I’ve wanted to visit Amsterdam for a very, very long time and yet the city still exceeded my expectations, even on a grey and somewhat-rainy long weekend in October. So, this is my inevitable fawning blog post about Amsterdam.
We left London on an early Friday-morning Eurostar train from St Pancras with Simon and Fleur, with Steve following a few hours later. I have gushed about the joy of direct trains from London to Paris before, but direct trains from London to Amsterdam are even more wonderful and engender a feeling of European interconnectedness in a way that flying never can and never will. After a pancake and hot chocolate-based lunch we hopped on a bus to a farm just outside of the city and the one-of-a-kind waggon we had chosen to stay in. Sure, we could have gone for a hostel or something, but that wouldn’t have been half as much fun as our beloved waggon.
On Saturday we started with art at the Rijksmuseum and in particular its special exhibition Rembrandt-Velázquez – Dutch & Spanish Masters. As a piece of curation this was easily one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen. Rather than my usual feeling of ‘wandering through many paintings and feel like I’m not really appreciating it properly’, whoever curated this has systematically selected one Spanish and one Dutch painting on a similar theme (headined, as the title suggests, by Velázquez and Rembrandt) and then invited the visitor to compare the works side-by-side. Combined with excellent historical background text, the whole experience of walking through an art gallery suddenly felt meaningful for someone who loves history but doesn’t really know much about art. And, if you are childish like me, you can also keep a running score of Catholic vs. Protestant? by picking your favoured painting each time. (I think the Protestants won out in the end, but it was a close-run thing!)
After lunch we headed to our timed tour of the Anne Frank House. (Tip: you have to book this online in advance, so check before you visit.) Having finally read her famous diary last year I was really glad that we got a chance to visit the annexe behind a bookcase where she and her family, along with several others, hid from occupying Nazi forces for two years before being discovered and killed. There is not much I can mieaningfully add here, other than that the museum is very well designed and it is both strange and haunting to walk through the rooms which Anne wrote so much about in her diary.
Much of discovering Amsterdam felt like proving that the clichés were true, and not in a bad way. Yes, the homes lining the sides of the canals are incredibly pretty and charming. Yes, there is cannabis everywhere. And yes, cycling has a dominance and a naturalness (no helmets to be seen) which I’ve not seen in any other city in the world. What was especially exciting was finding this was still true even when we ventured outside of the most touristy areas, or late at night. With many cyclists, and few cars, it’s actually possible to have streets which feel calm and quiet without being empty.
Because all other transport modes can flourish together when cars are restricted, all of the other ways to get around Amsterdam were unsurprisingly but uniformly excellent too. The buses to and from our middle-of-nowhere stop by the motorway were astonishingly frequent. The trams across the city were great and – much to our amusement – sometimes contained an entire counter in the middle of the vehicle behind which a member of staff sat and (presumably) dispensed travel advice where needed.
And let’s not forget the Amsterdam Metro with its huge, beautiful stations filled with interesting art to admire in the couple of minutes before the next train would arrive. (To be fair, the line we used was only opened last year, so maybe it’s only fair that the stations look good.) On two occasions, by the way, random members of the great Dutch public stopped and explained the background to a piece of metro art that we were looking at.
We used one other mode of transport: a train to The Hague and back on Sunday, on which we had a bit of a surreal moment when a member of staff walked down the aisle and stopped to check “if everything was OK”. We had assumed she was a ticket inspector and had taken out our tickets to show her… but no, she was just checking if things were good. (On the same train, a young girl was practicing her English by having her mother call out English words and providing the Dutch translation. So we enjoyed a constant and quite adorable stream of pretty advanced vocabulary – “prison!” “pollution!” “pitchfork!”)
Anyway. Why did we go to The Hague in the first place? Why, to visit Madurodam of course! This ‘war memorial’ to a Dutch resistance fighter, George Maduro, is in fact a huge and utterly brilliant miniature park showcasing the best of The Netherlands at 1:25 scale. Although I could easily include hundreds of photos I will try and restrain myself a little, although if you check back in the post so far you may spot several model replicas already. Suffice to say: I loved it, from the intricate historical buildings and streetscapes to the big model industrial areas like Schiphol Airport.
There are so many wonderful little touches here, like the miniature Mars trucks which pick up real mini Mars bars from their mini warehouses, or the stricken cyclist lying by the stopped car. We also had a lot of fun at the immersive ‘New Amsterdam’ experience, which pits the plucky Dutch colonists against the nasty English pirates and – outnumbered – has them totally surrender as New Amsterdam becomes New York. I don’t know how anyone could fail to love Madurodam, and it is definitely worth the extra trip out of Amsterdam to see it.
I haven’t even mentioned the food yet, but this was yet another highlight of our short trip. From pancakes to poffertjes, stroopwaffles to Surinamese food, we all ate pretty tremendously. My only regret was failing to realise that the Van Gogh Museum also runs exclusively on timed tickets and thus failing to get in before our train back home on Monday afternoon. Still, if there’s anywhere I now ‘have’ to go back to, I’m delighted that it’s Amsterdam.
Sadly the train home is not as magical as the way there since there are no passport control facilities (yet) at Amsterdam, meaning that everyone gets chucked off at Brussels, goes through the customary (but absurd) double British/Schengen passport control a few metres from each other and then waits in a too-small waiting area to get on a new train. Not to be outdone, the Home Office then insisted on a third passport check when we came off at St. Pancras. I asked the border agent what on earth this was for, and he responded that it was “only for certain trains”. “But… why?” “Because… well, why not?” On this stellar logic I am expecting passport checks at Brixton tube station in the morning. (Not that I want to give them any ideas.) Can’t we spend the money on someone to check if people on trains are OK instead?
But enough of the Home Office. I hope I have done enough to prove my newfound love for Amsterdam and the dry-humoured Dutch in general. Send me back any day!
I promise I had every intention of taking Randi on a whistlestop tour of the capital of the North when we originally planned our weekend in Manchester. But given that she had just run an eventful half-marathon in Edinburgh a week earlier, I think we can be forgiven for sharing a lazy weekend with Rob, Sarah and their dog Juniper in Stockport instead.
We were legitimately staying in Greater Manchester, at least, with honest-to-goodness tram stops and everything. And we very much enjoyed lunching at Altrincham Market and walking Juniper around the maze-like Walkden Gardens. What really took me back, though, was spending an afternoon trying out all of the crazy new weapons in Worms WMD. Robert was the person who first introduced me to Worms a million years ago at his house one day after school, and it was gleefully nostalgic to pick up the battle again in 2019. The only thing that’s changed is that one of us now owns a house…
Talking of homeowners, back in London we also hung out with nearby Matt and Laura in their wonderful flat which – based on their stories of dodgy electrics and chipboard walls – has clearly been a long, slow labour of love over the past few years. But now they’ve pulled so far ahead in the homeliness stakes (the British definition, not the American one) that they can whip out homemade raspberry ripple ice cream after dinner with homegrown raspberries from the garden. Very impressive!
Dear diary-masquerading-as-a-blog,
Oh dear. We all know that these are the worst kind of blog posts. I’ve waited too long, haven’t taken any photos for weeks, and now there’s just a crazy mess of random stuff waiting to be blogged about with no narrative coherence whatsoever.
I could give up entirely, declare blog bankruptcy for September and start again next month. But that would obviously be contrary to my archivist heart. So, instead, I’m going to junk the whole pretence of narrative coherence and go with a post-modernist take instead…
I’m queuing for a drink at an underground bar/music venue in Hoxton. From behind me, a woman reaches out and taps gently on the shoulder of a younger woman in front. “Hey, are you here on your own? Feel free to come sit with us, if you’d like. We’re very friendly and we don’t bite.” This is how you know you’re in a good place, isn’t it? The woman accepted her offer, I got my beer and the crowd clearly loved our evening of Anthony Blaize and Tabi Gazele. At work the next week I reported back to Tabi that we really did leave in a happy buzz and felt that we’d been let in on an amazing secret. Her voice is incredible. If you can, I highly recommend listening before you read any more of this post.
Katie and I sequestered ourselves in the living room to watch a six-part 1972 Jon Pertwee adventure, The Sea Devils. As you do. It really upped my appreciation of Jo Grant – she’s much more resourceful than I remember. Midway through our Indian delivery arrived and we tucked into our curries. I realised that I kept glancing at Katie’s plate, expecting her to have leftovers that I could steal, but we’re too much alike as siblings for that to work and everything was eagerly consumed.
In contrast, I was surprisingly bad at remembering to eat during my night out with Tash this week. We just sat outside at a pub table near work, drank our Heinekens and talked about anything and everything until I arrived back at Tulse Hill station and realised that I’d had half a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Thankfully, Tulse Hill is the kind of place where you can score six chicken nuggets and chips for £2.49 at 11.15pm on a Wednesday night (cash only). They were delicious.
Shopping for a baby shower is stressful. I keep trying to out-think everyone else who will be shopping for the same baby. Can I be the cutest? Or maybe that’s a trap… maybe the the best thing to do is to turn up with something practical, and then you look wise and knowing. But I’m not wise and knowing about babies, and anyway it’s too late because I’m already in love with the ‘activity fox’. It clearly doesn’t offend Frankie and Anya too much because they tagged along with Andrew and Bonnie a few weeks later in a return visit to Tulse Hill, during which London decided that it was summer again and we celebrated with ice-creams from Brockwell Park Café.
Our guest room has chalked up another visitor! I trundled my mum’s little black suitcase all the way from Brixton before we headed out for Turkish food with Randi. I think I’ve conjured up the only Turkish place which includes what is effectively a burrito on their menu but I am not complaining. Unexpectedly, the lights went down at 9pm and a belly dancer appeared, shimmying around the room to the rhythm of her finger cymbals and balancing a giant sword on her head.
Sanna and I are sitting outdoors by the fountains at Granary Square around the back of King’s Cross. A man barrels up to us out of the darkness, waving a phone around, explaining that he has no signal and could he please borrow my phone to call his friend? I freeze, stuck in that tricky zone between wanting to be nice and not wanting a stranger to run off with my phone. But then inspiration strikes. “Is a hotspot OK?” He thinks. “Yes, yes, a hotspot would work.” He hands me his phone instead, I connect us, and then he either calls his friend or performs a gorgeous spot of improv. Either way, he appears to be drunkenly jubilant and thanks me in various languages before running off again. I feel like I was handed a real moral dilemma and totally cheated.
I gave blood today! My first time since 2014, since Brits are not allowed to donate blood in the US, and the nurse went through my questionnaire with a straight face before teasing me that despite the gap in my records I’d never be able to run away from them forever. I’m especially fond of medical professionals this week, since my dad had a spell in hospital (he’s OK!) and, although this is a giant cliché, you really never stop being impressed by NHS staff. ❤
The last time I saw my something-cousin-Tessa-something-removed was in 2011 when I stayed with her family in Los Angeles. (I lazily failed to blog that trip, but I remember loving that family and wrote in my journal that they were all “polite, welcoming, warm, funny, clearly very creative and stylish”.) Now, very excitingly, Tessa is studying in London and joined me, Tash and Cormac to revive the tradition of eating my mum’s famous summer pudding (made with blackberries from the garden) and custard. “It’s like the most English thing our family ever did!” notes Tash.
Here’s a catchy tune I found tacked on to the end of an old cassette from the era when I was very young and very into copying things between audio tapes:
This is it
It’s happy learning
Fun and music all the way
Lots of smiles
With happy learning
As you practice every day
On the tape it sets up a nice introduction by Floella Benjamin about counting numbers, but now the final line strikes me as a little threatening. What happens if you don’t practice every day?
This Bank Holiday weekend Randi and I took the slow train to Dartmoor in an ongoing quest to explore the UK’s National Parks. I’ll cheerfully admit that we can’t compete against the US for sheer awe, but the British version of a National Park will still provide impressive walks through beautiful countryside and/or other people’s fields of sheep. I had actually forgotten when we planned this that I had already visited Dartmoor a decade ago, but this time we did things our style by rolling up to Exeter Central and then joining a small but merry band of travellers on the ‘Country Bus’ to the village of Moretonhampstead.
I was, in fact, that person who had phoned Country Bus (“the local bus operator with a friendly face”) in advance to check if they took contactless cards, and the guy at the other end (who was indeed very friendly) confirmed that – as of a few weeks ago – they did! “But, just to let you know, it’s not like using your card at Sainsbury’s where you can just tap and be done. You really have to hold it.” He was right, but I was still very impressed by the technological advance. And so we rattled on happily up and down narrow country roads (and past a road sign which said “CAT’S EYES REMOVED” which disturbed Randi as apparently they do not use this term in the US) until we arrived at our destination.
From here we followed a simple formula of eating large breakfasts, going on long walks and then eating large dinners. Wisely we decided to shell out for a paper map rather than relying on our phones, which was good because (a) I don’t think Google Maps is quite comfortable with hiking, and (b) on our second day we encountered a pair of proper walkers – one of whom sounded like a cousin of Gyles Brandreth – on top of Manaton Rocks. They were surprised and impressed that we had made it but also preemptively horrified that we might be using our phones to get around. Fortunately I could put their minds to rest with our laminated ‘Around & About’ (£3.99).
It was a simple but refreshing break, topped off on Tuesday night by the new season of Bake Off for which we were joined by Randi’s new friend Hala who had – surprisingly – never watched it before. Here’s to gentle vibes.
On Friday evening I skipped out of work (not literally, but close) to meet Randi on platform 4 at Blackfriars station for a Mystery Train to a Mystery Station and then a nearby Mystery Location. (This was a good format – I like mysteries!) The Mystery Station turned out to be Sydenham Hill, which feels like it’s been built in the middle of a forest, and from there we walked to Sydenham Hill Wood which is a fantastic example of the amazing places which lurk undiscovered all across London. Back in the nineteenth century there used to be a railway running through this area and it’s possibly the first time in my life where I’ve looked down from a bridge at ex-railway track – now very much a wood again – and thought “hmm, maybe we didn’t really need that one”.
Our expeditions into wild frontiers continued at the weekend with our fifth London Loop walk, from Chigwell to the ridiculously-named Havering-atte-Bower. I did promise I wasn’t going to do an in-depth review of each walk, and that is still true. I stand by that. But this walk was notable for several reasons:
- It rained a lot. We hadn’t prepared for this eventuality, and had a low moment as we fought through some mud and brambles in the rain and wondered what on earth we were doing with our weeknd.
- After asking for directions from a uniformed staff member in Hainault Forest – very much still in the rain – she pointed us on our way before adding “and if you see three cows… tell them I’m looking for them”. Only in Hainault.
- By the time we reached Havering Country Park the sun had come out and we could enjoy a picnic overlooking London and some beautiful giant sequoia trees imported from California. Who knew?
- The bus service in Havering-atte-Bower is subpar.
Other than lots of London-based walking, the highlights of the last two weeks have been seeing Daryl and Ermila again on one of their many quick visits, heading back to Dishoom (dining tip courtesy of Catherine and AJ) for brunch – it’s as good as you would think – and catching the stunning play The Lehman Trilogy near the end of its West End run. This is a three-act, three-hour story (adapted from the original Italian, which is five hours) of Lehman Bros bank starting from its beginning as a rural store in Alabama run by three Jewish immigrant brothers from Bavaria. The actors playing the three brothers go on to play every single other character in the drama right up until the demented implosion of the bank in 2008, and everything about the play – from the script to the set to the performances – was superb.
Finally, last night I caught up once again with my school friend Harriet. That’s my primary school friend, to be exact, and since leaving primary school we’ve probably only met up every 5-7 years or so (the answers will be in this blog’s archives). But somehow we always seem to pick up where we left off, even though she’s now an actual doctor and not just a 10 year-old planning to become one.
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
