History and Heritage (Dutch)

Master bedroom at Van Loon Mansion

We started the day with the Pancake Doctor, this time Paul had an apple pancake and I had a banana one – in the bright cheery breakfast room overlooking the canal full of friendly people all planning their day. We got talking to some ladies from Glasgow so those of you who know Paul well will guess how that conversation developed! (it was murrrderrr, Taggart style).

We walked up and through the flower markets and on to Museum Van Loon, a mansion owned by an extremely wealthy family who ran the Dutch East Indies Company in ‘The Golden Age’. It is now a museum full of original or accurate reproductions and an amazingly opulent view into their lives.

Across the canal was Foam, a photographic gallery with a number of different exhibitions including one on New York Times features.

Garden at Van Loon Mansion

Then a bit of a walk along the canals looking at the architecture and the boat pulling old/dumped bikes out of a canal.

Arriving at the Dutch Resistance Museum we were disappointed to see a large group of school kids but went in anyway. Really glad we did as it was a brilliant and large exhibition/collection of information and items from the 1930s through to the 1950s and a great insight into what Paul’s parents would have experienced especially during WWII when they were teenagers. Paul’s father had talked a little about his experiences but this really filled in details, and before we realised it we had spent almost 2 hours there. We barely noticed the school kids. That could be as close to family history as I have had Paul J

As it was well after 3pm and we suddenly realised how hungry we were, we went looking for lunch. It started raining and the first café we saw was a little organic place advertising Limburg asparagus (and Dutch beer). We had the place almost to ourselves and ordered the asparagus, spicy soup, chunky fries and Trappist beer.

Trawling the canals for bikes

As it was too late to ‘do’ any more museums we walked (and walked and walked) to find special needle, thread and tape to mend our suitcase.

As the day went on it got colder and colder with a very large wind chill factor – effectively making it about 4-5oC.

Dutch food for dinner – we chose a selection of ‘starters’ to taste more: herring, cheese croquettes, veal, pea and ham soup, bitterballen.

Lunch (almost)

Tesselated 'sofa' in front of the crooked house