Long-time readers will know that I’ve always been a passionate football fan, so it’s no surprise that I was there to see Arsenal vs. Lille in the Champions League last month. More specifically, I was there as a guest of Expedia (many thanks!) and enjoyed the hospitality of the private box with its heated balcony seats, although apparently no amount of money can prevent Arsenal from rudely scoring their three winning goals during the second half when the goal was much further away from us.
I was both amused and confused to be handed a free programme, as I didn’t think it would be possible to dream up content for every single match. Surely football captains deserve some sympathy for having to come up with a unique “Captain’s Notes” segment every time? “Lille are a very strong team who have had some great results in the past few seasons”, says Martin Ødegaard in this edition, presumably with a diplomatic wink.
Still, I was grateful for the programme’s “Scouting Report” for providing some plausible football jargon for the family WhatsApp chat later, and somewhat entranced by its throwback photo from of a vast, impossibly packed-in Highbury crowd watching Arsenal play Birmingham City in 1933. Just look at that sea of hats! And, of course, walking through Highbury Fields was also very nostalgic from my days of living next door to the Emirates stadium with Josh and Cat.
Having exhausted all of my football banter I’ll move on to baby news, although perhaps I officially need to rebrand this as ‘toddler news’ given the amount of (walker-aided) toddling he’s doing. Another milestone last month was his first dose of the MMRV vaccine, which is a souped-up replacement for good, old-fashioned MMR but with chickenpox thrown in for good measure.
Chickenpox vaccines have been common in many countries for decades, but the UK only abandoned its quixotic stance this year (long story) and as someone who’s lived my whole life in permanent uncertainty as to whether I ever actually had chickenpox (long story) I am very envious. To be serious for a moment, it is of course measles which remains the big threat globally, and I highly recommend Our World in Data‘s charts on the topic in case you’re feeling overly nostalgic about the past.
In the past few weeks we’ve also enjoyed an evening with Esther, Sam and Reema (always lovely!), a morning cuppa with Bronwen and a surprise Saturday outing to Lullingstone Country Park. I guess technically it was not a surprise for Randi, who had given Claude a short break from his hardcore coding tasks (thanks, Claude) to plan a nice family day trip. Either way, the two of them hit it out of the (country) park thanks to the winning formula of long walk + perfect park café.
The next day I mozied up to Kensal Rise for lunch with Alix, Adam, Emily, Michael and the kids. This was really great, including some timely conversations about how AI might legitimately kill us all but\and trying to balance this with the incredible potential for good, too. (And not just for finding nice country walks!)
A week later, Randi and I found ourselves accidentally jumping the queue for the Friday night Eurostar to Amsterdam (sorry!) which had suffered some sort of meltdown. As divine punishment for our misdeed, Fortuna then dealt us another curse card and we were forced onto the slow tracks by a broken train up ahead.
The mother of our Airbnb host in Haarlem was gamely staying up to let us in, but our midnight arrival was now drifting close to 2am as our WhatsApp messages grew ever more apologetic. To save everyone’s sleep, we eventually decided to make an emergency hotel booking in Rotterdam and jump off the train early.
And so, quite unexpectedly… hello, Rotterdam! We enjoyed a surprisingly lively (and only slightly drizzly) walk from the station before finally reaching a bed.
The next morning, we had become quite enamoured by the idea of exploring Rotterdam. In fact, we were genuinely sad to have to pick between Miniworld Rotterdam (a model railway museum!) and the Tax & Customs Museum. We plumped for the former on the basis that the history of Dutch taxation might not be the most child-friendly choice, but (and this is not a joke) we’re both really keen to return to Rotterdam someday and see some more.
In the basement of the model railway museum was a bonus “under construction” Great Britain section, with a little flying spaceship over Stonehenge and an impressive Angel of the North. Besides some smoky factory towns, however, it was a curiously rural representation. Please add more cityscapes! Afterwards, we had a long wander over the Erasmus bridge (it’s Erasmus everything here) before some cheesy Dutch toasties and a direct train to Haarlem to finally check in where we had originally planned to be.
We had very fond memories of Haarlem from our last visit and the city did not disappoint us this time either, despite it being too cold to go back to the beach.
Instead, we started our Sunday at a delightful kids’ café, which only added to the exceptionally child-friendly vibe in the Netherlands as a whole. Somehow their sturdy, wooden baby changing tables felt significantly safer than the standard plastic, despite a total absence of scary safety notices stuck over them.
With everyone fed and played-out, we took a long walk through more residential areas and became utterly obsessed with (what we later discovered were) theekoepels. Shockingly there’s no English Wikipedia article for these, but picture the grandest possible square shed you could imagine, with windows on all four sides offering a view onto an ornate dining table and chairs.
These are ‘tea pavilions’ and started to be built in the 17th century as a status object for the rich. I’m not totally sure how practical they really were – is it desirable to have to run through the rain from your house to drink your tea? – but I still want one. Unfortunately they did not catch on as a mass phenomenon, and the woman at the coworking space I rocked up to on Monday clearly thought I was utterly mad when I tried to describe one and ask what it was.
Other highlights from Haarlem included a micro-brewery in the converted church (a worthy trade) and Randi’s mysteriously free chocolates from Albert Heijn. (In other news, Randi loves Albert Heijn.) I also confirmed with our Airbnb host’s mother that people from Haarlem do not vaguely claim to be from Amsterdam when introducing themselves abroad, despite being only 20 minutes away by train. “No! I say I’m from Haarlem!” she confirmed, emphatically.
Nevertheless, by Monday night it was time for me to relocate to Amsterdam while Randi made her way back home to London. I was here for another Booking.com Travel Tech event – which I always enjoy attending – before flying back a couple of days later with my colleague Lee. Overall, despite the shaky start, this turned into another lovely trip to the Netherlands.
That week was also Halloween week, for which we received our first “cute arts and crafts things” sent home from nursery! Our own last-minute attempt to turn our child into a ghost is not going to win any awards, but he did enjoy playing peekaboo with the sheet, and my trusty skeleton mask was sufficiently frightening for at least a couple of our trick-or-treaters.
If I had more artistic talent I might have tried to dress up as a systematic polling error for the US midterm elections, but thankfully this did not come to pass and a rare wave of optimism and good feeling has washed over the Atlantic this week. And yesterday these happy thoughts merged with more personal ones, as we handed over several suitcases’ worth of newborn baby clothes in preparation for the next addition… 👶
