Belgium & Holland

By:  Jennifer Milano, June 2016

When I asked my eleven-year-old where she wanted to go for a mommy-daughter vacation, she barely hesitated before stating definitively, "I want to go to Belgium and eat chocolate and waffles."  Sounded good to me!  We invited my mother to join us, and the three of us set off happily for a culinary adventure of Belgium and Holland.

We flew to Amsterdam, where, coincidentally, I had visited with my mother as a twelve-year-old on my first trip outside the United States.  Avoiding the "adults-only" sections of the city, we stayed at a lovely small hotel, the Ambassade, with two side-by-side rooms overlooking a canal.  We spent our days wandering the city, gazing up at the unique roof lines of the quaint houses, and watching the Dutch conduct their daily lives from their bicycles, the style of which hadn't seem to change since the first time I was in Amsterdam in the 1980's. 

The only museums my daughter wanted to visit were the Houseboat Museum (interesting only to see the inside of a houseboat, and fun to sit on the bench on the deck of the boat pretending we were true houseboat dwellers) and Anne Frank's House.  For the latter, check the website three months' in advance to secure your tickets - when you walk by the line at the main entrance toward the door marked "Reservations Only", you'll feel like a movie star gaining VIP access to the hottest restaurant in town.  (You can also secure advance tickets to the Van Gogh Museum, which I visited years ago and have read has a great kids' audio tour.)  I wish we had been in Amsterdam on a weekend to take advantage of the special family program that the Anne Frank House offers.  But since my daughter had read The Diary of Anne Frank and other novels taking place during the Holocaust, she had some context for the Anne's heartbreaking story and the experience of walking the rooms where Anne and her family lived.  This was my third visit to Anne Frank's House, and each time it gets harder, as I mature and am able to reflect on the horror that occurred and still occurs in various ways in different parts of the world today.

Still recovering from our visit, my mom and I turned over the navigating to my daughter for the next couple of hours.  Luckily for my daughter, who may have inherited my mother's directionally-challenged mind, there is a "museum" on virtually every block of Amsterdam.  We visited the Tulip Museum, the Stroopwafel Museum and the Cheese Museum.  (Instead of a museum with a tiny gift shop, picture gift shop with a tiny museum.)  We took lots of silly photos and did a lot of laughing.  

We decided to do as the Dutch do, and rent bicycles for an afternoon.  Thinking we would be better off outside the city, my Dutch friend, Mira, recommended taking the train to Delft or Haarlem.  Since Delft has no shops renting children's bikes, we took a quick 15-minute train ride to Haarlem, walked two minutes' from the train station to Rent a Bike Haarlem on Lange Herenstraat, and rented an adult and a children's bike.  The bikes came with locks to protect against theft, but no helmets to protect against death.  As a Type A person, I'm a hyper-Type A mom, and don't even let my kids ride their bikes in our driveway without helmets.  When in Rome...

The shop recommended we bike to a nearby national park.  So, armed with a map that did not cover the area to which we were cycling, and a photo I took with my iphone of the national park, we set out.  As we biked in our designated lane that was about ten feet wide, and I watched the drivers yield in every case to a cyclist, I relaxed and for the millionth time in my life, wished the U.S. was more like Europe.  After our second roundabout, I was pretty sure we were lost.  We stopped to ask the only person we met in Holland who didn't speak fluent English for directions.  Fail.  We kept going.  We stopped to ask a young woman waiting for a bus.  "What is the name of the national park?" she asked with a smile.  "I don't know," I replied apologetically (but thinking, "how many national parks can there be in the immediate vicinity?").  She didn't know where the park was, but told us to keep going straight and we would reach the beach, with sand dunes and a good bike path.  She said she bikes there all of the time.  We followed her advice, and within about 100 yards, reached a sign that said "[something or other] NATIONAL PARK"!  My daughter pointed out that the woman passed right by the park every time she biked to the beach...

We rode through the park, and it was beautiful cycling through the forest.  We had lunch on the main square in Haarlem, visited the town windmill, and returned to what felt like by now our home on the canal in Amsterdam to read and relax in our cozy room.  The next morning, we took the tram to the train station and boarded our train for Bruges, Belgium.  I couldn't wait to show the picture-perfect town to my mom and daughter, and my mom and daughter couldn't wait to taste the chocolate.  We took a taxi from the train station in Bruges to the Hotel Prinsenhof, perfectly situated on a quiet side street off one of the main shopping streets and just a few minutes' walk to the main square.  The rooms were beautiful (we received a free upgrade) and the staff was among the friendliest and most helpful I've ever encountered.  And it was costing us only 180 Euros a night!

We spent our time in Bruges walking and eating.  Eating and walking.  Buying chocolate, and eating it while walking.  Or sitting on a bench.  We really didn't do very much, and we had a wonderful time.  In addition to the chocolate and waffles, the mussels and fries were amazing!  Our favorite meal was at The Flemish Pot, where the beef stew, and the chicken and mushroom stew were unbelievably rich and complex.  I can still recall the taste of dipping the crispy, hand-cut french fries in the sauces of those stews.  And one of the best shopping experiences of my lifetime was spending 100 Euros on gifts of chocolate from Chocolatier Dumon.  Watching my friends' eyes close and their faces soften when they bit into their chocolate gifts was worth all of my efforts to keep that chocolate from melting between Bruges and the U.S.  Eleven-year-olds eally have their priorities straight - chocolate is a fabulous reason to travel!

How to Get Here:  We flew Aer Lingus to Amsterdam via Dublin to save on airfare, which went smoothly.  Flights to the U.S. clear immigration and customs in Dublin, which was a good use of our layover time and allowed us to arrive in New York as if we were on a domestic flight.  We used raileurope.com to book our train tickets from Amsterdam to Bruges, via Brussels on the way there, and Ghent on the way back.  In Europe, you can sometimes use the official rail sites to book tickets.  On the railway's home page, you will be asked to select a country.  If you select "U.S.A.," you will be redirected to raileurope.com.  If you select "U.K.," you can often complete your transaction and save money.  However, more often than not my attempted purchases are rejected, possibly because I am using a U.S.-based credit card.  My friend, Harriet, recently used www.capitainetrain.com to book her European train tickets, and had a positive experience.  She recommends the site for its ease of use and comprehensive list of options. 

Where to Stay:  We loved the charming Ambassade Hotel in Amsterdam.  Ask for a room facing the Herengracht, on a high floor for good views and to reduce street noise.  We also spent a night at Hotel IX in the Ninth Square.  The well-designed rooms are self-catering, there is no reception and entry is by keypad, but the friendly owners leave a complimentary stocked mini-bar and bottle of wine in each room!  Two of the rooms are air-conditioned.  If you're a light sleeper, the church bells that ring every fifteen minutes throughout the night will wake you up.  In Bruges, stay at the Hotel Prinsenhof.  It is one of the nicest small hotels I've stayed in, and is a great value.  I would stay at this hotel on every return visit to Bruges, it was so perfect.

Where to Eat:  We ate pancakes three times (four, if you count my double order on our last visit), at Pancakes! Amsterdam.  Go early to avoid the inevitable line that forms.  The homemade apple pie at Villa Zeesicht made for a delicious afternoon snack, and the dinner at the bistro-style Café de Reiger in the Jordaan was very good.  For a quick lunch or homemade cake, stroll the Raamsteeg lane to number 5 and you will find the tiny Traiterie Chef.  The Indonesian food at Long Pura was tasty - share the "rice table" from the menu. 

In Bruges, you must have dinner at de Vlaamsche Pot (The Flemish Pot), where every dish was delicious and the waiter walks around with a huge bowl of french fries from which he fills your plate.  We also liked our mussels sitting outside on a lovely square at Poules Moules, but the mussels at De Koetse were even better.  Our dinner at Bistro in den Wittenkop was also very good. 

The best waffles (Liege-style, which we preferred) were at Ooya, across from the Gelateria da Vinci (good gelato for Belgium, but stick to the waffles here and save the gelato for your trip to Italy!).  For the Brussels-style waffle, order one at The Flemish Pot for dessert.  The best chocolates in our opinion were from Chocolatier Dumon.  We went there many times during our weekend in Bruges, and our enthusiasm for chocolate must have been notable because out of the hundreds of tourists that enter the shop each day, the staff remembered us, greeting us with "back again?" each time.

What to Do:  We paid slightly more for our canal cruise so that we could have a live guide rather than an audio recording, but the guide said very little so it didn't seem worth it.  Take the canal tour merely for a relaxing hour on the canals and seeing Amsterdam from a different perspective.  For Anne Frank's House, and for any museum you wish to visit, purchase your tickets online in advance.  For Anne Frank's House, check the website three months before your trip, and if you are traveling with children and wish to do the museum's family program, check the schedule as in early June the program ran only on the weekends.  We had planned to go to Vondelpark, but the weather didn't cooperate, and perhaps the cool temperatures kept the street performers away from the Leidseplein, as well.  The Houseboat Museum was fun to see, and takes only about 20 minutes of your day to tour.  And one of our favorite pastimes was to spend lazy afternoons reading in our room, with the windows opened up to the sounds and sights of canal life.

To experience Holland as a local, rent a bike.  We took a 15-minute train ride to Haarlem, and rented bikes from Rent a Bike Haarlem on Lange Herenstraat.  I had also been in email contact with the friendly tourist office of Delft, a town about an hour's train ride from Amsterdam, and they were welcoming and helpful, suggesting bike routes and rental shops.  You can also rent a bike in Bruges and cycle along a canal, past a working windmill, to the village of Damme, four miles away.  My daughter nixed this idea, preferring another stroll to Chocolatier Dumon!  Bruges also holds outdoor markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  We enjoyed some yummy pastries at the Saturday market for our breakfast!

What to Read:  "Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl" deserves a read or a re-read before your trip to Amsterdam, particularly if you are going to visit Anne Frank's House.