there for a “before” tour as they are about to begin extensive renovations over the next several months. The whole town is just waiting to be discovered and renovated. I was only half joking when I told Jill she could make a new career channeling her inner Joanna Gaines and creating Fixer Upper Netherlands.

It was also a festival weekend in Schiedam so we combined our visit with a bit of live music, second hand shopping, overpriced trampoline-bungee jumping and festival food. I tried Kibbeling for the first time, which Jill calls “fish donuts,” a surprising accurate term.

A highlight was a short visit to the Stedelijk museum in Schiedam, a satellite of the main modern art museum in Amsterdam. The kids were relatively patient while exploring one of the exhibits and afterwards spent a long time working on a mosaic craft project. This was the first of two art encounters this weekend and I was impressed both times by the quality of the project and materials, as well as the knowledge of the instructors.

On Sunday, with Jeff along for the ride, we took a day trip to the Hague. Two of our all time favorite museums are here: the Maurithaus which is the art museum that is home to Girl with a Pearl Earring, among other masterpieces, and the Escher Palace, which is all about MC Escher’s life and work.

The Maurithaus had a great, free, downloadable audio tour and Ben surprised all of us by listening to every single narrated stop on the tour.

Getting the scoop on the Girl with a Pearl Earring

At the Escher Palace, the kids and I stumbled into an art workshop and spent the better part of an hour creating block prints. The instructor was so patient and capable with kids (in Dutch and English, no less). Their finished pieces look great and the teacher helped the kids to connect the dots to Escher’s work, much of which uses block printing as the medium.

Eli and Ben in the Ames room at the Escher house.

We’re posting a little early this week because we have big plans: We are going to Paris just because we can. Every morning as we commute to school, the kids and I see a Thalys train to Paris on the route board. So, we said oui to Paris and are off tomorrow night. We’ll send a dispatch with our French adventures next week.