Family On Tour In Haarlem
We were heading for Haarlem on the coast of The Netherlands for the birthday celebrations of our Dutch niece and cousin, Marijke, with whom we should have been spending the weekend. Instead, a couple of weeks earlier, she had been felled by an out-of-control sixteen-year-old on the ski slopes of Austria and was plated up, strapped up and unable to put weight on her leg for some weeks. So plans had to be fluid around her needs.
I arrived first on the Thursday; my sister, niece and I had hired an Airbnb for three nights.
The other seven family members were in a hotel but not arriving until Friday. Having negotiated the key box on the wall of the elegant riverside town house, (always a panic in case a) the box doesn’t open, b) there isn’t a key inside, or c) the key doesn’t open the door), the front door swung wide to reveal a stairway to heaven. With treads very shallow and the staircase steeper than any I have ever seen, I dragged my case up what amounted to a stepladder. Forty-nine steps and a couple of dodgy turns a shoulder shove got me in through the apartment door.
Three floors up and the view of the river was spectacular.
Having looked around the quirky flat, on the principal of ‘first up, best dressed’, I commandeered the bedroom on the same floor as the bathroom. The other bedroom was on a mezzanine, so up shiny, painted stairs with a distinct lack of handrail, so I took Chair’s action on that one.
Friday morning was glorious, and we made our way to the train station en route for Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum. The swing bridges were in action as huge barges carrying sand lumbered down the river. Long queues at the museum, but they moved fast and we were in. Our first goal was to eat cake and drink coffee, which we achieved very successfully.
Then we oo’d and ah’d over the Rembrants, Van Gogh’s and Pieter de Hooch’s Dutch interiors of domestic scenes. His wonderful use of perspective in creating archways or doorways, is a joy.
The highlight for my engineer niece, Lucy, was that The Night Watch had been deframed, and was being stretched and temperature controlled on an aluminium frame because the paint was cracking. Right up her boulevard that was.
In true LWS (London Writers Salon) style, I was thrilled to meet Tracy Bickley, who was in Amsterdam to visit her son.
Alas, too brief a meeting as we had to get to Utrecht railway station where our niece, Marijke, met us, looking surprisingly well on her first outing since the op. We found a café and drunk tea but swiftly switched to wine when we realised we were on licenced premises.
We left Marijke after a couple of hours to get her local train, looking forward to seeing her and Henk on the following evening for a meal to celebrate her birthday, and we headed back to Haarlem, ready to meet up with the family. The trains in Holland are a dream, clean, quiet, on time – qualities we can only dream of in the UK.
The Italian meal was ideal, something for everyone, and the boys, Daniel and William, aged eleven and nine, were excited to see us, at least until the Cassis Fanta arrived, which seems to be the current favourite if they can’t get hold of Prime!
The next morning we arrived for a boat trip around the canals of Haarlem. I assumed the boys would be up for it. How wrong can one grandmother be? Heads down, they played a game on their phones all trip, refusing to acknowledge any landmark we pointed out to them. “It’s boring”, they insisted, although later I realised that Daniel, the older one, had been absorbing the commentary as he put me right on one or two points.
Haarlem is beautiful, seeing it either from the canal or walking the streets. The architecture has a sturdy elegance which has stood the test of time. Bicycles are everywhere, baskets, seats, little ‘sidecars’ in front which seat 2 children or 3 dogs. Bicycles left outside houses unlocked, houses that open directly onto the street, and rooms that remain uncurtained at night, which allowed the nosier members of our party, including me, a glimpse into Haarlem homes.
The boat trip ended and across the river was a small quirky museum, the Teylers.
Daniel wanted to go in but William didn’t, neither did he want Daniel to go in. He wanted to find sweet shops, because that’s what you do when you are nine years old and in Holland. Daniel took his own decision and wandered around the fossils and prehistoric skeletons. William and parents formed a splinter group and went shopping. There were a few interesting pictures depicting everyday life, poor people in clogs, which horrified Dan. Good tearoom in that museum, to which we all gravitated, some earlier than others.
We found William’s shopping party in a bar which was gearing up for lunch, and set about the excellent menu of chips, chips, and er, chips. The boys went off to find a shop selling Dutch treats and I hoped the shop wasn’t what I feared it might be. They came back with Haribo, which they could have bought anywhere in the world, but as long as the kids are having fun…
We had seen a large domed building on our boat trip, which, the commentary told us, had been a prison, with cells all around the walls and guards in the middle. We decided to see what it had become.
We discussed how long we had and what time Marijke’s birthday meal was. Enter William, the disrupter!
’Where’s the cake?’ he demanded.
‘She’s a grownup,’ we assured him, ‘She doesn’t need a cake.’
Now both boys were animated.
‘You can’t have a birthday without a cake’, They were staring us out.
‘OK’, I was first to crack. ‘Shall we see if we can find a cake?’
Most of the others went to the prison. A couple went to people-watch from a bar and the boys and I walked into town. My sense of direction was never my best feature, and inevitably I got confused in the big square with all the cafes and led them the wrong way. They are lovely chatty boys who don’t see one another very often, but play Fortnite online together, so they picked up comfortably where they left off. They both play football every week, support different teams, so as they talked their way down little streets,
I was grateful to be surplus to requirements as I frantically tried to remember how I had got out of these streets last night. Because yes, I had been lost around here before.
I turned a corner and recognised where we were. I was both relieved and horrified when I realised I would be leading them through the red light district. What to do? I couldn’t turn back as I didn’t know any other way, Fortunately Haarlem is small-scale in all things and the red-light district was no different. One and a half small streets, a couple of dubious doorways and two ladies sitting in windows covered it, while the boys, totally oblivious, competed with one another on the subject of their pets – Dan with four cats and Will with three dogs. Nobody won.
We found a cake shop and, having made the mistake of allowing the boys to choose the cake, they disagreed. Fortunately the cakes were for sale in halves so that’s what we got, 2 gooey, but different halves. William meanwhile had spotted a rainbow cake which was sold in slices, and so we got back to our Airbnb with afternoon tea.
They played hide and seek in the numerous cupboards in the apartment, and insisted the parents ascended the staircase to find them. Parents were delighted to be faced with the staircase to end all staircases just to discover their little perishers lying in the bottom of a none too clean cupboard!
The highlight of the weekend was undoubtably the family meals. We are scattered all over the UK and the Netherlands so love a get-together over food.
In case you were wondering, traditions in Holland seemed to be the same as the UK. The whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday and then applauded, and Marijke cut her cake(s) under supervision from Dan and Will.
We all headed home on Sunday after an exhausting, but wonderful weekend. The footnote is that I developed covid on Sunday afternoon, but none of the other twelve members of the family caught it, (so weird) and the best news of all - Marijke has had the strapping off and can put weight on her leg again. She’ll be back on the ski slopes in no time at all!
Sue - I've sent you a message today on instagram - Varosha (The Daily Faces)