Tag Archives: The Netherlands

Haarlem

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Previous – Archeon

The morning of my last day, we went back into downtown Amsterdam: I had a mission. We were up kind of early because I really wanted to go to Fantasy Shop Chimera, a goth/witchy shop that I’d learned about a few years ago. It is a very big shop, two stories tall, and filled with many things. I didn’t really walk in with a specific desire in mind, I just wanted to look at everything. They had hundreds of statuettes of different themes – Norse gods, Egyptian gods, fairies, dragons, unicorns, mermaids, elves, if it was fantasy-themed they had some. Of course they had incense and gemstones, notebooks and tote bags and little signs that said “Frog Parking Only – All Others Will Be Toad”.

The clothing in general appealed to me less than I thought, even though I had vaguely hoped to get some really cool clothes completely different from clothes I already had. Getting a graphic T-shirt like with a unicorn or a dragon on it kind of appealed to me, but I already have plenty of T-shirts (and if I got one with a hot fairy then I would just look less hot in comparison, wouldn’t I?). The goth/rave stuff had a pre-distressed look that doesn’t really appeal to me. But eventually I found a cobalt blue handkerchief-hem dress that looked an awful lot like the “pirate princess” dress I bought at a summer festival in my last place of residence many years ago and wore until the skirt started falling apart at the seams (which wasn’t that hard, really, it was not the best-made thing). This one looks a bit better made. Cost $100CAD, but honestly for something hand-made from natural fibres that’s way too cheap. Although the shop lady asked if I’d tried it on, and I said no, because it was a “one-size-only” deal, and she reminded me that there were no returns on clothes, and I said I was going back to Canada tomorrow, and she said that if it didn’t fit I could always gift it or something. Which… I was over the weight I want to be, but I wasn’t that big!! What the hecc!? It actually fits perfectly so I don’t know what she was worried about. It has a lace-up top so when I lose the weight I want to, it will still fit fine.

Anyway, Betameche also bought a little owl figurine and named it Ada as a gift for a friend. : ) Continue reading →

Archeon

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Previous – The Dunes

Last couple days of my trip were upon us, and at some point we decided to take the second-last day and go to an outdoor historic theme park called Archeon. It’s kind of geared towards kids, but Tharash was like “you’ve got a lot of inner kid” and I acceded to his assertion.

The park is built on the outside of Alphen aan den Rijn, a bit southwest of Amsterdam, and one reason we decided this would be a good activity was because our friend Betameche was coming to visit from Belgium, and this would be less far to travel than all the way to Amsterdam. Tharash met him while sailing last year, and invited him to join our D&D group, and he’s a fun guy to play with… if somewhat chaotic as a gamer. When we met him at the train station, he was wearing a nerd shirt that said “Woke-on-LAN”, which he explained to me: “Wake-on-LAN” is when you wake up a computer from sleep mode via a LAN connection, but his shirt showed a computer port and a rainbow. Continue reading →

Valkenburg

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Previous – Zuid Limburg

So I woke up with a blister from all the hours of walking I’d done the previous day, but it wasn’t so bad yet (eventually it took over most of my left middle toe lol). We picked up things for breakfast and lunch at a convenience store, and ate breakfast on benches outside the train station. We missed the bus, but we were still a bit early, so we took the train instead. This was the first time in the Netherlands that I took a train that wasn’t NS – apparently in an attempt to cut costs, NS divested itself of a bunch of minor lines a while ago, so this one is run for instance by Arriva. You can still use the same transit card, but you have to boop the Arriva card machine instead of the NS card machine. And if you are arriving by NS and then taking an Arriva train (or vice versa, of course), you have to sign out of the NS machine and then back in to the Arriva machine to continue on your journey.

Which really wasn’t a big deal since at this point, we were only taking Arriva. Valkenburg is a nice little town, though to cross the main car street (Geneindestraat) that lies between the train station and the historic city took a LONG time even with the fancy timed crosswalks. The historic city is pretty nice, and the Klein Geul river runs through it, which eventually ends up in the Maas just north of Maastricht. Continue reading →

Zuid Limburg

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Previous – Maastricht

Fully a third of all Tharash’s trip pictures were taken on this day, I think he might like this place. I also took a lot of pictures, so… this will probably have the most pictures of any post on this trip.

This day we went to the hostel’s dining room for breakfast; it’s a breakfast buffet that’s only an extra 10 euros, for which you can make as many broodjes as you like, or get boiled eggs, or yogurt, or cereal. Probably some other stuff too, I didn’t make a list. We’d also gotten the lunch package, where they give you a bag with some pre-prepared stuff and then you can make more broodjes from the breakfast material to put in it. The paper lunch bags were a bit big, so we transferred the materials to our backpacks – and the bottled water to our own waterbottles.

Then we headed out. Over a pedestrian bridge, past the Maastricht Museum, and to a bus stop under some trees. The bus went past the European Union monument; did you know the European Union agreement in 1993 was signed in Maastricht? They seem quite proud of it. Also the stars on the monument spin under certain conditions which is pretty funny and neat. The bus ride out to our destination was about half an hour, and then we had to walk another 15-20 minutes to get to the start of the walking tour we were going on. Continue reading →

Maastricht

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Previous – the Drentsche Aa

Sorry for the delay; first I was tired and didn’t feel like blogging for a bit, and then I was in the process (still am in the process really) of switching over to Linux because I’d like an operating system that doesn’t have a stupid nosy spying algorithm in it, THANKS Microsoft. As a Windows-girlie for the past 29 years, being on Kubuntu now has been a learning curve. Like I had to format my HDD so I could play my Steam games, and it took me 3 days to figure that out. And, relevant to this blogging endeavour, I had to find a new photo editing program. There are a bunch of things Linux does well, like it starts up super fast because it doesn’t have all of Windows’ deadweight bloat programs, but apparently straightening photos is not something people commonly use; I went through a dozen programs over two hours to find what I was looking for (apparently most people only want to rotate their photos 90 degrees? What, they’ve never taken a crooked picture before?? Or else it’s some pro-level program that’s much too time-consuming to use). Windows’ photo editor previously handled it very smoothly, so I could easily straighten every photo, and I was looking for something like that. The program on Linux that does the same thing in the same way is called Shotwell (and then I still need to use Gwenview to resize them, so it’s the same steps as on Windows because I need to resize my photos in Windows in Paint). (If you think they’re still crooked, don’t give me a hard time about it, some of these angles were hard to judge. >.> )

THAT ASIDE, here’s my new favourite Dutch city. Nearly 100 pictures of it.

The following three days were the highlight of my trip! I’ve got a separate post for each day because I took so many pictures on these days. Ever since I found out mosasaurs were named for the Meuse/Maas River, and definitely since Tharash gave me a mosasaur tooth for Christmas, I wanted to go see Mosasaur Central – I mean Maastricht. Continue reading →

The Drentsche Aa

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Previous – The Veluwe

We had another rest day after all that hiking in the Veluwe, and that was the day I ordered Japanese food for dinner from Diemen’s new Japanese restaurant, because Tharash’s family doesn’t eat Japanese food a lot, and I wanted to show them what I like to eat, like unagi (and also see if Japanese food is any good in the Netherlands). In person, it’s an all-you-can-eat, but we decided to get it as delivery and eat it at home (with our own alcoholic beverages etc). So… I accidentally got too much, partly because I can never estimate how much food I’m getting from a Japanese place (since it’s lots of little things) and partly because their website has super tiny pictures and minimal description, and sometimes the description is just plain wrong. Also they only take cash, so I had to paypal Tharash for it instead of paying the restaurant directly. : / Continue reading →

The Veluwe

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Previous – The Maritime Museum

The next day we took another rest day, and I really needed it. It was the day of the Diemen weekly market, and Tharash and I went along with his mom. There were bakery stalls, cheese stalls, butcher and fisher stalls, clothes stalls, garden plant stalls, it’s a fantastic town market. Maybe a couple drops of rain but not a problem. We got a lot of herring, because I love herring, and also some cumin cheese. Continue reading →

Belgian Christmas 2023: Utrecht

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Ghent

After Ghent, we didn’t go anywhere for like a week. There were certainly more touristy things to do in the Low Countries, but like I said before, my main objective was not to be a tourist. But we did discuss things we could see in the future, such as the Maastricht Natural History Museum, in relation to which I learned that the mosasaur is named after the Meuse (Maas) River which was absolutely shocking to me. Also shocking is the controversial history of the first mosasaur skull ever discovered, which French soldiers yoinked in 1794 and the French government has refused to return ever since, citing that someone was paid (though those circumstances are, from what I understand, dubious). Another place might be the historic pump Museum de Cruquius, the largest steam engine in the world, apparently.

So we read books, played games, listened to music, and cooked food, drank alcohol with the food occasionally. We watched the birds at the bird feeders in the mornings, Tharash has four bird feeders on his deck as well as a water dish. I did not get much creative writing done. That’s fine, I was in rest mode. Continue reading →

Belgian Christmas 2023: Antwerp

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Okay so you know I visited Europe last summer to see Germany, but I went again at Christmas. Tharash had come to visit me the previous Christmas (for some reason I didn’t take any pictures of that? I guess everything was too normal for me to take pictures of) so I was like “trade!”, and I had never been to Europe in the winter, and I just wanted to see both more in-person Tharash and more Europe. But this really was a vacation to unwind, not to sight-see. Still, I took a bunch of pictures.

First I had three flights to get to Schiphol, so I took some pictures of Canadian clouds. It was interesting to fly over Thunder Bay, but I wasn’t at a good angle to take pictures of it. But it was interesting to me when there were sudden edges to endless fields of cloud, for instance. And the first picture you can see the shadow of the cloud, I think.

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The Netherlands 2012 – Part 4

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Part 3: Muiderslot and Madurodam

In this episode, we went to Amsterdam some more, to a nature reserve, to Marken Island, and to Texel Island.

Please note this is a coffeeshop, not a café. What’s the difference, you may ask? You get coffee at a café. At a coffeeshop you get weed. (This was not something either of us knew back then, but we weren’t interested in coffee either so we didn’t go in lol I just took the picture for the shop name)

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