At Home, part 25

After our day and a half in Bruges we left for Amsterdam, stopping in Ghent on the way. There we saw what would have happened if Bruges had continued to develop instead of “dying”—Ghent’s merchants became much richer and built much grander guild houses, homes and churches. But it was dirtier and more modern and urban, too.

The rest of the ride to Amsterdam was noticeably flatter than any terrain we’d been through on the trip. It was rainy, and we passed through much green farmland.

When we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s, we all did a double-take. “Mom, look at those girls,” Lisa whispered to me, indicating the servers behind the counter. There were three pretty, blond, six-foot-plus teenagers there—only the first of many tall Dutch girls we were to see.

We wound our way around and over the canals that webbed Amsterdam, making our way to our tall canal house hotel. We were three flights up a dark, narrow staircase, but the rooms were comfortable and the location was great—close to the center of the city. We marveled at the packs of cyclists we saw as we hustled to the Rijksmuseum before it closed—we wanted to see the Rembrandt paintings, and there were dollhouses for the kids to view.

Mike and I spent a few minutes perusing the guidebook for a likely restaurant. “Ooh, let’s get a rijstaffel,” I said. Indonesia, the former Dutch colony, was represented by several great-sounding restaurants that specialized in rijstaffel, which means “rice table” and consists of many fish, meat and vegetable dishes.

“I’d love to do that,” Mike said, “but what about the kids?”

“I think there’ll be so many choices for them, they’re bound to find something they like,” I said, and I was right. The restaurant had a great Asian atmosphere, with bamboo and cane accents everywhere.

“I’m gonna taste everything,” Lisa vowed.

“Not me,” said Julie. “But I will have some rice.”

Later, leaving the restaurant, we stopped at a pay phone to call our Dutch friends, Geertje and Peter Roorde. They had lived near us in Stamford, and their daughter Sietske had been in kindergarten with Lisa, but they’d returned to Holland when Sietske turned six.

“I promised you you could see Sietske if we moved to Spain, and I’m going to keep that promise now,” I told Lisa. We made plans to see the Roordes the next day. I turned and left the phone booth, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and went sprawling onto the pavement, breath knocked out of me, searing pain in my knee.

Mike and the kids rushed to help me up. “I think I have to stay down here a while,” I said, barely able to speak. I saw that the knee of my jeans was shredded, as was my knee itself, scraped and bleeding. After a few minutes I got up, but I was really in pain and had to hobble back to the hotel. I felt like an idiot, but mostly I just hurt.

I cleaned myself up as best I could and pitched the jeans into the trash. The knee kept oozing, and it throbbed all night, keeping me awake. By morning I had a gory scab that covered my whole knee and hurt with every movement.

But we went out early anyway, to see the Anne Frank house before the crowds built up. Julie had read Diary of a Young Girl the previous spring, and by the end of the visit Lisa wanted to read it, too. Seeing the house was a moving experience for all of us.

“It’s so small,” Lisa said when she saw the hidden apartment. “I wouldn’t want to live here.” We wound our way up the stairs of the narrow house, and on the top floor was an exhibit detailing the fate of the Jews of Amsterdam. Lisa was disturbed by this, as she had been by Struthof, but she seemed to know that it was important to see and absorb what had happened to the Frank family.

From there we drove to the Roordes’ home in the suburb of Bloemendaal. They showed us around their beautiful house, built in 1903 by a judge, filled with splendid woodwork. Sietske looked much taller—like Lisa, she was tall for her age—and though she seemed to have lost some of her English, the two girls played happily together.

Peter and Geertje took us all to nearby Keukenhof, a famous garden that is used as a spring showplace for all the bulb-growing companies of Holland. “I’m embarrassed to say it,” Geertje confessed, “but I’ve lived here almost all my life, and I’ve never been to the Keukenhof before.”

Mike laughed. “It’s like being a New Yorker and never going to the Statue of Liberty till you have guests from out of town,” he said.

The Keukenhof was spectacular—acres and acres of tulips of every color, thousands of crocuses and irises and daffodils, and buildings full of more exotic flowers. The kids were astounded, but we were all like kids there—that riot of color just filled us with joy. It was great outdoor running space for the youngsters—Sietske’s little brother Haye was with us, too—and there was even a playground amid the blooms. We took a full roll of photos, trying to preserve some of that beauty.

Then Peter drove us out to the dunes by the North Sea. There was nothing to see, as the coastline was blanketed by fog, but he hopped out of the van and returned a minute later with several cardboard containers similar to the ones french fries came in at home.

“What’s this?” we asked.

“This is fresh herring, just caught, cleaned, and salted,” he said. Lisa and Julie turned their noses up at this, but Mike and I took a taste. It was briny and tasty, so we helped the Roordes finish all four containers.

“Now we’re going for a real traditional Dutch family dinner,” Peter said. “Pancakes!” We drove through the dusk to a nice barnlike old building, a cozy neighborhood pancake restaurant. The place was casual and relaxed.

“Everything is good here,” Geertje said. “You might want to try a savory pancake for dinner and a sweet one for dessert.” We ordered some specialties like curried chicken wrapped in a pancake and stewed beef wrapped in a pancake. Everything was delicious and satisfying, a really warming dinner after the chill of the coast.

The next day we got up early and ran out to see the Jewish History Museum. The museum’s designers had done the incredible job of joining together four adjacent synagogues, creating a single building with angled passages from room to room and floor to floor. The original synagogues had been of different periods and styles, and the museum made the most of the similarities and contrasts between them. There were exhibits of ornate and beautiful religious objects that had been used in the synagogues, and there were historical exhibits with artifacts and photographs of the Amsterdam Jewish community.

We went from there to meet the Roordes at the Van Gogh Museum (we could only approximate the correct pronunciation using a guttural German-like sound—van Chuch). We were a little early, so the four of us sat in the museum’s cafeteria to have a Coke. There was a big picture window overlooking a park, and we noticed some activity out there. There was a huge, colorful striped tent—it looked like a circus tent—and slowly we realized that it was the Cirque du Soleil tent, and that it was coming down.

The circus had been in town, we knew, and we were fascinated by how small a crew was needed to dismantle the tent. Only eight or ten men were doing the job. It seemed well orchestrated—everyone knew who did what and when. They pulled ropes, dismantled scaffolds, and folded canvas. The Roordes joined us in the cafeteria, and they sat down, too, to watch the free show. The job wasn’t finished in the half-hour we watched, but tremendous progress had been made by the time we got up and turned our attention to Van Gogh’s haystacks and sunflowers.

The next day, Sunday, we drove to Brussels. Our hotel there was pretty dumpy, and it was raining, so we started to feel ready to end the vacation and get home. We went to the city’s art museum, and then we went to see the movie Outbreak, about a killer virus. It turned out to be far too scary for Lisa, who spent most of the time on the floor between my knees so she wouldn’t have to see the screen.

After the movie we walked to the Grand Place, the town’s main square, which was ringed with beautiful guild houses. We walked through the surrounding arcades to stay out of the drizzle, looking at the colorful displays of fresh seafood on crushed ice outside every restaurant. Moules frites (steamed mussels and french fries) were the specialty everywhere. We found a pretty good restaurant, had a filling dinner, and went back to the hotel.

The next morning it was still raining, so we left town and drove along the Meuse River through the Ardennes Forest. I knew these were World War I battle areas, but I didn’t know the stories. “Only Doug could really appreciate this,” I told Mike, thinking of my brother-in-law, who was a real history buff. If he had been there, he could have told us about the places we were passing—Verdun, Waterloo, the Saar. We passed many lovely houses along the Meuse, and then we stopped to explore La Merveilleuse, a cave in Dinant that had been carved out by an underground river.

We made it to Luxembourg, returned the car, got on the plane, and were in Madrid by 7 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny outside, and our taxi driver said it had been clear and warm all week. When we got home our front yard was abloom with huge, beautiful, fragrant roses.