Amsterdam is full. That’s the message I’m getting as I’m trying to find a campsite to stay at. I mean it is August I guess, but I thought we’d find a decent campsite within a short distance of the city a little easier than this. I finally found a space at De Sport Camping, a new site on the edge of Amsterdam. It’s pretty pricey for a campsite, but it looks good in the pictures. The reviews are mixed, but it’s this or nothing so we book a spot and off we go.
As campsites go it’s not the best to be honest, it looks like it’s still being built and they’ve really squashed us in, but it’s 25 minutes from the centre by bus and that’s gotta be worth something.
What do you do in Amsterdam when you’ve only got one day, and with two small kids in tow. We decided we’d book a museum, and the Van Gogh museum was our first choice as Hunters been learning about him at school. But they are also full. For the next 4 days! So book ahead would be my advice for Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum has availability, and while it only has one Van Gogh, it has a lot of Rembrandts and many Vermeers among other things, so that’s good enough. With that booked for the afternoon, we decide to check out the centre on foot first, then have some local food. Then after the museum maybe a canal tour to see the city from the water.
We wander the streets of old Amsterdam, straight up the Damrak to Dam square, where we find a man handing out handfuls of rice which encourage the pigeons to perch on you. I figured he would ask for money, a rather cunning ruse I thought. But it seems he was just having fun seeing the kids (and adults) delighting in being essentially mobbed by these feathered muggers.
I had read that the best chips you can get in Amsterdam are to be had at the hilariously named MANNEKENPIS on the Damrak. Bizzarely named after a famous Belgian statue of a peeing child, it serves the Dutch staple of perfectly fried chips smothered in a sauce of your choice, all dispensed from a small weeing-child shaped dispenser! And I must say, they are delicious. Kids fed, we make our way over to the infamous red light area for a quick photo op with the (un-manned) red-curtained windows. With the kids requesting a toilet stop, a quick Google search for public bathrooms showed up the well reviewed if somewhat terrifying “Sexy Loo”, which turned out to be the cleanest public loo ever, and so it should be for the princely sum of 2e. Although the lady let two kids and one adult supervisor in for the price of one, so pretty good value when compared to the alternative 10-strong queue for the Starbucks loo.
Time for the museum, so we hopped a tram up to the Rijksmuseum and headed on in past a busker playing classical music with a cello, it seems they have a better class of busker here!
Knowing that our time in an art gallery will be reasonably short with an 8 and a 6 year old in tow we head straight for the Van Gogh, closely followed by the Rembrandts and Vermeers. The highlight had to be the famous Night Watch by Rembrandt. Standing at 3.6m high and 4.3m wide, this almost 400 year old painting is simply epic in person. Obviously it’s priceless and irreplaceable, but the man stood next to it informed us that it had an insurance value of 500 million euros.
As predicted, the kids had only a very small appetite for classic art, so we took our leave and headed back to the centre to hop on one of the many tourist boats for an hour long cruise of the waterways around Amsterdam. This is a pleasant way to see the city from a different angle, and the information provided from the multilingual voiceover tape is useful to notice things you might not otherwise notice on foot.
Before leaving the city and heading back to our campsite, we decided we should indulge in some other famous Dutch staples. The first being proper Stroopwaffels, which we found at Mellys Stroopwaffels freshly baked daily in store, and available in many different candy coated options. The second being some proper edam from one of the hundreds of cheese stores lining the Damrak. Bam and Hunter both chose their favourites to munch on in the Motorhome. And finally I wanted to buy myself a box of nice Dutch cigars for the odd occasion that I like to enjoy one with my friends, so we headed to the famous P.G.C.Hajenius which has been selling fine tobacco products in the Dutch capital since 1862.
Souvenirs in hand and feeling like we had done Amsterdam as best we could in a day, we headed back to our bus stop for the 25 minute journey back to our campsite.
Daan Verschoor
When I was a little boy we never went on too many family holidays abroad. Growing up on a farm provided me with the most amazing childhood, furnished with an amazing freedom that I guess I took for granted at the time, and that I now realise was an enormous privilege. The flip side of that however is that my parents had to work incredibly hard. You’ve heard of the phrase 24/7, well this really was it! Dairy farming really didn’t allow you any time to escape. You can’t ask the cows to milk themselves for two weeks while you pop off to Majorca for a rest. We managed a week in Bournemouth here and there, but that involved my poor dad driving us there and staying one night, then leaving us to it while he went home to run the farm before coming back to get us at the end of the week! Don’t get me wrong, it never mattered to us as kids, we never wanted for anything and I had a truly blissful childhood. If my parents are reading this (I know you are Mum!), you need to know how fondly i remember my time growing up, it really was perfect. It was just the way it was. Foreign travel, however, was never on the cards.
At a certain point my Dad started doing some business in Holland, and he had made a great contact and firm friend in Mr Daan Verschoor and his wife Marie. Suddenly my brother and I had a family in a foreign country who were willing, and I hope even happy to put us up once a year. Now Holland isn’t an exotic location I know, but to an untraveled 8 year old from Somerset it might as well have been Timbuktu!
Once a year my folks would pack me and Charlie off on the KLM flight as unattended minors to be picked up in Schipol by the Verschoors an hour later.
I loved going to Voorschoten every year, and when Charlie got old enough that it was no longer cool, I kept going on my own, and Daan and Marie made my week away as action packed as it could have possibly been.
Today, I took my own kids to see Daan in Voorschoten, 35 or so years after I first went there, and it was so great to see my old friend and do some of the things I used to do all those years ago. Sadly Marie is no longer with us, having succumbed to the big C some years ago. Perhaps serendipitously Kate and I popped in to see them in 2011 on a trip to Amsterdam, and Kate met Marie then. I say serendipitously as it was only 3 short months later that she sadly passed. It’s a shame the kids never met her, as I know they would have loved her, as she would have them. Daan however is still the same man I remember, if a little bit older (aren’t we all).
We met Daan at his home in Voorschoten right next to the canal, where he keeps his horses and chickens, and after a quick catch up over a coffee, he said we were going to go the centre of Leiden for lunch via the many waterways that criss cross the Netherlands.
A good piece of advice for anyone with young kids would be to never miss an opportunity to go to the toilet. A maxim we temporarily forgot today as Bam suddenly proclaimed her desperation in the middle of the canal. “No problem” said Daan, “I have a friend who lives here” as he pulled up alongside a canal side house. After a short dutch exchange across the garden the kids were invited to disembark and use the man’s facilities, saving me from literally dangling poor Bam over the side of the boat, then off we go again.
What a perfect way to enter a city! Imagine going to a city centre in the UK, and instead of queuing in a traffic jam and fighting to park and paying over the odds for the privilege, you could just cruise in on a quiet canal, waving at your fellow sailors whilst enjoying a glass of wine, then moor up wherever you want right in the middle of the city and walk straight into a local restaurant for lunch. Life seems so much more laid back when you view it from the water, and it made me fall in love with Holland all over again.
After a bite to eat and a quick visit to the historic windmill I visited with Marie three decades ago, we took to the water once more for a whistle stop tour through the centre of Leiden before making our way to Vlietland lake, where we used to go swimming all those years ago.
The kids were desperate to go for a swim, they had been wearing their swimming costumes for several hours by this point! Instead of just a swim though, we were amazed to see an aqua assault on course in the corner of the lake. We signed the kids up and sent them running in, but I very soon felt like I was missing out, so I too got myself a life jacket and headed on in with them! What a laugh, the water was warm, and because it was a lake it was nice not to have the familiar sting of salt or chlorine to deal with. I did however feel like I had run a marathon by the time we came out, it’s pretty tough keeping up with an 8 year old!
A quick coffee to warm up and it was back to the boat to head back to Daan’s place as he needed to head out to a prior engagement. Five minutes away from home though, disaster struck: put-put-put and the engine cut out. “No worries” said Daan, “more petrol under the seat”. You guessed it, the reserve petrol can was empty! Here we were, up the metaphorical creek, but luckily with a physical paddle! We (me) managed to paddle us to a local group who were enjoying a BBQ at the side of the river who very kindly gave us some petrol along with some very tasty sausages to boot. But alas the engine still wouldn’t fire up and we were once again drifting aimlessly in the water. I’ve never tried thumbing for a lift from a boat before, but there’s a first time for everything, and as it turns out it’s pretty easy! Within 5 minutes some kindly couple had noticed our plight and offered to tie us on the back and tow us home. So off we limped back to our starting point, with two weary kids and a few new stories after my trip down memory lane. We shook hands and promised to meet again before too long, and I hope we keep that promise, life is too short!