Trip Report-Netherlands, Belgium and a personally important weekend in France

Day 1 Saturday

KLM is quickly becoming a favourite airline despite the problems with us being bumped in May (see my “forgive my rant pre-trip report” linked in my intro). The on-board service was impeccable and better than any airline I’ve ever been on. I bring the service up because in the row in front of us was a young Mom travelling with a Toddler who cried…the entire flight. I wish I could say this was just a case of a poor kid not dealing with cabin pressure well, but this kid was an out of control brat used to getting his own way. When we were getting ready to land, he refused to sit and be buckled in and three flight attendants carrying tie-down straps converged on him and had to forcibly strap him down. I’m bringing it up because I was impressed by how organized the flight attendants were and how they did it with military precision. It was clear this wasn’t the first time they’ve had to do it and it seems like something that may be practiced in training sessions.

Aside from that, the only downside about the daily KLM flight from Calgary is that it arrives at 7:30am which means we arrive dead-tired and in too much of a Zombie state to start the day running. We chose Hotel Jakarta in Amsterdam again because in May, when we showed up on their doorstep at 8:30am they had a room ready for us. It was the same this time. We promised ourselves we’d catch a 2-hour nap and then force ourselves to stay awake and adjust our internal clocks…..5 hours later we woke up. Jet lag would not be our friend for the first week as we struggled to sleep through the night.

We had nothing planned for today anyway except a walk through the red-light district in the evening. When we got home from our trip in May we got the usual questions asking if we’d…nudge, nudge, wink, wink, visited the red-light district. We’d realized then that we hadn’t even seen it or didn’t think we had. We looked on a map to see where it was and realized we had extensively walked through that area on a Saturday morning but had no clue that was where we were. It looks completely normal in the daytime. Anyway, this evening, we walked through it, and it does look a bit seedier, but I’m surprised it's considered a must-see for tourists. I can’t imagine even Instagramers hanging around because I’d read that you can get into trouble if you try taking photos. In any case we weren’t offended or shocked when he saw the women displaying their wares in the windows, just a little surprised at how normal it is here.

Day 2 Sunday

While still not an art lover I figured out how to look at art at the Rijksmuseum and enjoy myself. There probably is no right or wrong way to look at art and the challenge is to figure out a way to do it so you can get something out of it. Correction, there is a wrong way. I can’t remember the painting, but I was trying to get a closer look at some specific detail, and I put my phone’s camera within inches of the painting to use it like a magnifying glass. A security woman came over and let me know that was the wrong way, and to step back.

A Sunday in October seems like a good time to visit and we probably didn’t need to pre-order a timed entry, but we had one for as soon as it opened. We headed straight for the main gallery where the Night Watch and the Milkmaid are hung. The Nightwatch is undergoing a restoration, and initially I thought that may fascinate me more than the actual painting. Sadly, it was Sunday, and no restoration work was happening. I did have a good conversation with the docent about it and perhaps the restoration work wouldn’t have excited me anyway. She said the cleaning and touch-ups go millimetre by millimetre and watching it may have been like watching grass grow or paint dry.

I was fascinated by the Milkmaid, but you have to be patient. It’s small, and even on a Sunday morning in October there were numerous small tours crowding around the popular paintings, sometimes for 5 or 10 minutes and it took a while to work my way to the front.

Two less popular paintings were my favourites though, the first to catch my eye was “Young Italian Woman with ‘Puck’ the Dog. Likely, because it has a dog, but I did stand in front of it for a long time and can’t explain what attracted it to me. But then the uncultured rube in me surfaced and I compared it to ‘Dogs Playing Poker’ and I may have impressed my friends and family with my cultured art knowledge that while the Puck painting once sold for $45,000, Dogs Playing Poker has sold for $680,000.

The painting that I loved the most was ‘Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters’ by Hendrick Avercamp. It fascinated me so much that I bought the fridge magnet. It’s a painting you have to look at in detail to appreciate and what caught my eye was a couple of areas that looked like people were using hockey sticks. WHAT!!?? The painting is from 1608 in the Netherlands; everyone knows that Canadians invented hockey. Was my whole life a lie? But with a bit of research Canadian pride was saved because apparently those are golf club type sticks and they’re playing Kolf; a precursor to Golf. So maybe it’s Scottish pride that is at stake.

In any case, things I learned today about looking at art. I enjoyed the Rijksmuseum far more than any Renaissance art facility I’ve been to. Talking to Docents was a huge help in appreciating what I was seeing, and finding something you like and studying it in detail helped me create interest.

Day 3 Monday

A good chunk of today was dedicated to getting from Amsterdam to Bruges. Our ticket required us to take the 11:06 train from Schiphol to Antwerp, and from there we were free to catch any trains that would get us to Bruges. The challenge we had was that something must have been happening because the trains in Antwerp kept not showing up. We had 10 minutes to get to our next track but then waited 25 minutes and no train showed. We then found another train going to Ghent in 5 minutes, so we headed over there but it also never showed up. Finally, we found another going through Ghent and then on to Bruges without a connection, and that one showed. Later that night I received an email saying I may be entitled to compensation because a train never showed, but I haven’t bothered to fill out the forms.

We had a good experience with the Radison Blu Hotel in Zurich in May, so we decided to give it a try in Bruges. The downside is it is next door to the train station and not in the old quarter. We figured that was OK because at the time our plans included a few day trips by train. Cost was about €250/night which was €35 more than the far superior version in Zurich. There was nothing wrong with the hotel in Bruges, but it wasn’t nearly as nice as the other. We had thought we’d discovered a good new chain that checked a lot of boxes for all of us. Maybe not, at this cost.

In any case it was about a 20-minute walk into the main market square in Bruges, which was fine. We had prebooked one of those ‘free’ walking tours where you tip at the end. This one was with Legends Tours. These tours can be hit and miss, and I’d rate this one as ‘good enough’ for the €10 each that we paid. Its theme was the seedier history of Bruges, and the guide told stories that probably wouldn’t stand up to a serious fact check. Such as a serial killer baker who was selling kidney pies which turned out to be the kidneys of his victims. Another story of how the stereotypical look of witches came from Bruges from women called Alewives who wore tall pointy hats as a marketing tool to sell their beers which they stirred in large cauldrons. It was all fun and probably the most helpful part is we found some streets and restaurants worth exploring for the next few days outside of the main tourist area.

Day 4 Tuesday

Ghent is only a half-hour train ride from Bruges and then about a 25-minute walk to the tourist sites. While researching this trip I read several times that the trams from the train station may not be running due to ongoing construction. I can confirm that they are running. We walked anyway but did take the tram back in the evening after dark. It’s not a difficult walk and our first impressions were that Ghent is a real city whereas Bruges has more of a fairy tale vibe to it.

I’ll never say no to a castle and so first on the list was Gravensteen Castle. We’ve seen better. Signage was limited, and even more limited in English. We found out later that an audio guide was included with entry. Apparently when we turned left toward the one-way trail through the castle, we should have turned right then gone down some stairs to get the audio guide. No signage told us that and neither did the cashier. As a result, I can report that we saw a castle but can’t tell you anything about its history.

The wonderfully unique thing we found about Ghent is it smells like chocolate. It’s like the chocolate shops pump the smell into the street to entice customers. It worked. We stopped for lunch at ‘In Choc’, because of the smell coming from it. We had a window seat overlooking the castle, so the setting was perfect. We both had grilled cheese and the fanciest milkshakes we’ve had since a trip to a hamburger joint in Rye a few years ago. These milkshakes made typical milkshakes look like diet food. And since this was a chocolate shop, our order came with several complimentary chocolates.

When planning this trip, I don’t think anyone on this forum who offered me advice said NOT to visit St. Bavo’s Cathedral and its altarpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. We didn’t prebook tickets because we had decided we’d only go if we had time, and since the castle didn’t take much time, we decided to give it a shot. There was no issue walking up to get tickets, and we were two of only about a dozen people looking at it at about 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon. We booked the Augmented Reality tour where you’re given virtual reality glasses for a 1-hour tour ahead of seeing the actual painting. I can’t recommend this enough as it was so helpful to learn about its history and the details of the painting. My impression is that I loved how vivid the colours were, how large the paintings are and most of all, how weird the painting is; from the lamb bleeding out, to the one guy in the lower right corner holding his severed tongue in front of him with pincers. Thanks to the virtual reality tour, I understood the symbolism.

Final stop of the day was a late afternoon walking tour with Legends Tours again. Our guide was fabulous and gave us a comprehensive history of Ghent. As in Bruges yesterday, it was a tip-based tour, and on the hit or miss scale, it was a definite hit.

Day 5 Wednesday

The original plan was another day trip, possibly to Brussels or Antwerp, but we’ve both been missing our pillows and have been hit hard with jet lag and chose a lazy day instead. Usually, we get over jet lag within a couple of days, but we couldn’t shake it this time and regretted that 5-hour nap on Saturday. We knew better, but that bed was so warm and comfy that we didn’t care…until it screwed us up for the rest of the trip.

We’re not the type to not have a plan, and we can get tired of aimless wandering, but despite that we still had a good day. My only recommendation for the day is the Stadhuis (city hall). I was under the impression that it was a museum, but the Gothic Hall, which I thought was the museum, is a still functioning meeting place for the monthly city council meetings. The building was started in 1376 and completed in 1421 and it’s obvious from the architecture that Bruges was a wealthy international city. The Hall is covered with murals detailing Bruges’s history including a mural that shows life during a market with merchants from all corners of the globe. In a room off to the side of the hall is a very well-done map/diorama of Bruges and the ocean and gives a good historical lesson of how Bruges became a port city in the 10th century and had to battle the climate ever since to remain a world power in trade and commerce. Over the centuries, canals to the ocean had to be rebuilt after they silted up. The final straw was in the late 15th century when it silted up again, and Bruges disappeared from the world stage.

On our tour on Monday, we were shown a building that’s been a restaurant/pub since 1515. For that reason alone, we stopped at Café Vlissinghe for lunch. It was OK, but I’ll take an old English Pub over it anytime. The photos on the website make it out to be more charming than it really is but my sense its reputation will keep the tourists coming.

Day 6 Thursday

In the early 80’s in High School I did a unit on WW1 which included interviewing a WW1 vet that I’d tracked down, as well as reading ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ Other than this unit, Phys-Ed is the only subject that I have vivid memories of from High School. This also the first trip that I really did an intensive study in advance of what I’d be seeing, even so, I learned a lot today that I had no idea about. I used Quasimodo Tours which is recommended in the RS Belgium book, and he picked a winner, this tour was outstanding. I was on my own as Carla prefers to be an Ostrich when it comes to war, however there were 17 of us on the tour which included 11 Canadians, 4 Americans and 2 Australians. I’d forgotten how many other Commonwealth countries were involved and when England went to war it automatically meant Canada and other countries were also at war.

I could go on and on about my experiences and feelings about today, but in an attempt at brevity I’ll explain a few of my highlights. The Brooding Soldier near Ypres is a monument to the 18,000 Canadians who survived the first German gas attack of the war, and the 2000 Canadians who didn’t. In 2022, 122,000 shells were found still buried in fields. This is normal. In July a farmer was hospitalized with severe burns after uncovering a mustard gas shell while plowing his field. Our bus stopped so our guide could show us some shells and grenades that were dug up recently and were set on the side of the road by farmers. The farmers will leave them there and then call the Belgian Army which makes scheduled trips to pick them up. Our final stop of the day was to the site of the field hospital where Colonel John McRae of the Canadian Expeditionary Force wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. He died during the war without realizing the impact his poem would have around the world. I remember being selected a few times to read the poem at school assemblies on Remembrance Day ceremonies.

It was a memorable day, as Saturday will be, but for personal reasons.

Day 7 Friday

We’d purposely left this day open because I didn’t have a clear idea of what my tour yesterday would cover, and I wanted an extra day in case I needed more time to visit the WW1 sites in Belgium. I easily could have used another day to visit the museums in Ypres and Passchendaele, but Carla really didn’t want to. Instead, we rented bikes from Ben’s Bikes and road to Damme. We had friends who raved about the ride, but I found it too short and Damme too dull. It’s only about a half hour of flat riding along a tree lined canal outside of Bruges. Ben(?) From Ben’s Bikes suggested it was only another 8km ride to the Dutch border and I was all for that, but Carla just wanted a nice ride to see the countryside and was having none of my attempts to try and turn the ride into something more extreme. She knows me too well that once we reached the border I would have looked for ideas to keep on riding and not returning until dusk.

It's our last day in Belgium so I should talk about beer. Beer is the only alcohol I drink, but even then at home and a 6-pack may last 6 months in my fridge, but here I sampled 1 or 2 daily. It was nice being in a couple of countries where beer has a higher profile presence compared to Italy and France where there may only be 1 or 2 beers on the menu. Tonight, we stopped at Le Trappiste which has excellent ambience in the basement of a former monastery and has close to 200 beers on the menu. My beer of choice is usually a stout or porter, but I discovered a love for Lambic Beers which is described as ‘complex beer with sour and funky flavours’. I’ve now got a new love for a Kreik beer which is made from cherries however, when I search for some at home, I’m finding some sell for upwards of $8/bottle. Guinness it is.

Day 8 Saturday

I’d asked on this Forum during my planning sessions about the Crit’Air sticker required for places in France. Taking the train to Lille to pick up the car wasn’t an option I wanted to use because I wouldn’t know until the day before if I was going to need more time in Belgium to visit the WW1 sites. I had confirmed ahead of time that Lille would be my only problem city and so I planned a route to avoid it. It added very little time to my route because our first stop this morning after picking up our car from Enterprise was Ypres and the Flanders Museum. When I asked my guide on Thursday, he recommended the Passchendaele Museum over Flanders, but Ypres was more convenient for our day and there was no way Carla was going to let me get away with two WW1 museums. I can linger at museums significantly longer than her, add the topic and she could have skipped it. I’m surprised she didn’t skip it because when we turned into Ypres we discovered it was market day right in front of the museum, and we had to park about a 15-minute walk away. I thought she’d spend an hour or two at it instead. The museum was good-but because of all the research I’d done on this trip, it was almost like a review. I got it right in my planning by taking the tour instead of trying on my own and visiting the two museums.

Vimy Ridge has been on my bucket list since high school, but it became more important to me after a conversation with my mom about 3 years ago while we were having daily discussions as her health deteriorated. I had no idea about this until then when told me she’d named me after her uncle. I have vague memories of my great uncle Allan and just remember him as this kind, very tall guy. It wasn’t until after my mom passed away and I started going through her stuff and family history that I learned more about him. Private John Allan Wannamaker enlisted as a 19-year-old and his first action was at Vimy Ridge where he took a bullet through his calf that also broke his fibula on August 12, 1917, as his 46th battalion charged up the hill that the Vimy Ridge Memorial now stands.

Over the years, I think I may have built Vimy Ridge up so much in my mind that visiting the actual site couldn’t compare. Despite the massive memorial/statue, the site is quite simple with a small visitor’s centre and a rebuilt section of tunnels and trenches that showed how close the allied and German lines were to each other. I had visions of retracing his steps from the trenches where his battalion attacked from and up the hill that they conquered. However, the majority of the Vimy Ridge site remains fenced off due to the danger of live munitions. I couldn’t get anywhere near where he started his charge. It was still a very quiet and humbling visit.

On the way to Vimy, we made a stop at the Hill 70 Memorial in Lens, France which was built through private donation with minimal government involvement to commemorate the 1877 Canadian soldiers who died taking the hill and stopping numerous German counterattacks in August 1917. Great Uncle Allan also fought here and was severely injured again, this time by shrapnel. These injuries were severe enough that he was hospitalized into 1918 and was out of the war. I’ve heard people call him unlucky to be injured twice, but I have to think that he was one of the lucky ones. He survived and had a good life.

Day 9 Sunday

During planning we had no idea if we’d fit Vimy and Hill 70 into our travel day and so we had chosen Arras, France as a good base that was close to both in case we needed an extra day. I could easily have fit in another day focusing on WW1 stuff, but I was outvoted by Carla. I wouldn’t consider it a tourist destination, but it was a good base and was fine for a weekend. The downtown area around the two squares is beautiful and also has the Flemish style architecture you may be familiar with in Bruges and Amsterdam.

We stayed at Hotel de L’Univers and while a bit dated it was a great location with a huge room for €150/night. There is limited onsite parking, but we were assigned a spot. Thankfully, most of the guests left Sunday because it was a tight squeeze to get in and out and it was nice to have extra space, or I may have had to make a 10-point turn to squeeze out.

Without a plan we went on a leisurely Sunday morning walk and stumbled across an old stone Citadel that neither of us had read about. It was built in the 1600’s and was a military base until it was decommissioned in 2008 into a public park. It’s well worth the walk if you’re in town.

I had my eyes on the Wellington Quarry nearby which were the tunnels dug by the New Zealand troops during WW1, but instead we settled for a tunnel tour directly below one of the market squares. While additional tunnels were dug here by the troops for the war, the original tunnels were a limestone quarry from the 9th and 10th centuries but decommissioned in the 11th century due to the market above. The weight of people in the market and the buildings in the area made it too dangerous to mine in this location anymore. Then it was taken over by the wealthier merchants in the area which rented space from the city and used as storage cellars.

Day 10 Monday

From the moment we left our hotel and checked into our next hotel in Leiden was 8.5 hours. It was a dull day of sitting in a car and then sitting on trains from Bruges to Brussels to Leiden, but I don’t know if we could have planned it any better. It was simply one of those days. In order to save time, I decided I’d risk a ticket for not having a crit’air sticker by driving on the highway around Lille, however that plan backfired and I saved no time because of an accident which added about an hour to the drive back to Bruges to drop off the car. I hope the traffic cameras don’t look for cars without the sticker because they would have plenty of time to find me idling on the highway in traffic. Once we caught our train, our ticket indicated we needed to make a connection at Brussels Midi, however the signs on the train said the three stops in Brussels were Zuid, Centraal, and Nord. Our first reaction was to assume that Midi meant middle and so we’d want the Centraal station. However, I’m not one to leave things to the chance and Google was my best friend as I learned that since Brussels is a bilingual city signage would be in different languages. In English the station we’d want was Brussels-South, in Dutch it is Brussels Zuid-which is South. As far as I know Midi is not French for South so thank goodness for Google to help me out.

The reward of a long and tiresome travel day was perfect. Leiden is a gem. Thank you to all that suggested it. In the future, if we do use KLM again as a connection point to other places, we will likely spend time here and not in Amsterdam. After such a long travel day we decided we’d walk to our hotel which was 1.5km from the train station or about a 25-minute walk. It wasn’t the handiest location but our room at Breathe Hotel is upscale and service oriented and it overlooked a canal. We were on the 3rd floor (2nd floor?) and the hotel has narrow steps and no elevator, so beware. Breakfast is available for a fee, but the room had a mini fridge, so we bought drinks, fruit and yogurt for meals and snacks. The only oddity was a tip jar at the front desk stuffed with a few American $10 bills. It seemed out of place for a hotel of this quality.

Even though the hotel is a long walk from the train station, it’s in a nice area and only a short walk to some sites and plenty of restaurants. Our restaurant tonight deserves a spot in the RS Guidebook. We found a restaurant down a narrow street called Bistro Goeswijn which is more like a Spanish tapas bar with small, shareable plates. It seemed like we were the only people there that didn’t know everyone else, and we were definitely the only English speakers there although we had no trouble communicating.

After we ate it was dark, and we were able to walk the streets and hardly saw another person. Very un-Amsterdam. I hesitate to share in case it becomes a tourist hub. I love Cameron Hewitt’s description in a blog; “a charming historic university town without the tourist baiting sleaze.” Well said, but don’t tell anybody.

Day 11 Tuesday

Our last day. Our pre-trip plan was to head out on a day trip to somewhere like Delft. But we were so enchanted by Leiden that we wanted to explore it more. We stumbled across a castle-like structure last night and went for a daytime look. It’s kind of a castle, but really only a circular fortress on top of a man-made hill. It was for defensive purposes only and didn’t seem to have any living quarters. I guess just a place for the citizens to go if the city was being attacked. The 2nd stop was the Botanical Garden at the University of Leiden. This was where the first European bred Tulip was created, and the university has been a hub of learning in horticulture and other sciences since 1575. As we were walking through the outdoor gardens, I came across an interesting exhibit describing the history of the university as well as the evolution of plants starting with the migration of plants to land from the ocean 500 million years ago, to the formation of seed plants 375 million years ago to flowering plants from 140 million years ago.

The final stop of the day was to one of the few remaining windmills in Leiden. This one is a museum now where you can climb ladders/stairs to the top to see the inner workings of a windmill. The climb is steep and may not be for someone with limited mobility or the faint of heart due to the steep climb. There is an outdoor balcony that is just below the rotor blades of the windmill, it was kind of a peaceful sound two hear the rotors whooshing past your head every few seconds.

The evening was spent aimless wondering again and it may be a photographers dream to be able to photograph Leiden at night. The contrast between it and Amsterdam is remarkable and since it’s only a 15-minute train ride to the airport and about 41 minutes to Amsterdam, I can’t imagine bothering to stay in Amsterdam again.

Day 12 Wednesday

The tram and train systems in the region are outstanding, and it was our first experience using a credit card to tap in and out and it worked well. I’m not to sure what to say about the bus system though. In our days in Amsterdam and Leiden we waited for the bus 5 times and 3 didn’t show up. Twice at Amsterdam Centraal where the bus stops are well signed and a timer to indicate how long until the next bus. The first day in Amsterdam we waited for two buses that were on the sign, but neither showed. In Leiden we decided to take the bus back to the train station this morning, but it never showed either. We got there about 15 minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive and waited 30 minutes. The next bus wasn’t for another 15 minutes and so we walked. I’m curious if anyone else has had bad luck with the Dutch buses?

There were plenty of train options to the airport and in our usual fashion, we were plenty early and flew through security and passport control. The longest line was for Starbucks as we had a couple of hours still to kill prior to boarding. In any case, another successful trip, and as I’m writing this, it’s only 17 days until we head to London. Life is good.

Oh, Allan! What a great trip report!

I love Avercamp and particularly that painting. If you look at it online, look over to the far left and you see the bare bottom of a guy pooping, lol! Avercamp often included pooping men, women falling and having their skirts go over their heads so their bare bottoms showed, a line of 3 or 4 men skating and yes, always the Kolf! SO interesting!

The fact they are still finding munitions from WWI is so incredible. On a RS tour in 2019 we had lunch at a farmstead. The farmer had munitions out on a pallet in his side yard awaiting the Belgium army UXB folks. He'd just turned it up on his spring plowing. Amazing. Interesting you saw them stacked along the roadside.

Your connection to Vimy Ridge is so interesting. And again the fact that it's restricted due to the old munitions in the area is shocking.

I'm also glad you enjoyed the Augmented Reality at Saint Bavo's. For myself it added enough detail and texture for me to really enjoy the altarpiece.

-->OT tangent: Were you asking at one time how to get to the Medieval ruins in the Louvre? I had a note someone was interested, lol. Anyway....go up the escalators to the Sully wing, go thru the ticket barriers and it is straight ahead. It's confusing because I thought it would be on the ground floor but it's not, lol.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post! Your trip sounds wonderful!

Bruxelles-Midi?
The word "Midi" is French for "midday" and was used to refer to the south. This is why the south of France is called 'Le Midi'. Night trains departed for Le Midi as early as 1840. Because the trains departed from that station, it was named Bruxelles-Midi (the same logic for Brussels-Luxembourg station because the trains depart from here to Luxembourg). The Dutch translation "Brussel-Zuid" wasn't officially introduced until after 1898. And Bruxelles-South is the name of the airport in Charleroi.