Say 'cheese'

Cheesy title to have on a post about a cheese market, I know.....

Yesterday Victor and I went to visit the kaasmarkt in Gouda. We both like the cheese, and it's mentioned as an attraction to be seen in the Netherlands, so why not check it out?

Well, it's not really much to see, as it turns out. There are wheels of cheese lying around on the ground in front of the town hall, and there are women dressed up as milk maids, or something like that, wearing clogs (OMG!), carrying around wheels of cheese in their arms and posing for photos. There were also horse drawn carts standing around, which I suspect also had wheels of cheese lying around in the back. At some point two men were haggling over the price of the cheese, and they didn't seem to come to an agreement. And, that was pretty much that.

Now, you may say, "but Sarah, what did you expect of a cheese market, other than cheese?". Well, seeing as it's supposed to be this tourist attraction, I had imagined they might've created more of an event around the whole thing. There were other market stalls all around, selling clothes and fish and whatnot, but I can find more interesting markets here in Amsterdam anyway. And I had expected that maybe people would be allowed to sample different varieties of cheese. but not so much. Well, at least I can cross that off my list. And Gouda seems to be quite a charming town, though we didn't see all that much of it during our short stay.

"Decorative" cheeses hanging above the street

Cheese!

Girls carrying cheese!

Cheese chair (children sold separately)

People weighing cheese!

And apparently someone just got married.... :)

A little more Rotterdam

Since, like mentioned in the previous post, I spent most of my Rotterdam day in the zoo, I didn't get to see all that much more of the city this time around. I'll have to go back and have a look around one of these days. The thing that sets Rotterdam apart from other Dutch cities I've visited is all the modern architecture and tall buildings. The other Dutch cities I've seen usually consist mostly of the same type of old stone houses. But as you probably know, dear readers, Rotterdam was bombed by the Germans during WWII, so it follows that a lot of the buildings here are of the more modern variety, which makes for an interesting change. I do still think I prefer the older buildings, partly since it's what I've come to associate with this country, but nevertheless Rotterdam is interesting. Here are some pictures of what I've seen so far:

The tallest building in Rotterdam, possibly in the whole of the Netherlands. There was a miniature of this in Madurodam, which was still pretty tall.

Bicycle art. I suppose. It's too big for anyone to actually use anyway.

The famous cube houses, which I'm still very curious about. It seems like such a weird (and inefficient) idea to build houses this way. Apparently you're supposed to be able to go inside one of them and have a look, but it was already late by the time we got there, so further investigations will have to wait for the next visit.

A detail from a weird and interesting sculpture near the cube houses. After some googling I've discovered that it was made in honour of a Dutch Cartoonist called Marten Toonder.

When we were at the train station waiting for my train back to Amsterdam, an old fashioned steam engine showed up on the next track.

If you want to see more of Rotterdam without actually going there, this page is pretty cool: http://www.dakvanrotterdam.nl/index.php?option=com_dvrgmm&category=1&Itemid=38&class=r

You can click your way onto the top of different buildings, and have a look around by dragging the image up, down, left and right with your mouse.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

(A little bit of a misleading title, since I didn't see any lions or bears, and only one tiger. But I recently re watched the Wizard of Oz....)

Yesterday I went to Rotterdam to visit Victor, and we ended up spending (almost) the whole day in the Blijdorp zoo, which was fun. It's a really nice zoo, where they seem to have done their utmost to create a comfortable and natural environment for the animals and give them space to roam around in (and a chance to hide if they don't feel like being stared at by a bunch of silly humans). It has a large variety of animals, and covers quite a big area. We were there for a little over 5 hours, and by the time the zoo closed we'd covered most of it, if not absolutely every inch. One of the coolest things was the butterfly room, which is the closest I've ever come to the rain forest. It as very warm and full of rain forest/jungle type plants, and there were all sorts of colourful butterflies flying about. The Oceanium with the sea lions and the underwater tunnel was pretty cool too! I also added some animals to my list of animals I'd like to have (whenever I see one I like, I add it to my list...). This list is of course not terribly realistic unless I become extremely wealthy and can keep my own zoo, since most of these animals aren't exactly household pets, but a girl can dream. Among the cutest were the swift foxes, the dik-diks (which I've been wanting to see ever since they were mentioned on an episode of QI), and the fishing cats. The fishing cats had babies, which were so cute my heart just melted. I could've sat there staring at them for hours there they lay sleeping all huddled up together. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a good picture of the fishing cats since they were behind glass, and it was rather dark in there. Here are some other pics though:

Prairie dog, which doesn't look anything like a dog, but which is awfully cute.

Sea lion

Swift foxes, which are quite small and quite adorable.

Flutterbies....

Dik-dik is cute-cute!

Elephants

Camels

Monkey business

Timon (or alternatively, meerkat)

Giraffes

Some kind of antelope.

Madurodam

Madurodam is a theme park made up of miniatures of important buildings/streets/places here in the Netherlands. It's located in Den Haag, and we went to visit on our way back from Delft. It was fun to see, and it was really nicely made, with little people in the streets and little cars and boats actually moving around. Nice eye for detail. It must've taken a long time to make all of these displays. It costs 13,50 euros for adults, but the nice thing is the proceeds (after taxes) go to charity. And it's definitely something that's worth seeing if you're interested in this country. Here are some pictures:

Overview

Miniature parliament in Den Haag

Miniature town hall in Gouda, outside which they have the cheese market that I still want to go visit one of these days. Love that cheese....

Miniature Dam Square. Strange to see a miniature of something so familiar to me. I see this square almost every day.

Miniature Magere Brug, and miniature people on pedal boats.

Miniature red light district.

Delft

Last weekend we went to visit Delft, which I've been wanting to do for a while. It (naturally) brings to mind my mothers Delft Blue china (is it still called china when it isn't made in china?....) that she inherited from her father. It is world renowned, and most of the stuff you buy in souvenir shops are actually knock offs, made in China. But we went to one of the stores where they make it, and you could actually see it being made. It's quite nice and distinctive.

We also took a tour of the old church and the new church (creative names, no?), including the tower of the new church, that Boyfriend reluctantly agreed to ascend with me. It was quite a climb up the spiral staircase, and I found myself a little dizzy once we reached the top (probably also caused by looking down and realising exactly how high up we were). But what a view!

The new church

View of tiny people on the ground from the tower

View of the town hall from the tower

View of the old church from the tower

Delft is also known as the home and birthplace of the painter Vermeer (and also the setting for the film about said painter, Girl with a Pearl Earring, based on the book with the same name), and also the home of inventor of the microscope, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Both of which are buried in the old church. Below you can see the place where Leeuwenhoek is buried.

Heart art, outside the new church. It did not come with an explanation, but then again, art usually doesn't.

All in all it was a nice visit, and both the churches are definitely worth seeing if you like that kind of stuff (which I do, as mentioned in a previous post). The tower was fun, and a little scary, and the poffertjes we ate in the square after our big ascension were delicious. ;)

Sightseeing Saturday

Yesterday I got a visit from Victor (of the victorineurope blog in the right hand margin) who is originally from Canada, but is spending a year in Rotterdam. So I had a go at being a tour guide of sorts, going around the city with him, taking a boat tour together etc. I feel I know my way around here pretty well, but I may need to glance at a map every now and then if I'm to get to a specific destination.

Boat tours are a great way to get a view of the city in a limited amount of time, and they usually provide some details about the buildings and bridges you are passing. A standard boat tour usually takes about an hour, though you can also find more specialised ones that will take longer. Like the candlelight boat tour that Boyfriend and I went on last year, that serves wine and cheese and takes you through the canals in the evening time for 2 hours. Good for those who are more romantically inclined. For candlelight tours, or other specialised ones you will probably need to make an advanced booking, but for the standard one hour ones you can just hop on a boat when you feel like it. They leave with frequent intervals and have several stations along the Damrak (between central station and Dam Square).

We also made a stop at Puccini for some chocolates. These are seriously the best thing I've ever tasted, and if I didn't exercise some self control I would be eating these almost every day.... My mouth is watering just thinking about them.... They look quite nice too:


Puccini is made locally here in Amsterdam, in fact in the very stores they are sold. You hear about Belgian chocolates, and Boyfriend says he prefers Leonidas (Belgian brand), but as far as I'm concerned, Dutch chocolate kicks Belgian chocolate's ass. And I did my share of sampling of the Belgian stuff when we went to Brussels last March. There are two Puccini stores in Amsterdam. You can find them at Staalstraat 17 and Singel 184.


We also wanted to go to the Anne Frank house, but we had limited time and the line was long. Boyfriend said the line is always long, but I know I've seen it much shorter at times. I guess a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer may be a particularly busy time. Instead we ended up taking a tour of the tower of the Westerkerk (right next to the Anne Frank house), which was more fun than I had expected. And also a bit of a challenge for someone like me who has a moderate fear of heights. Those stairs were quite steep and narrow, particularly going down. We were accompanied up to the 42 metre high platform of the tower (the whole thing is actually about 87 metres high), by a guide who told us titbits about the history of Amsterdam and the history of bells. The bell in the photo bellow weighs 3500 kilos, I was informed, whilst standing right underneath it. It occurred to me that that was possibly a good time to move....

Here are some pictures of the view from the tower. You can go all the way around, and see the city spread out beneath you. It's a recommended experience, unless you're even more afraid of heights than I am...


We ended our evening having dinner with Boyfriend, in one of my favourite restaurants, Kantjil & de Tijger, an Indonesian place with delicious and reasonably priced food. We've been to this restaurant at least once every time I've been in the Netherlands so far, and I've always loved it. So far it's always been a sure winner with guests as well. One of the nice things about this place is that you can order a fixed menu (in 3 varieties) with lots of different little dishes. So you get to taste a lot of different things in one meal, and you're almost guaranteed to find something you like. Besides, Indonesian food is kind of a speciality here, since Indonesia is a former colony of the Netherlands, so it's in a way also an essential Dutch experience.


All in all I'd say it was a pretty good day! Now, anyone else feel like coming to visit? :)

Pedal boats are NOT fun

Well, I guess opinions might vary, but I must agree with Boyfriend in this matter, who was very reluctant to go in the first place, since he had been in a pedal boat before and thought it sucked. And it kinda did. But at least I got to find that out for myself, which is the only way to be sure. It wasn't that bad either, but it wasn't fun. The pedaling itself I didn't mind, but the boat was a bitch to steer (and there are quite a few other boats out and about which you would do well to avoid). I was just getting the hang of it when we were at the end of our ride. On the bright side we did see a boat with a toilet in it, and how often does that happen?...

For anyone who DOES want to go pedal boating, there are four stations along the canals more or less in the centre. The one in the picture is on the corner of the Leidsestraat and the Keizersgracht. For more info you can check out their website. I'm sure some people do think it's fun....

Market day

Yesterday I decided to go to the Albert Cuyp market to have a look around.

I've been there a couple of times already with Boyfriend, but he usually just wants to go down the road and buy stroopwafels (syrup waffles), and go back again. Having a better look at it all I've realised that they have everything at this market... From clothes to exotic footwear,

from birdcages

and handmade soaps

to chocolate boobs and penises (!),

underwear, discount drugstore items, second hand DVD's, fruit and veg stalls,

all sorts of snacks, and these really cute shoes that were unfortunately too big for me (the heel is a little taller than I care for as well, but for 5 euros, what woman cares about that?..),

and these really cool Beatles bags that were not cheap enough for me to impulse buy, but if they're still there next time I visit, I'm getting one!

In short it's a nice place to spend a day when you have nothing in particular planned. And you're likely to find a really good bargain that you didn't even know you were looking for... :)