2For66

Visit Dates September 19-21, 2026

We have been besieged by the fates when it comes to international travel outside North America. In 2016 we planned a trip to Australia. Carla broke her hand the week before and was having a plate screwed into her hand when our would-be flight left. We had a trip booked to France, Switzerland, and Italy to explore the Alps in 2020; well you know how that ended: global pandemic. We rebooked and COVID was still roving. We booked a new trip to Paris and Normandy; still shutdown. We finally got out of the States to Canada for three trips in 2022, 2023 and 2024. But dang it we wanted to get off the continent. With fingers crossed we planned a trip to Europe this Fall.

We booked a Roads Scholar tour with our friends the Mattilas to see Paris and Normandy. The tour is a week long so Carla and I wanted to make the most of the long flight and extend it a bit. The Mattilas have already been to Amsterdam and Belgium so we planned a week on our own. We used Domonique Matthews – the wife of a friend we do business with – a professional travel planner. She set up a week for us in Amsterdam and Bruges, Belgium. She booked our hotels, museum tours, and got us great round trip airfare. Our first stop was Amsterdam. I was there in 1973 – a long time ago – and Carla has never been. We wanted to see the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house.

Amsterdam is known for its canals and you’ll see plenty of them in this post. We spent our days in the central area which is built around five concentric semicircle canals.

We stayed at the Pulitzer Hotel overlooking the Prinsengracht canal [opens in new tab] which was started in 1612 and named for the Prince of Orange.

Although we were well and truly jet lagged we booked a canal tour through the hotel for our first evening. I think this is the boat we took (like I say, we were jet lagged).

Looking back at the skyline…

As you can imagine the boats that ply the canals are low to make it under bridges, and wide. With those constraints there is still plenty of room to be creative. The Netherlands is the land of clogs and this boat celebrated that heritage.

There are locks on the Amstel river to protect the canals from the sea levels. Here is a view of the Amstelsluizen on the Amstel river from Google Maps

Here are the Amstelsluizen [opens in new tab] from water level.

In Portland if we see a building built before 1950 we thing “oooh; so old”. Amsterdam says “hold my beer”; they have buildings going back tot the 17th century and earlier. Our canal cruise showed a lot of them up close and personal

Holland has been clawed back from the North Sea over the centuries. The water flows into Markermeer lake [opens in new tab] and through a river (whose name I can’t find) creating the north east border of central Amsterdam

Markermeer is a }freshwater reservoir and buffer agains floodwaters and droughts” [Wikipedia linked above] against the North Sea (Zuiderzee). Originally it was a saltwater inlet but has since turned into a lake. Our canal tour took us out into the harbor where we got a nice view of the Amsterdam Centraal railway station.

We did more than experience the canals. Domonique booked us a tour of the Rijksmusem with Maia – a woman with a PhD in art history. We spent over three hours and they went by in a flash. Taking pictures of pictures is kind of dumb because they can’t capture the essence of the painting. Oh well, I have a couple anyway. The most famous picture in the museum is The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn. I’m including the picture here to demonstrate the restoration effort underway. Notice the difference between the restored vibrant majority of the painting compared with the non restored bits on the edges.

The painting is very secure; it is in a room by itself and can only be seen through a large glass viewing area.

The next day we had a tour of the Van Gogh museum. Our tour guide was delightful; but not nearly as knowledgeable as Maia. We would have been better served by looking at the displays ourselves with the help of the audio guides. It was the only tour that didn’t exceed our expectations. Vincent Van Gogh painted about 50 self portraits. He was poor and couldn’t afford a model; and hiring a model would have required a commission which would not have allowed him to explore. There is a large room with many of these self portraits; they are a great way to see how is style changed over time. Again, pictures of pictures are dumb; whatever, this self-portrait and a similar one in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris really spoke to me. This is hardly a “painting” (applying a brush to a surface) it is more work of lines of color that look like they were applied with a palette knife. His face emerges from the lines. In a few posts I’ll share the one from the Paris museum which is even more striking.

On Carla’s birthday we walked down to the Café George, which Domonique recommended, for Steak and Frittes: delicious. If you know me, you know I can be a bit mischievous. For example one of my favorite gags is when I go out to breakfast with my buds, I love it when the wait person says “sit anywhere you’d like”. I’ll go up to an occupied table and tell them they have to move because the wait person said we could sit there. It usually gets a smile (but not always). So, while we were eating dinner another couple came in and were seated right next to us. It’s a small cafe and the man on my right was as close as if we were at the same table. We had finished and were waiting for dessert and the other couple were just being served. The man had a delicious looking bowl of French onion soup with an enormous dome of cheese. I turned and said “if I had a spoon I’d ask fore a bite.” He took me up on it and asked the waitress for a spoon! I started waving him away “NOT REALLY, NO”. I got the spoon but still said “NO! I was just joking!”. He put the bowl in front of me and I took a very small bite. It really was delicious. Anyway the four of us started talking. He was visiting his daughter who had just started university in Amsterdam. He is Ademir Kenovic [opens in new tab] and is from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. He is a movie producer, director, and writer. A really fascinating man. Turns out he is just a week older than Carla! We were going to share our dessert with them, but they had to run.

On the way back we had yet another beautiful view of the canal.

Domonique worked hard to get tickets to the Anne Frank house museum. Oof; it is difficult for me to put into words the impact the house had on me. The father was the only one of the family who survived the Holocaust. When the families were taken by the Nazis, the Nazis removed all the furniture. In remembrance of his family Otto insisted the house remain unfurnished and bear witness to this small sample of the inhumanity. It is the quietest museum you’ll ever visit. This is the first of two sobering visits we made on this trip.

On our last evening in Amsterdam we took a taxi to the Rembrandt House Museum – where Rembrandt lived. In addition to being an artist he was a collector and had items from around the world (easier to do in Amsterdam at the time given the Dutch dominated the trade routes with the Dutch East Indies and Dutch West Indies companies). My take away from this – along with Maia’s tour – was just how easy we have life today. Today, if an artist wants to paint something blue, they buy a tube of paint. Back in the day, the artist would first have to grind down linseeds to make oil; then find something appropriate of the right color (e,g. lapislazuli for blue, lice for red), grind it down, then mix it with the oil. Maia had shown us a piece of lapislazuli – a beautiful bright blue rock. It would be a lot of work to grind that down to a powder.

Then it was time to move on down the line. We headed to Amsterdam Centraal to catch the Eurostar bullet train to Brussels where we got a connection to Bruges (next post). Not everything in Amsterdam is old; as we waited for the train I grabbed a picture of modern building across the harbor.

Look carefully at the top of the tall building just to the right of the low white building. Notice the four crane-like poles on the right hand side. Those are actually SWINGS! We saw them in use on our canal tour. If you want to (I do not) you can swing out over the street below. Nope.

Back to waiting for our train.

I had been stressing about making our connection in Brussels. We had 20 minutes – which looked to be plenty when I looked at the Brussels-Midi railway station layout. With a lot of early morning sleuthing (thanks jet lag) I found where the Eurostar came in and had a semi-good idea where our connecting train left from. Um, until we got there. It turns out Brussels is the busiest railway hub in that part of Europe. It was CRAZY BUSY. People running hither and yon. We found our train with a few minutes to spare. The lower level of the car was absolutely packed and we had no room for ourselves – much less our luggage. Then I noticed the upper level of the car was first class – luckily for us I had booked that class. We got ourselves and luggage upstairs and had a couple of seats together.

For anyone with an interest in visiting Europe but are worried about managing themselves. Amsterdam is the perfect introduction. Everyone we met was so nice and helpful. And everyone spoke English fluently, without hesitation. Amsterdam is beautiful, the canals are amazing, there are world-class museums, and the food is delicious.

Next: Bruges, Belgium.