Amsterdam: Highlights (November 4-10)
This week, Eli was in Budapest to participate in Tedx and then spent a night in Paris to visit the new DaVinci exhibit at the Louvre.
I surprised the kids with a visit to Efteling, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, situated in a small town about 90 minutes southeast of Amsterdam. The fairytale park feels a lot like Disneyland with its themepark attractions and a few rollercoasters, but it is somehow more charming and much less commercialized. The park is set in a forest which gives it a botanical garden feel and many of the attractions are based on Brother’s Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen stories.
We spent the night in the town of Kaatsheuvel, near the park, which put us right at the entrance as the park doors opened on Saturday morning. I highly recommend this strategy as we were able to ride six different attractions in the first sixty minutes of our visit with no lines at all. After lunch, we waited as long as an hour for each ride.
Norah’s love of rollercoasters only expanded at this park as she tried four different – and progressively more intense – coasters. She rode all of these solo as Ben was not ready – or tall enough – to ride.
Ben is at the perfect age to enjoy the magic of the theme rides including one called Dream Flight and another called Symbolica. I really enjoyed all of it and thought it was very well done. The park is also the perfect size. We spent a full day, covered nearly all the terrain, and felt very satisfied with the visit.
The only hiccup in the planning was that I decided to try FlixBus to get from Amsterdam to Efteling, rather than taking the train because it seemed to offer a faster and more direct route. Lesson learned…the bus was delayed, it stank of urine, the driver was barely competent, and the front row seats – which I paid extra to reserve – were declared unavailable when we boarded.
I bought the seats because both Norah and Ben both get motion sick and sure enough, Norah threw up on the bus. Fortunately, having previously dealt with motion sick kids (see Dolomites), I was more prepared this time. Still, the experience was traumatic enough that we decided to forego our (pre-paid) return tickets and use public transit instead. Flixbus customer service also got a howler of an email from me.
Our other notable outing was a lunch visit to Corner Bakery. Although my kids couldn’t quite wrap their head around the fact that it had no relation to corner bakery at home and they were convinced we were going to have American mac n cheese and chicken noodle soup, they quickly forgot their cravings when I showed them the milkshake menu.
Yes, that is a full-sized donut balancing on the top of the mug, holding a mountain of whip cream and candy in place. Yes, I managed to keep this place a secret from them for three months.
After lunch, I took them to an Amsterdam public pool to swim off all that sugar they consumed while I sat in a beach chair with a book. It was a good afternoon for all of us.
