Dunkirk (France).
After the ferry docked in Calais (drive on the right, Ben), we headed north along the coast, stopping at Dunkirk to see the infamous evacuation beaches. Bathed in sunshine and bathed in bathers, there was little to evoke the desperate scenes of the allied evacuation.
Bruges (Belgium)
We drove on to Bruges (Brugge*), our destination for the next two nights. We stopped at Martin’s Relias, our spacious canal-side hotel, leaving our bags and moved the car to nearby underground parking. Very little traffic comes into this old city, which is bordered by a near-circular canal and cobbled throughout. Bruges was a delightful first stop. The city is beautiful, with canals, ancient buildings and oozing with history. It also oozes with tourists and it was pretty busy on Saturday and Sunday daytimes. In the evening, the day-trippers have gone home and it adopts a more serene feel. We managed a couple of runs, and enjoyed the pedestrianised paths abutting the canals surrounding the city. Food was good, particularly the local dishes, such as Flemish Beef Stew and Lemon Sole. We joined a walking tour with Alastair, a fellow Scot, who emigrated here 7 years ago. He was a wealth of history and humour and we enjoyed our couple of hours wandering with him. Bruges is a lovely place to spend a couple of days. Very compact, safe, and beautiful. Flemish is the dominant language here, but English is widely spoken. Hint, don’t try French first 🤬.
*We’re increasingly uncomfortable about renaming other people’s homes, so will try and include the correct name!
The Hague (Netherlands)
Leaving Bruges, we drove north, crossing the Belgium/Netherlands border (and lamenting the drop in speed limit from 120 > 100kph) to the coastal town of The Hague (Den Haag). We’d booked parking 5 minutes walk from our hotel, the rather nice Hotel Indigo.
After a light lunch, we spent the sunny afternoon wandering the streets, seeing the sights of this pretty town. Being a Monday, much of it was shut, where businesses take a day off after the busy weekends. We wandered down to The Binnenhof, the grand government buildings in the middle of the city (the oldest parliament buildings in the world, apparently). Currently under renovation, a steal tower called the Uitzichtpunt Binnenhof has been erected for visitors to scale to get a view over the lake and buildings. Unfortunately, the tower noticeably swayed towards the top which Ben Didn’t Like (overthinking the inevitable engineering failures and material stresses which will sent it toppling).
We stopped to visit the Mauritzhaus, where the famous Vameer painting The Girl with the Pearl Earring is housed. The painting itself is subtly bewitching, perhaps due to the surprisingly contemporary image of beauty captured in the girl’s face – known as a ‘tronie’, the subject was in fact imaginary and not a portrait. After the Mauritzhaus, we walked past the sadly closed Escher museum (which my father would have loved) before playing spot-the-Embassy on the way to the Peace Palace, the international courthouse of The Hague. A location we hope to be very busy in the coming years, if international justice is to be served. After a long walk, we retired to the hotel before heading back out for an evening stroll, followed by a lovely meal at the excellent Megu ‘Pan Asian’ restaurant.
Amsterdam (Netherlands)
After an excellent breakfast in a local cafe, we left The Hague and drove the relatively short, but traffic-laden road to Amsterdam. One complete standstill on the motorway turned out to be a tailback to let a boat through. That was a first – stopping a motorway for a boat. This is a watery land.
Amsterdam doesn’t like cars, and so the nearest we could park while avoiding bankruptcy (still €75 for 2 nights) was behind the Centraal Station. We packed enough for a couple of nights into our day-bags and walked 20 or so minutes to our hotel, the Hotel Nes. It was well located with canal-side views and nice staff, but somewhat shabby, cramped and aircon-less.
This city is still a melting pot. It’s edgy, alive, drunk, stoned, debauch, 24/7 and packed with energy. The concentric canals create a ripple of life packed either side of the waterways. Cafes, restaurants, boutique shops, coffee shops and red light windows change through the day; understated and non-descript in the daytime morphs into a cachopany of light, people and sound in the evenings. I loved it, but Shona preferred the more picturesque and refined feel of Bruges and The Hague.
Over our two days in Amsterdam, we shopped, ate, drank, joined a free walking tour and a fantastic evening Canal Tour (recommend an evening tour with drinks). Shona went for a swim in the munipal pool and I found a great Gym. We also had a great run up and around the stunning Vondelpark which is a beautiful park alive with walkers, runners and sunbathers in the glorious afternoon sunshine.
Cologne (Germany)
Our 4th country after leaving England on Saturday, we left Amsterdam this morning and drove the 2.5 hours to Cologne (K̦ln). Leaving the Netherlands, the road speed increased to 130kph (woohoo!) and the surface worsened considerably. As we neared Cologne, I started developing a bit of a blind spot in my vision Рa sure-fire sign of a visual migraine. Fortunately we were near a petrol station, so we stopped to allow my temporary blind spot to dissipate before continuing.
The drive into Cologne lacked the feel of our past stops. Concrete and shabby, we found our hotel, the Ruby Ella Hotel, which while trying a bit hard to be cool, is nice enough with decent underground parking.
I was still feeling a bit off and the city didn’t help matters much. With the exception of the vast and imposing Cologne Cathedral, much of the rest of the city is pretty uninviting, a post-war functional concrete blandscape. A small old-town and river bank lifts the spirits a bit, but we’re glad we only elected to spend one night here. Despite this, we had a great meal at the local Cafe Romeo Romeo and a chilled evening.
Tomorrow, we move on to our 5th country, Luxembourg, to stay for the weekend with our friends, Aidan & Jill and their boys.
Travels with Sklaroffs 