Wrong horses

One of our conclusions from our recent trip to Amsterdam is that we’re not very good at being organised. Or more precisely, we’re not very good at being organised by others.

This short trip included two included outings. The first was advertised as a guided tour of Amsterdam. We thought that wouldn’t take long & may be interesting. It turned into a tour of car tour of Noord Hollande.

Off we went to Monnickendam, with its narrow streets & old fishermen’s cottages. At one point you could see from the water levels either side of the sluice gates how much higher the sea was than the land. At another place was one of the, if not the, oldest church in the Netherlands.

We didn’t stop to properly look around or take photos. Instead we went on to a cheese & clog farmshop. Here we were told how cheese & clogs were made. The former I already knew – my mother always made cheese if we had a milk glut in summer. As for clogs I’m not really interested, much as I appreciate they can be beautifully painted. The Fox was reminded of the wooden clogs his father used to wear when the Fox was young – a common practice in Lancashire in times past.

The most interesting thing we learnt was not about cheese or clogs, but rather Christmas traditions. The 5^th of December is the day Santa visits children in the Netherlands. There is quite a controversy raging these days as Santa’s little helpers are blacked up – it’s from the soot in the chimneys they have to descend to deliver the presents. Now there is a brouhaha about whether this is racism & something derogatory to black people. As our guide says, if you were starting the tradition today, you may have done something else, but this has been the tradition for centuries, long before concepts such as racism existed.

From there we went onto Zaanse Schans, a monument to village life in the 17^th century. Here we saw windmills galore. Most were in working order. The Fox was reminded of the sounds & smells of the old water-powered corn mill he used to work in. We were left to take our time going around so we were able to amble around at our leisure. 

The saw mill with the cheese farm in the foreground

The pewter foundry

The problem with this day trip was that we had largely gone on holiday to Amsterdam to see Amsterdam. If we’d been staying for a week or so we may have appreciated a trip out of the city to see something of traditional life &architecture, but when we only had 3 days there we were loathe to waste time away from a city which has so much of interest to see. Admittedly we were grateful to have gone to Zaanse Schans in December. As several coachloads of tourists arrived & the place was swamped with people, we couldn’t help thinking in summer it must become a bit of a nightmare. We were grateful we were just leaving then.

Our second organised trip came on the Sunday, when we were sent off to the Christmas market at Westerpark, a fairly residential part of Amsterdam. We were dropped off & the transport was due to return four hours later to take us back to the hotel.

In half an hour we had walked around all the stalls & were left wondering what else we could do. The market was a small Sunday market, nothing particularly Christmassy about it. It seemed all the poorer because the day before, on our free day, we had come across a far more festive market in Rembrandtplein, in the city centre, It had music playing, lights twinkling, people dressed in Christmassy gear – so much more exciting. We decided to at least explore the park a bit.

On the way to the market we had passed an area with loads of herons in it so we headed there. 

Then headed a bit more into town but soon stopped when we saw an open café & the prospect of something to drink, &, in my case, a hot cup to put my hands around, was overwhelming. We entered the warmth & discussed what to do next..

Fortunately our driver had indicated that he couldn’t see how the, this year much reduced, Westerpark market could keep us entertained for four hours. He’d let us know he could come earlier if we just gave him a ring. We decided that’s what we would do. We didn’t see much point in going in the cold & threatening wet around a part of Amsterdam that was low on our priorities to explore, when we would much prefer to go round the Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the Maritime Museum. So after our drink, we headed back to the market, rang our driver & waited. It got progressively colder & wetter. He arrived & took us to the museum, rather than our hotel, & we spent the rest of the day there.

Het Scheepvaartmuseum

This was a much more fascinating place. Here we found about how the land was reclaimed from the sea. The country is still increasing in size, as you could easily see from the images of the country over the centuries. The Dutch seem to be incredibly inventive. If land is getting a bit crowded, you just take a bit more from the sea, or expand upwards into the air.

I was also surprised to realise the Dutch were still actively whaling in the 1960s. Somehow I thought it was an activity that had ceased more in Victorian times, though I do remember the embargo being introduced in my childhood. However, I’d thought, by then it was essentially a non-European activity. Seemingly not.

The Fox would have loved to have had the time to explore the “Amsterdam”, a reproduction East Indiaman. He did venture out to it, despite the rain, but by then it was getting late & it seemed more important to see what we could inside before the place closed for the day. 

The Amsterdam

We concluded this part of the day made up for the waste of time at the market. We’d just wished we could have spent the day at the museum & not have bothered with the market. We were very grateful that he driver had indicated he was happy to collect us early.

It is always a problem with these organised trips. Many people seem to get a lot of pleasure & satisfaction form them. We generally prefer to do a bit of research before we go away, decide where we fancy going & then go in our own time, unpressured by being hustled round quickly or just waiting for the trip to end. It’s a case of different things for different people. We’ve come to the conclusion optional trips suit us better, then we can opt out. For us the holiday would have been better if the flights, hotel transfers, IAmsterdam card (which gave you free trams, buses & a canal cruise, as well as free or reduced entry to most of the sights), possibly the use of a free taxi to go to where we chose, would have suited us better.