Friend trip to Amsterdam, Bruges and Achen

Most of my stories are about trips with family.  Occasionally, I take a trip with friends. My friend, Vicki, wanted to plan a trip that included Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Bruges in Belgium, and Aachen in Germany.  So Vicki, our friend Mary, and I started planning the trip.  Mary’s husband, Ken, and my husband, Greg, decided they wanted to go as well.  The trip was planned for the end of March/beginning of April, 2023.  It was during tulip season in Amsterdam, and Mary, who is a gardener and a florist, was very excited about seeing the tulips. 

We booked our flights and then we started to book hotels and activities.  We were flying into Amsterdam to start our trip. 

I think I should explain something about my friend, Mary.  Let’s just say…she is not very adventurous when it comes to hotels.  Vicki and I pretty much have the attitude that if the hotel is clean and safe, we don’t have to have luxury, but Mary prefers the luxury. Vicki and I also like to stay in unique places.  Mary? Not so much. I suggested that we stay in this hotel that looked like suspended boxes.  Mary nixed that idea right away.  I found this interesting hotel in Amsterdam called Hotel Not Hotel. 

Mary was not super excited about this hotel, but I managed to convince her to try it when I told her one of the rooms was plant themed. Each room had a name.  Our room was called Mrs. De With.  Mary and Ken’s room was called Poison Ivy.  Vicki stayed in one of the Secret Bookcase rooms.  Vicki’s room was literally behind a bookcase.  You couldn’t even tell it was a room unless the door was opened.  It just looked like a bookcase.  The names of some of the other rooms included Sin City, Invisible Room, Blue House, Casa No Casa, the Sun Room, Crisis Free Zone, Amsterdam Tram Cart (really a tram cart) and Volkswagon (really a Volkswagon Van).  The hotel had kind of a hostel feel to it.  The lobby was full of couches, chairs and tables, and the rooms were very small, so most people hung out in the lobby.  Some of the rooms had private bathrooms, but most of the rooms had no bathroom and the guests used a shared bathroom/shower room.  There was a very small restaurant attached to the hotel.  You ordered your food in the restaurant and they would bring the food to you in the lobby.  I thought the hotel was very cool.  I’m not sure Mary was convinced. 

One of the first things we decided to do was to take a canal cruise. We were tired from the flight and it was cold and raining, so the idea of sitting in a covered, heated boat did not sound like a bad idea. Ken and Greg found a bench to wait while the women figured out how to secure the tickets for the tour.

The cruise was enjoyable. We were able to see some of the sights of Amsterdam, while a guide gave us a lot of interesting information about the city.  After the cruise, we stopped at a restaurant to try the Dutch Apple Pie. 

Mary really wanted to visit a tulip farm.  We had scheduled the Kukenhof tour, but Mary had mentioned that she wanted to be able to ask the tulip farmers all about how to grow tulips. Since the Kukenhof tour was very large, I did not think she would have that opportunity on that tour.  I found a private tour on a family owned tulip farm. It was called Tulpenexcursie.  The farm was located outside of Amsterdam in a town called Slootdorf. 

We left the next day to go on this tour. We had to take a train, then a bus, and then the owner was going to pick us up and take us to the farm.  We managed the train, but we missed the bus.  There was not another bus going to Slootdorf in time for us to make the tour.  We ended up taking a very long, very expensive Uber ride to Slootdorf.  We found the owner (the farmer’s wife) and she gave us a ride to the farm.  We were the only guests on that day, so we got a very private tour.  We were served coffee/tea and some delicious desserts.

Then we went on the tour.  Mary had a wonderful day.  The private tour allowed her to ask all questions she wanted.

I am not a gardener-in fact, plants come to my house to die-but we all had a great time. It was very interesting.  We learned how the tulips were grown, harvested, and prepared for selling. 

We learned how the family farm works and enjoyed learning about a family owned business in Amsterdam.  This business hires young people who live and work on the farm during tulip season. 

The next day, we all went on the Keukenhof tour.  We booked the Windmills and Countryside tour in the morning, and the Keukenhof Excursion in the afternoon.  The tour bus took us to both tours.  The Windmills and Countryside tour included visiting the fishing village Volendam, where we visited a cheesemaker and we bought some very good cheese. Mary, Vicki and I learned how to make stroopwafels. Greg and Ken found a bench. 

We visited Marken, a small seaside village,

where we watched a traditional clog maker making shoes.

We saw the windmills in Zaanse Schans.

It was very cold and very windy, but we still had a wonderful time. 

In the afternoon, we were taken to the Keukenhof gardens.  Flowers, flowers and more flowers. 

I thought Mary might just start to skip through the flowers.  Wait.  I’m pretty sure I did see her skip a time or two. 

The men found a bench.  Vicki and I stuck it out with Mary looking at the flowers. I looked at a LOT of flowers for being a non-gardener. 

The trip had been going very well so far. However, I had started to develop a cough and body aches.  But that didn’t slow me down.  I was not going to miss anything on this trip.

We visited Anne Frank’s House. This was high on my list of things I wanted to do.  I had been fascinated by Anne Frank’s story since junior high school.  We visited the Rijksmuseum to see the Vermeer exhibit and other art. 

I have a confession-I knew nothing about Vermeer’s art.  I did my usual museum routine-I walked around for a while, trying to look like I was cultured, and then I saw that Greg had found a bench, and I joined him. We also visited the Van Gogh Museum.  I really enjoyed this museum.  I am familiar with some of Van Gogh’s art, so I didn’t have to fake it as much. 

I had read about this bike path outside of Amsterdam near a town called Eindhoven, which was Van Gogh’s hometown.  The artist Dan Roosegaarde created a bike path based on Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. The path contains thousands of twinkling colored lights that are charged by daylight and then at night, the stones display parts of the Starry Night painting. We would have to take the train to get to Eindhoven, and we were not able to work this in before we left Amsterdam. We were coming back to Amsterdam at the end of the trip, so I still had hope that we would be able to visit this path.

Before we left Amsterdam, we needed to do some laundry.  I have really been working on minimalist packing. One of the tips I regularly see is to pack half of the clothes you need, do laundry about midway through the trip, and wear those clothes again.  I did not manage good minimalist packing this trip.  I took my Cotopaxi backpack.  It has a large zippered section on one side, and three smaller zippered sections on the other side.  I used packing cubes and stuffed a lot into this backpack.  It was SO heavy. I looked like a turtle, walking through the airport, hunched over, with this overstuffed backpack on my back. Greg, who is much better at minimalist packing, had gone through most of his clothes and needed the laundromat.  Mary and I set out on our last morning in Amsterdam to find a laundromat, lugging our bags of dirty clothes.  Mary was very unsure about this adventure.  I had googled laundromats and I found one that was not too far from our hotel.  Mary wanted to Uber.  Mary, Mary, Mary.  You should know me better than that by now.  Why Uber when we can walk and experience the neighborhood?  Mary expressed her reservations most of the way to laundromat.  It didn’t seem like the best neighborhood.  But we found the laundromat, managed to figure out the machines and the correct money, and ended up with clean clothes. And we were not mugged, which was a concern of Mary’s. I’m sure there were a lot of people on the streets of Amsterdam waiting to mug two American ladies and steal all of our dirty clothes.  

We lugged our bags of clean clothes back to the hotel and prepared to take the train to Bruges, Belgium.

We had booked rooms in Bruges at Hotel Dukes Palace. Mary picked this place. 

She thought she needed some luxury after she had tolerated staying in a room called Poison Ivy.  The hotel was very nice and it was very close to the center of the city.  We arrived at night, had a nice dinner, and got some rest.  I coughed my way through the night, and by the next morning, I knew I was going to have to get some medicine if I was going to make it through this trip. I asked a person at the hotel desk for a recommendation for a doctor.  I called the number they gave me and made an appointment. After breakfast, Greg and I set out on foot to find this doctor.  Turns out, looking for a doctor’s office is a good way to see part of a city you might not otherwise see.  We finally found the office.  It was in a residential area and looked like a house, so it was a little hard to find. There was no receptionist, so we just sat in the waiting room and hoped someone would see us before long.  After waiting for about 20-30 minutes, a man came to the entry and called my name.  He took us into a room that had a desk, but no examining table or anything that really looked medical.  I thought maybe it was bookkeeping and they were going to take care of the billing first.  Nope.  The man was the doctor.  He sat behind the desk, asked me some questions about my symptoms, then asked me to stand up.  I thought maybe we were going to go into an examination room. Nope again. The doctor walked over, he listened to my chest, and he looked in my throat, nose and ears. I’m not sure I’ve ever been examined while standing up before.  Then he went back around to his desk, wrote three prescriptions and took my money.  That was an interesting doctor’s visit. We found the pharmacy, left the prescriptions, and went to find Mary, Ken and Vicki. 

We all took a bus tour of Bruges, called City Bus Tours.  It was a good way to see the city in the one day we had.  The buses arrive every 30 minutes in the Market Square and tour around the city. 

After the bus tour, we walked around the Market Square, shopping for souvenirs and buying chocolate, of course. 

Then Greg and I headed back to the pharmacy to get my medicine.  The doctor had prescribed an inhaler, an antibiotic and some medicine to help with the cough.  Luckily, the doctor had written the dosage instructions for each medicine, because the names of the medicines and the instructions on the bottles/boxes were in Dutch. One of the boxes had Braille on it, but since my Braille is about as good as my Dutch, that was not helpful at all. Oh well.  I guess I didn’t need to know exactly what I was taking.  As long as it made me feel better, I didn’t really care what it was.  I have to say-the cough medicine was very effective.  The instructions were to take the cough medicine only at night. I should have known that there was something very strong in those pills.  About 15 minutes after taking the pills, my arms started tingling and I felt like I was sinking into the bed.  Vicki translated the ingredients on the bottle label the next day.  The medicine had codeine in it.  That explains a lot.  But I slept very well and hardly coughed all night.

The next morning, we took the train to Aachen, Germany.  We checked into our hotel, Hotel 3 Konige, which translates to Three Kings. The hotel was very close to the sights of Aachen.  We dropped off our luggage in our rooms, and we went to see the sights.  We went to Katschhof Square.  Katschhof Square is known for being the inner courtyard of Charlemagne’s palace.  It is the connection point City Hall and the Aachen Cathedral. 

We watched some street performers, Mary and Ken danced to one of the songs, and we visited several of the most popular sites. 

Later that day, we went to Drielandenpunt, which translates to “Three Country Point.”  It is also the highest point in the Netherlands. There is a monolith at the point where the borders of Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium meet.  If you stand in a particular spot, you can stand in all three countries at the same time.

There is a playground and a restaurant. There are hiking trails. I couldn’t resist getting on a trail for at least a little while.

There was an observation tower.  Mary and I climbed the tower.  We are the first two-you can see my white hat.

No one else was willing to try it.  There were a LOT of stairs. But the climb was worth it.  Greg and Ken waited on a bench.

You can see the three countries from different sides of the tower.  I wish I could identify which country is which, but I don’t remember.

There was also a labyrinth. 

I didn’t think the labyrinth was a great activity for someone with no sense of direction, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. There were clues to help to find the correct paths to take.  The labyrinth had spontaneous spouting water walls.  You had to time it just right to get through the walls without getting wet.  It was cold that day (actually it was cold the whole time we were on this trip), so the last thing I wanted was to have wet feet or wet clothes.  Sometimes one or two of us could get through, but if another person tried to get through, they would get soaking wet.  Mary and I went through one of these water walls, with Vicki behind us.  I turned around and told Vicki to go ahead and go through.  I swear I thought it was safe for her to go through.  There was no ill intention at all on my part.  But Vicki got soaked….  The fact that I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand did not help my case, but I really did not intend for Vicki to get soaked by the water.  Her reaction, which included angrily screaming my name, indicated that she definitely blamed me for the soaking.  I think maybe she has forgiven me by now, but I can’t be sure.

The next morning, we had to leave Germany and take the train back to Amsterdam so we could catch our flight the next day.  I still really wanted to go to Eindhoven to see the Starry Night bike path.  The rest of the group tried to convince me that we did not have time, but I became kind of stubborn.  I really wanted to go, and the group finally gave in.  We took the train to Eindhoven and found the bike path.  We arrived before dark, so we walked around on the path until it started getting dark. Greg and Ken were really excited to be there, in the cold, waiting for it to get dark. They couldn’t think of anywhere else they would rather be.

Then the path started to sparkle.  It was pretty cool.  

We spent some time with the sparkling rocks, and then caught the train back to Amsterdam. 

We had booked rooms at a hotel near the airport.  We arrived at the hotel around 11:00 pm. Vicki checked in, Greg and I checked in, and then Ken and Mary tried to check in.  They were told there were no more rooms.  We were confused.  They had reservations.  How could they not have a room?  The hotel staff said they had overbooked, so they had given Ken and Mary’s room away.  It was late, we were tired, and Greg…let’s just say, the staff had no problem understanding how he felt about the situation.  While Greg was making his feelings known, I called another hotel and found rooms for us.  The rooms were over twice the price, but at least everyone now had a bed to get a few hours of sleep.  We could walk to the airport from this hotel.  When I told the first hotel that I wanted to cancel our reservation, they told me I couldn’t. Completely frustrated, we left the first hotel and went to the other hotel to get some sleep.  I wasn’t giving up easily though.  I contacted the corporate office of the first hotel, and after a few weeks, they refunded my money.  The next morning, we took our very early morning flight home. 

Tips:

1. We booked the tour to Keukenhoff through www.tours-tickets.com.
2. If you’re interested in the tour with the family owned tulip farm, go to www.tulipexcursion.com.
3. Book a canal cruise by going to amsterdamcanalcruisesnl.  There are many activities that can be booked on this website.  We choose the City Canal Cruise.
4. Luckily, there are usually plenty of benches in tourist areas. I think Greg and Ken found them all.
5. Tickets for the Van Gogh museum can be found at www.vangoghmuseum.nl.
6. Tickets for the Rijksmuseum can be found at www.rijksmuseum.nl.
7. Tickets for the Anne Frank House can be found at www.annefrank.org.
8. These are the hotels where we stayed: Hotel Not Hotel at www.hotelnothotelamsterdam.com, Hotel Dukes Palace at hoteldukespalace.com, and Hotel 3 Konige at www.h3k-aachen.de.
9. It is free to walk the grounds at Three Country Point, but there is a fee for the labyrinth. There is also a small fee to climb the observation tower. Tickets can be purchased on site.
10. If you have more tech skills than I do, I suggest labeling your pictures of the three countries that are seen from the tower at Three Country Point. It would be really nice to know which country is which.
11. I recommend the bike path in Eindhoven. The rest of the group was not as invested in seeing this as I was, and I kind of threw a little tantrum to get my way, but everyone admitted it was worth it. They may have had second thoughts when we found out the hotel had given one of our rooms away because we arrived so late. So far, no one has directly said they blame me, but I may have sensed a little something…..I still say seeing the sparkling bike path was way more fun than sitting in an airport hotel for the entire evening.