The big news for this month is that I. and I finally have a home again! We have found a beautiful, airy, and well-heated flat in the Leith part of Edinburgh, close to pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, charity shops, bus links, a bookstore, a fishmonger's, and a butcher's. I moved in shortly before I. flew back over, and revelled mightily in the chance to cook meals again . . .
To celebrate the completion of my third chapter, and my husband's return after nearly four weeks apart, and the discovery of some very inexpensive ferry fares, we scuttled off in mid-November for an European getaway.
The ferry left on Thursday evening from Newcastle, an industrial/port city in England about two hours' train ride south of Edinburgh.
After a night on board, we awoke in the morning to a beautiful foggy sea filled with dozens of small boats . . .
We docked in IJmuiden, a port city to the west of Amsterdam. It took quite a while to disembark, mostly due to some technical difficulties.
Amsterdam, wonderful culinary haven that it is, has scuttled quickly up my list of awesome cities, due in great part to its wonderful abundance of cheese:
I., though he enjoyed the cheeses, was also very excited about sampling some of the alcoholic delicacies. Scottish whisky is not usually counted among these, but the packaging was so well done I couldn't resist:
(Instead, we sampled genevre, the alcoholic forefather of gin. It comes in two styles, old and new, and the old version tastes a little like whisky, while the new variety is about as tasteless as vodka).
In addition to the numerous cheese-laden windows, we also enjoyed the delicate craftsmanship of these chocolate shoes:
On our first day in Amsterdam, we were drawn to this little musical cart. We have no idea what it does, but it was a large music box on wheels and its owner appeared to be passing out tracts.
I. particularly enjoyed the window display in this spectacle shop:
On our first afternoon in the city, we visited the houseboat museum, which was wonderful and all kinds of amazing. This is its tiny efficiency kitchen:
And this the mechanical part of the ship (which, as the creepy hand on the right is meant to suggest, was also once the sleeping quarters for the residents' servant/servants).
We also, on our first afternoon, visited the Anne Frank museum, which was not really a place where I really wished to engage in photography. The exhibits were well assembled and interesting, but visitors were generally just shuffled from TV screen to TV screen, in an unending line of gawkers: it was crowded beyond comprehension, which made the carefully plotted exhibition lose some of its poignancy.
On our first morning in the city (a Saturday), we headed out of our hotel in search of a street market,
stumbling across a Black Peter festival along the way (I. tells me this is something to do with a Christmas theme, though I'm unfamiliar with the story). There was music, dancing, and a lot of blackface and ginger cookies.
We walked about five miles into the city centre, and plotted our route to wander through as many parks as possible.
We finally reached the street market, which was all sorts of exciting crammed into a half-mile simply bursting with people. Armed with a list of must-try foods provided by a former teacher/mentor, we bravely waded into the fray and tried raw herring, fries with mayo, and (my favourite) Loempia, a Vietnamese spring roll.
We rounded out our meal with oliebollen, a deep-fried sugar-coated beignet type food:
For second dessert, we indulged in waffles:
Meandering on at last from the delights of the street market, we walked past the Heineken "brouwery" (we were dissuaded from visiting on account of its terribly steep admission fees).
The most exciting part of our Saturday was indubitably the afternoon spent at the "Museum of the Dutch Resistance," which housed an amazing abundance of World War II memorabilia focussed, as the name implies, on the Resistance workers. All the exhibits were captioned in English and Dutch, but I was frustrated by my inability to read the original documents on display (letters, newspapers, postcards, ration books, and all sorts of other exciting things). The museum was pretty quiet, which made it easy to savour the displays; what I particularly enjoyed were the sort of character sketches assembled throughout the museum: each featured individual had a board, usually with a photograph at the top, telling a short story about that person's work in the resistance or response to the war. We learned about some female assassins who dressed up as a romantic couple and shot traitors and German agents, about families who housed Jews and other sought-after individuals, and about normal, everyday people who reacted to the calamities around them in a variety of ways. It was a wonderful collection, and I am only sad that we didn't budget more time for our perusal of the entire museum. (Must learn Dutch and go back!)
After the museum closed, we strolled around the city, enjoying the sights at dusk. I.'s favourite window collected another inhabitant:
We stopped by the large and beautiful central train station to check train times for our next expedition, and I had to take a photo of the magnificent architecture.
Guided by our tour book, we went in search of a pub called
Festina Lente, but it was filled to capacity, so we left unsated. On our way to the pub we did visit (in search of Amstel beer, also a city brew), we passed this outdoor shrine to what I can only assume was a jazz quintet/sextet.
The canals are beautiful at night!
Randomly, while in Amsterdam, Isaac was introduced to what he thinks was his first Turkish kebab (having lived near several kebab shops in St Andrews, I am less inclined to concur, but will add that the kebab shop we found had the most delicious kebabs I have ever experienced). We went the first night because everything else near our hotel was closed, and returned on the second night because the food was just that good and impressively inexpensive as well!
We left our hotel early on Sunday to compensate for the citywide transit strike that was affecting trams (our main method of getting to and from our hotel) and some busses. We walked through the beautiful and foggy Sloterpark to get a train at Sloterdijk rail station for our day out of the city.
Our teacher/mentor had recommended a day trip to Zaanse Schaans, a working replica village just north of Amsterdam. I would equate this village to America's Williamsburg, only, perhaps, a little more exciting because of all the windmills and traditional Dutch crafts. The fog was still heavy when we arrived (if you look very closely, there are two windmills in this picture, the second more a looming darkness in the fog than a definable structure: normally, I believe, it's possible to see four or five windmills stretching along the Zaanse Schaans waterfront).
Zaanse Schaans features, among other things, a pewtermaker's workshop (we were able to watch a spoon being poured), a clock museum, and the first Albert Heijns grocery store (now a very large supermarket chain at which we later bought many goodies to take back home). We sampled some delicious coffee in the Albert Heijns.
These barrels offer a much more efficient (and eco-friendly) method of procuring one's liquor:
I. spent some time making friends with a beautiful cat, who was quite distressed when he shoved her off his lap so that he could still spend the day with me.
We visited a bakery museum (for the awesome admission fee of £1) and learned about some older methods of baking bread and other goodies, then splurged on a fresh loaf of bread for our lunch.
Our idea of a cheese, avocado, and fresh bread picnic might have worked better had the weather been less foggy and frigid and had this lovely duck not been quite so zealous in its pursuit of our victuals. (Really, though, it was mostly the cold that got the better of us, and we eventually retreated into the cheese shop/museum in search of warmth).
Slightly warmed from our observations of cheese, we went out in search of windmills. We did visit one, most recently or notably a spice mill, where we learned a lot about the Dutch spice trade and where Isaac discovered that "tying a millstone around [one's] neck" might be a more daunting prospect than he imagined in his childhood. We went in search of some other windmills, but as the fog was heavy and the mills not in operation, we elected not to visit each one in turn. They were beautiful, though!
In search of warmth again, we visited the klompen-shop, where we saw dozens of sample shoes (demonstrating regional and stylistic differences, as well as the elaborate woodworking required for traditional "wedding shoes," which apparently once served as an engagement gift from a would-be bridegroom to his beloved. Some of these were covered in amazing and intricate patterns of stars, flowers, and geometrical shapes, while others had drastically lengthened decorative toes--the description of one pair said that the length of the toe represented the extent of the young man's passion/desire!) We also learned about some traditional ways of making shoes: once done by hand in a process that took hours, a shoe can now be made in about three minutes using the mechanical drill equivalent of a photocopier!
Here are several dozen of the sample shoes that this workshop produces to amaze and delight guests:
Isaac was so fascinated by the klompen that he decided to try on a pair for himself:
After a lovely day in Zaanse Schaans, we took the train back to Amsterdam (where it was still foggy) and began our quest for the ultimate culinary experience of our trip. Near the rail station we passed the Dutch equivalent of a commuter carpark:
The first food item on our "must-try" list was Rijstaffel, litterally a "rice-table," typically served in Indonesian (and sometimes, now, Chinese) restaurants. A little pricey on the menu, we might not have tried it had it not come so highly recommended! We then discovered that the price was more than fair, as we ate like royalty!
Our meal began with a delicious chicken and mushroom soup, which warmed us from the cold damp air and was just scrumptious! We then sampled three different types of appetizers (all delicious). Then we were brought this amazing plate of food, which really does not do our meal justice:
Check out the water glass on the right for scale. This was supposed to be a plate for two; I am not sure I have ever seen so much food in my entire life! After this deliciousness, which included the pineapple towers on the top right for dessert, we were brought coffee and allowed to linger for as long as we liked.
Eventually we ventured back out into the cold and attempted to walk off our ridiculous amazing meal as we headed back to our hotel (still a mile or two away). We finished our evening by doing crossword puzzles in the bar and generally relaxing.
Monday was our last day, and still foggy. We finally got to see this sculpture, located near our hotel, during the daytime:
We took the tram to central Amsterdam but hopped off quickly to go shopping at several street markets and a few supermarkets, being immensely desirous of taking as much Dutch food home as possible. This beautiful building is near the "Neuwmarket" and featured prominently in many of the films in the Dutch Resistance Museum, leading me to suspect that it was quite near the old Jewish quarters of the city. The surrounding square now boasts one of Amsterdam's many street markets (the vans on the left are part of this) although it was a little sparsely occupied on this occasion due to the wet mist.
It stayed about this grey all day, and we enjoyed our last meal and a few last dashes into kaas-shops for more delicious cheese, then caught our bus back to the ferry and enjoyed another quiet sea crossing.
We had a particularly awesome room on this journey, and were able to watch the ship's crew raise and lower the anchor, and the port crew secure the ship to the docks. Here's our morning view of Newcastle as we arrived:
Having never been outside the rail station in Newcastle, we seized the opportunity to walk around some of its older buildings and see its ancient keep (not this building, but this one actually fit into the picture. The keep is off to the right on the other side of the rail bridge).
We enjoyed coffee and a cheap pub lunch, then discovered this
wonderful old library: books can only be borrowed with a subscription, but admission is free, the shelves are well stocked, and tea and coffee is available for a very reasonable fee. We sat and sipped our coffees for a while and enjoyed the atmosphere:
And here's a photo of (me in) the stacks, because the husband insisted:
Then . . .
Home at last! And how nice it is to have a home (though we are still so grateful to the many people who let us stay in their homes this summer). We took the train back to Edinburgh, walked back to our flat, unpacked our kaas and genevre and brood and koffee and melk (for koffee) and zout/zoet drop (licorice) and stroopwaffles, and threw all our clothes in the washer because they smelled horribly of marijuana, the smell of which pervaded the entire city centre, some of the pubs, our hotel, some of the trains, and eventually all of our clothes although we never set foot in the coffee shops themselves. (On a related note, please appreciate the above picture of me in the amazing blue sweater, which was a casualty of the trip because one of us has apparently never had to wash wool before and the other of us assumed that everyone knew how to wash wool).
Home and relaxed at last . . . but November was still young! As a special treat, I. and I splurged on two tickets to the pre-West End showing of
Top Hat, whose leading lady I particularly wanted to see. Playing, I think, to a completely sold out audience, the actors all put on their best American accents (Summer Strallen, the leading lady, and the understudy whose name I have forgotten who took over playing Horace Hardwick, were particularly fine) and managed a terrific show.
I. and I spent Thanksgiving with some friends in St Andrews, then had a good time this weekend (I.'s first weekend in the new flat, and my first weekend at home without a deadline) exploring some of Edinburgh's special treasures, such as the farmer's market beneath the castle.
We also stopped by the castle to watch the staff fire the one o'clock shot.
Finally, it's properly Advent now (not that this matters to the retail and tourism industry), so the Christmas market is in full swing. Here's a side view of the enormous ferris wheel beside the monument to Sir Walter Scott:
Here's my handsome husband before the merry-go-round:
And this the widest view I could manage of the non-retail part of the Christmas market, which is one of my favourite things about Edinburgh in the winter:
That should suffice for November, I think. Next month, as the icon at the top corner of this page should indicate, I'm planning to participate in the
December Photo Project again, so you should be able to enjoy shorter and more frequent postings.
