From John in Amsterdam with ice all the way across the canal and amazing private fireworks displays.
And from Shirlee enjoying visiting with family in Portland where the snow is almost gone.
We'll be together again in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks, planning for the next year's adventures.
Hope this finds you all healthy and optimistic about the year to come.
My trip to Portland to spend the holidays with family here got off to a great start when Northwest Airlines upgraded me to business class for no apparent reason. If I knew how that happened, maybe I could repeat it for the return trip in mid-January. The plane arrived early, and I cleared customs without additional fees despite the slightly more than allowance quantity of alcoholic beverages in my luggage, and yes, I did put it all on the form. My sister and her husband (Sydney and Mike) met me at the gate. They had arrived via bus and MAX light rail due to the snow that has clogged the streets here. Then we reversed the process to get back to SW 45th and Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, where Mom met us at JoPa's and treated us to lunch.
John (and Märzen) remained behind in Amsterdam. He says it's really OK with him, and I know that he has some social activities planned: a Solstice party on Sunday at someone's house, Christmas with Dandelion in a house that they're taking care of over the holidays, Democrats Abroad fun gathering on 3 January, Anouk's open house at her new apartment on the 11th, and a boys' night out for his birthday on the 12th. I'll be back on the 17th (leaving here on the 16th).
Schools have been closed here (Portland's west side and Beaverton) all week due to snow, and more is expected over the weekend. It's really amazing: all day long the only thing on the TV is the weather news. Now it's affecting the whole country, and flights are being delayed and cancelled further east. I'm really glad that NWA had that non-stop flight from Amsterdam. The weather is delaying my long-awaited Mexican food outing, but we're having American pizza at the Stocks this evening, and it's all good (as John would say).
-Shirlee
Here I am looking forward to flying to
No, of course this isn’t what it looks like here now. I’m just looking forward to spring and thought I’d share this lovely picture that John took at Keukenhof in April 2004.
The weather isn’t awful here – at least, not yet. It has been cold, but we haven’t had a hard freeze. And at the moment the sun is out, so it’s actually quite pretty. With the sun as low on the horizon as it is this far north, the light is awesome.
The Sinterklaas festivities should be over now. Last night was the night when the children were supposed to set out their shoes. I actually saw a Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet yesterday evening when I took Märzen out. They were hurrying down the street – on to the next party, no doubt.
Lately we’ve been entertaining ourselves by catching up with old friends on Facebook. I’ve found people I haven’t seen since the late 60s, as well as the
In other excitement, Kent and Heather Sisk (from
Otherwise, we’re just living a normal life here. Cruising isn’t always fun and excitement, you know. We are trying to figure out our plans for the summer, though, and that’s fun to look forward to.
We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving with just the two of us, plus Märzen, of course. John is making potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, dressing, Brussels sprouts, and chicken. It is possible to get turkey here, but it’s expensive, and with just the two of us and our small oven, a big chicken will do nicely. With all the dishes, we’re having the standard problems with refrigerator space, so John is stashing some dishes – and the bubbly – in the cockpit.
The temperature here is about the same as
Yesterday it was just hail and sleet. Now the temperature has dropped, the wind has changed, and it’s snowing. So far it isn’t sticking much, and the forecast calls for a little warming, so we hope this won’t last long.
Yesterday we braved the elements to do some provisioning for Thanksgiving at the big market at Noordermarkt. We won’t be having turkey, but John will roast a chicken, and we’ll have most of the traditional accompaniments including cranberry sauce. Our first time through the market we couldn’t find the cranberries, but we spotted them on the way back. We’ve invited Dandelion to join us, but Kerry and Zelma seem to have met a lot of expat moms and babies here, so they may have other plans.
While exploring the Seven Seas Cruising Association website today, I discovered that there’s a third
In big news from the States, our nephew Joel Stocks has just been promoted to sous chef at 50Plates in
Photo credit: I found the photo on the blog of Marc van der Chijs. Except for taking Märzen out and a trip to the store, we aren’t going outside.
Sinterklaas is pronounced almost exactly like Santa Claus and the two are very closely related. Sinterklaas is a shortening of Sint Nicolaas — you know, jolly old Saint Nicolas. You can read more about him in this Wikipedia article. Anyway, he’s arriving in
This is also Zelma’s first birthday (she's the baby on Dandelion), so happy birthday, Z!
John and Zelma’s dad, Andrew, have been doing their part this past week to help with the Dutch Sinterklaas celebration. One of the canal boats at the marina needed to have some work done to get it running for today. With Sjoerd acting as their agent, the guys took care of everything. And our big outing of the week was a trip to the chandlery for parts and supplies.
At the end of last week, I also got to spend a few hours with my friend Marike. She was coming to the city to visit a Chinese store and get some CDs for her Qigong exercises and invited me to join her. We had a wonderful time. One of the stores we visited looks like a great source for kitchen implements and spices. I’m planning to take John there sometime since he’s in charge of the galley.
We also visited the farmers’ market at Nieuwmarkt. It was much less crowded than the one by us, which was nice, but what made it really special was that Marike knows a couple of the vendors and introduced me. I was especially impressed to meet a real Dutch farmer and get a close look at some of his produce. There were several root vegetables I’d never heard of like parsley root and black salsify. After looking it up on Google, I think salsify sounds tasty, and maybe we’ll try it one of these days. It certainly didn’t look very appetizing, but it seemed quite popular.
To top off the outing, Marike treated me to lunch at a nice restaurant called Café in de Waag. We might meet Marike’s sister Gemma there one of these days. I hope so because I’d like to see her again too. One other thing is that we spoke Dutch the whole time, except for a couple of times when I lapsed briefly into English.
Photo credits: Sinterklaas came from Intelligent Travel from National Geographic Traveler, a pretty cool looking blog, but the photo credit belongs to the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Marketing. De Waag came from a Picassa photo album owned by BH. I left a note of thanks for BH, who seems to have traveled to many of the places we've also visited.
In the week after we elected Barak Obama to be our next president, it’s good again to be American. On the tram home from the election night party I carried one of the paper
While waiting for the tram we got our first text message of congratulations from Maria, who was getting ready for work. We heard from all of the rest of our Dutch friends before the end of the day, either by e-mail or in person.
The Dutch were always friendly to Americans, but now when they hear our accents, they ask if we’re happy about Obama. Of course we are, and they let us know that they are too.
(Can you find us in the photo? We're towards the back and against the wall. The woman next to me is from Kentucky, but we know she voted the right way.)
Thanks to our friends Lex and Maria, who we met here at Marina Westerdok in September (see our blog post from that time), we just spent a wonderful weekend in
We, including Märzen, took the train from
After we had coffee with Lex and Maria at their house, the four of us went downtown to see the sights and try a Bossche bol, a famous dessert that, by definition, is only available in Den Bosch. It’s a huge creampuff sort of thing filled with whipped cream and covered in dark chocolate. We had ours with coffee sitting across the street from the
In the evening Maria prepared a feast of different kinds of stompot, which is potatoes mashed together with various vegetables. When the potatoes are mashed with carrots and onions, it’s a unique variety of stompot called hutspot. Besides the hutspot, Maria served a stompot with boerenkool (curly kale) and one with sauerkraut and pineapple. In my previous experience, stompot was served with smoked sausage called rookworst, and Maria had that, but she also served some other sausages and fried Dutch bacon. The Dutch bacon really doesn’t translate. John says it’s sliced pork belly; it isn’t cured at all. Anyway, it was delicious!
Sunday was the regatta. After a nice breakfast we went to the yacht club. Every member helps with the work of maintaining the club, as well as paying dues, and it’s a very nice facility. We sailed on 32-foot boat whose owner, Goos, lived in
The photo shows Lex at the helm during the race with Goos running the main sheet and starboard jib sheet. I had the port jib sheet. Maria is on the foredeck where she helped the jib across in the light air.
In between eating and sailing, we had several interesting conversations with Lex and Maria about the differences in the way things are in the
It’s been fall here for weeks now, and it has definitely felt like it. Yet, summer time officially ended over the weekend. Summer time is what the Dutch and others in Europe call the time shift that the
Last week I rode my bike to my Dutch conversation class. It was my first time using it for real transportation, and I have to admit that it was a little scary. The Dutch all ride so fast and there are so many people on bikes! So even though I was on a bike path most of the way, there was lots of traffic. I’m not sure the class is all that helpful. There’s usually only one native speaker to work with the various small groups, and since I used to be fluent in Dutch, my Dutch is stronger than that of most of the other participants. Still, it’s fun to get out, so I’m going to keep it up.
I’m making an effort, too, to speak Dutch with Dutch people. Most are patient. Some even seem a little relieved not to have to speak English. The Moroccan corner butcher is an example. When I went in to get some lamb shanks the other day, I asked him for recommendations on preparation. He quickly said his English wasn’t very good and asked about speaking French. We wisely continued in Dutch. The lamb shanks turned out great, and we had a lamb ragout with penne pasta for dinner last night. Yum.
The photo above is one I borrowed off of the Internet. It shows the store where we do our normal shopping on the left. The initials "AH" stand for Albert Heijn. The gray weather in the photo looks like what we're having lately, but it must be really early in the morning because the street and sidewalks are so empty. Normally they're jammed.
After checking at several bike shops in the neighborhood, we finally found a good deal on a used bike for me to replace my stolen one. My new bike is a Batavus, a Dutch brand. It has a little rust and a few dings, but I hope that will just make it less attractive to thieves. It’s a three-speed, which is nice for getting up those big hills (dikes and bridges) and for speeding down the street. I haven’t been far on it yet, but the forecast is for a nice day tomorrow, and I hope John will join me for a bike ride. We’ve already had a neighbor ask for first chance at buying it when we leave in the spring.
In other news, John just got his annual haircut for 18€ at a place down the street. He looks like a new man. Andrew walked right past him without recognizing him. John’s last haircut was in
We’ve been trying Dutch food regularly. Cheese is a staple, and we’ve sampled various kinds from the grocery stores, cheese stores, and cheese booths at different markets. Lately we’re favoring one of the cheese booths at the nearest market, which is only held on Wednesdays. The woman who runs it is very nice (she always gives us a taste before we buy), and she understands my Dutch. We’ve been experimenting with the various degrees of aging that is offered for Gouda-style boerenkaas to find our favorite. If you want to know more about boerenkaas, you can check out this brochure in English.
I’ve been introducing John to typically Dutch things to put the cheese (and other sandwich fillers) on. So far, he isn’t crazy about the Friesian roggebrood (a kind of pumpernickel), but he does like the cracker bread, especially when we can find it with sesame seeds. We’ve also been trying various kinds of bread, but we aren’t finding the bread from the stores as good as I remembered.
Of course, there’s also Dutch licorice in myriad varieties. I like the typical salty licorice. (It’s an acquired taste.) When I could find it in the States, I always bought the double-salted kind. Saturday at the market I bought my first DZ here (DZ stands for dubbel zout, which means double salt). Wow! When it’s this fresh, I think single salt will be enough for me. John has been trying varieties of sweet licorice, and Sjoerd has contributed a couple of standard types to John’s experience.
Some things that we haven’t found here, which were staples at home, are ham hocks, regular mozzarella (fresh is available), canned stock, and plain pizza crusts. John makes pizza dough, but not often since we haven’t found the right pizza cheese. He’s also been making homemade stock, but that's time consuming and adds a lot of humidity to the boat, something we really don't need here. For a long time we couldn’t find popcorn, but I spotted it in the market yesterday when we were looking for something else, so we have plenty of that now.
There are so many good things to eat here. It really isn’t a problem if we can’t find what we’re looking for. We just eat something else.
The photo is from somewhere on the Internet. It's of a cheese stand at the organic farmers' market that's held near here on Saturdays. John didn't have a photo of a kaasboer (cheese vendor).
Yesterday David and Gunilla from
In other news, Carrie and baby Zelma from Dandelion are visiting family in the States, so we took Andrew with us to the Democrats Abroad gathering on Saturday. It was fun to take him to a part of the city where he hadn’t been before (in the center near the main shopping and tourist area). There was a good turnout, so we couldn’t talk with everyone, but we did happen to meet a young woman who is a CIA-trained chef from
My Dutch is improving. I’ve started attending a weekly conversation class (free), and that’s pretty fun. I’ve also translated a recipe that John wanted from a Dutch cooking magazine that Marike brought us. And I finished the book (in Dutch) that I picked up in
The photo is from our 2004 trip. It's Museum Square. When we were there with David and Gunilla yesterday to visit the Van Gogh Museum, it was pouring down rain.
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| Anouk on the boat |
Saturday was a beautiful day here — the sun was shining and it was actually warm — a perfect day for a boat ride. Lucky for us, Anouk and her parents (Jan and Ria) invited us to join them on their boat for the afternoon to be followed by rijsttafel in the city afterwards. In between we got to visit their home in Amstelveen.
Jan and Ria keep their boat, De Walrus, at Leimuiden on the Westeinderplas. For those who aren’t familiar with the country or area, the Westeinderplas is a large shallow lake south of Schiphol airport. De Walrus is a British-built motor boat that is mostly enclosed with a nice deck on the back. It’s very comfortable, and with the nice weather we were mostly on the rear deck except for Jan, who manned the helm inside, sometimes with company from John.
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| Jan at the helm |
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| Shirlee and Ria on the deck |
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| Nursery barge |
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| Recreation islands |
Jan took us out of the lake to the Ringvaart, a canal that is part of the staande mast route (standing mast route) linking Amsterdam and Rotterdam. There was quite a bit of traffic on the canal including some commercial barges like the one in the photo, which was moving containers of shrubs from a nursery. The town of Aalsmeer, which borders the lake and is bisected by the canal, is home to many nurseries and greenhouses. It hosts huge flower auctions of tulips and other flowers that are shipped all over the world from Schiphol, both as cut flowers and as bulbs.
Between the canal and the lake Jan and Ria pointed out little islands with docks. These are recreation islands. People from the city buy (or sometimes rent) them as a place to take their boats for a picnic or a weekend get-away. They aren’t allowed to sleep on the islands, but they can sleep on a boat moored at the island. Some were quite developed with picnic tables and playgrounds in addition to the docks, but others were left in their natural state, except that the weeds were cut.
As comfortable as it was on the boat, it also looked like it would be fun to ride a bike along the canal. The bike paths are very nice, and there are plenty of places to stop along the way. Unfortunately, my folding bike was stolen soon after we unloaded it from the boat. I didn’t even get to ride it. Yes, it was locked, but bicycle theft is rampant here. When I mentioned it to Anouk and her family, they said, “Welcome to Amsterdam.” On the website for Boom Chicago, an English-language theater here, the directions by bike read, “Bike to the Leidseplein. Lock bike nearby. See show. Replace stolen bike.”
After the boat ride, we drove to Anouk’s family home in Amstelveen where John got to see a Dutch house from the inside for the first time, and we met Anouk’s brother, Patrick, and their dog, Kai. Then it was back to Amsterdam and the Indonesian restaurant Tempo Doeloe for a wonderful rijsttafel. A rijsttafel is a dinner of many small dishes of varying spiciness. The idea is to start mild and work your way up. (I have to record the name of the restaurant because we couldn’t remember the last one we went to in 2004 with Jeffrey, Karan, and Esmeralda. It turns out that it was just next door, but I still don’t know its name.) The food and service and wonderful, but we couldn’t finish it all — except that I think we did manage to eat all of the dessert.
In all it was a wonderful afternoon and evening that we are sure to remember as one of the highlights of our stay here. Thank you so much, Jan, Ria and Anouk!
Mark your calendars: we just had a whole week without rain here! In fact, it may have been a few days more than a full week, but we have a 70% chance of rain tomorrow. We’ve enjoyed it while it lasted, going for walks and boat rides.
On our way home from our second dinghy tour last week, we spotted the sailboat Dandelion tied up along the canal where the boats who taking the “standing mast route” through
We spent the first few days rafted up, which is always gezellig (an untranslatable Dutch word that means something like cozy, but now Dandelion has its own slip. In a few days we hope to move too to a slip that isn’t on the outside. The Dutch are very good boat handlers, but there’s lots of traffic in the canal, especially when the weather is nice, and it feels safer to be in an inside slip.
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| From a walk in Vondel Park |
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| One of the canal boats |
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| Another canal boat |
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| At the farmers' market |
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| Apparently there are no freight elevators here |
Märzen got her Dutch pet passport today. Although her rabies vaccination was good for three years, we thought the EU required yearly vaccinations because they require a vaccination within a year of entering the EU. So we made an appointment with the closest vet we could find in the Dutch online yellow pages, just two stops away on the bus and within easy walking distance, except that Märzen doesn’t really like to walk.
The vet is a nice woman named Annette, who has two dachshunds of her own. That was an unexpected bonus. It turns out that, although the EU recognizes rabies vaccinations as good for three years if that’s the kind you get, they don’t actually recognize the
The vet was amazed at the amount of paper in Märzen’s medical record because they computerize everything here and record the essentials in the passport. That’s very handy. Now if only they took Visa.
We had one day of nice weather last week (before today) and celebrated by visiting the Vondelpark,
Later that day another sailboat came to the marina. They didn’t fit in the slip that the harbor master had planned on, so we had them raft up with us. It was fun to have neighbors for a few days. Maria and Lex are about our age and live in 's Hertogenbosch, in the south of the
Despite the rain that has fallen almost every day we've been here, the canal has been busy with canal boats filled with Dutch people having fun. Today after John reset a stanchion, we finally put the dinghy in the water and went for our own tour on the canals. We had a canal map with the routes (truly a map, not a chart), but at one point we got lost anyway. It’s difficult to see the names of the canals from the water because they’re posted on the sides of buildings. Often on the water the view is blocked. Then when I could see a name, it wasn’t on the map. I figured we would run into a canal off of the one we were on eventually, but it dead-ended due to bridge construction before that happened. We ended up retracing our route back to where we had turned off. Finally we found recognizable territory and made our way home.
If the weather is still good tomorrow (and it’s supposed to be), we’ll go out again. This time we’ll bring the map I use to get us around town. It has all of the streets on it. We’ll also bring a leash for Märzen, and a blanket. Today she needed to stop, and I didn’t have her leash, so I had to follow her closely lest she escape. Fortunately, it isn’t too difficult to get ashore, and we were somewhere without a lot of street activity.
Cruising can’t be exciting all the time. Even when you’re someplace exotic, if you stay put, life develops a routine. And that’s what’s happening with us. We’ve found a chandlery in addition to grocery stores and markets, and we’re figuring out the most efficient combinations of buses and trams to take to get where we need to go if we don’t walk. Day-to-day life consists of small trips to the store, checking the Internet for election news, and working on boat projects.
Our shower space is now a shower all the time as we’ve moved all the things that we were storing there to other locations. We definitely had more provisions than we needed for the Atlantic crossing, but now we don’t have to buy as much at the store. John has found a place in the lazarette for the transformer where it is safely out of the rain, and we’ve gotten the bike out but haven’t used it because of the rain. (Did I mention that it rains here?) Sjoerd, the harbor master, has loaned John a bike, so we can go riding together when we get a dry day.
A major project for John has been fixing the furnace. (That’s why we’ve already found a chandlery.) It’s working now, though, and should be fine for the rest of the winter. Now we’re tracking down the leaks. Found one right over the table in the salon, but now there’s another in the galley.
We haven’t seen our old friends this week, but we did go to a DemsFun gathering of Democrats Abroad NL, met some new people, and said hello again to those we met on Obama night. The elections are really capturing most of our attention these days. There are links to some of the blogs we follow on the Links page of our website if you’re interested. That’s part of the reason that we haven’t added new photos to the website. It takes time to read all that stuff! Also, the weather hasn’t been very conducive to picture-taking.
Our first week in our new marina has been full of exploring and visiting with old friends. We’ve had a wonderful time and have been too busy doing things to have time for updating the blog.
Wednesday Marike took us to the Museum Jan van der Togt in
Thursday night we went to the Democrats Abroad Netherlands all-night gathering to watch Barak Obama’s acceptance speech. It was fun to meet some other Americans, and we found out, among other things, where we can buy corn tortillas. The guys who gave us the tip had actually been pressing their own tortillas from polenta before they located the mother lode to supply both corn tortillas and masa. Also, our gathering was covered by Dutch television, and we were shown on the news the next day. Although we were interviewed, that portion was cut, and we only show up clearly at the end. Here’s a link to a clip from the show called EénVandaag, but it’s in Dutch.
Friday afternoon Marike came by and spent the afternoon. It’s so good to get acquainted with her again. She gave me a carnelian necklace and bracelet for my birthday and brought lots of books about Anton Heyboer so that I can learn more about her life these past 30+ years.
Saturday the sun came out, and it was a beautiful summer day. Esmeralda and her boyfriend, Mark, came to see us, and we had wine and hapjes (snacks or nibbles) in the cockpit. She looks great (as you can see), and Mark is very nice. We’re looking forward to seeing more of them. Esmeralda brought me the latest Kathy Reichs paperback, Bones to Ashes, which is much appreciated especially since Reichs is one of my favorite authors.
Saturday evening Anouk came to visit and we went out for a yummy Chinese dinner. It turns out that the best Indonesian restaurants are closer to where Anouk lives in
Unfortunately, birthday greetings from my sister also brought the news that my dad is in the hospital. Reports are that he’s doing well, and we wish him a speedy recovery.
All the staff at Marina Westerdok and the owner, Nauticadam, are great. They’re all making us feel very welcome here as we pester them with questions while we settle in.
The harbor master, Sjoerd, is a very nice, and very busy, young man. We had a chance to get better acquainted with him yesterday afternoon. It turned out that the boat that was in our slip was his, but someone else had put it there, and he didn’t know. And it wasn’t scrap lumber (that was just my impression), but rather nice teak boards. In his spare time, Sjoerd and a friend are restoring the boat, which is pre-WWI vintage. Anyway, it’s all sorted out now. No worries.
The general manager of Nauticadam, Jorrit (or
The photo of the
This morning we joined the queue of boats leaving Sixhaven Marina, and then crossed the river IJ, called to have two bridges opened for us, and finally arrived at Marina Westerdok to find a black scow with scrap lumber in it tied up at our spot. What’s more, the harbor master is off sailing in the IJsselmeer. We had already used all of our prepaid phone minutes talking with Anouk yesterday evening, so we couldn’t call the harbor master ourselves, but the skipper of a tour boat helped us out and called him. She told us that we were just supposed to tie up somewhere for now. Not pleased with that answer, we rafted up with the boat in front of our slip so I could hop off and get more minutes to call the harbor master myself. He told me the same thing, but he sounded very calm. I told him what we’d done, and he said it was fine and he’ll be back this evening.
The really good news is that there’s an open wi-fi hotspot in the area, so we’re temporarily connecting to it. It’s kind of nice to have a quiet day to catch up with things. We can’t really leave the boat the way it is. Already we’ve moved from the boat that we were rafted with in order to let some neighbors leave the dock. We were blocking the channel for them. (And they too called the harbor master.) Now we’re tied to the dock outside of the boat that’s in our spot, so if the owner comes to move the boat, we’ll have to let him out. The neighbors were very nice and friendly, so already we’re getting acquainted, and I think we’ll like it here very much.
The photo is the view off our stern. The bridge is for the trains, but they’re quiet, electric trains, so it isn’t like
Having made incredibly good time from Ostend to IJmuiden, we decided not to stop there but to continue on to Amsterdam. First we waited about an hour for the sun to rise behind the clouds so that we could see what we were doing. Then we headed straight for the lock on the North Sea Canal. After only a very short wait, the bridge opened to let us into the lock, and we tied off like pros. Suddenly John noticed that we were going down. After the Panama Canal and the lock at Ostend and based on our intuition, we expected to go up to go inland. But, no, we're in the Netherlands (which means low country) and they call it that for a reason.
So as I write this, we're motoring toward Amsterdam, below sea level, and we've finally arrived in Holland.
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It looks like today is the day we finally start the last leg to the
The gale warnings are gone from the British shipping forecast for our area, but significant gusts are still predicted, so we’re staying one more day.
This is the day we had thought we would leave
Having enjoyed the waterzooi so much, we used Google to find more Flemish recipes. There’s an interesting site called Recipes from
It’s good to use the stove and oven because then we don’t need the furnace as much. Our family tells us it’s been hot in
John has been instant messaging with our friend Jeffrey in the SF Bay area. We traveled to
John used a combination of Rachel Ray’s waterzooi recipe on Foodnetwork and the Homebrew Chef’s recipe. Since Flemish cooking traditionally uses beer, we figure the Homebrew Chef’s recipe is a bit more authentic, and John definitely used good Belgian beer in his version. We had broth left over, so tomorrow John is going to add some potatoes and fish, and we’ll have another wonderful dinner.
As promised, today we returned to
The train stations in both
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| Buildings along market square in Brugge |
We’ve been very busy the past two days. Yesterday we went to
Today we went to
We bought a five-day pass for Flemish buses and trams before we went to Bruges, so we’re going to do more exploring around here over the weekend. There’s a world music festival going on in a neighboring town on Saturday, so we’ll go see what that’s about, and there’s also a modern art museum right here in Ostend that we haven’t seen.
A note about spelling: Everything here has at least two spellings (Dutch and French), and most have three (something different for English). For example, the English spelling where we are is
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| Neighboring local boat showing Dutch spelling of the town's name |
In order to get to this marina we motor-sailed about 10 miles northeast of Nieuwpoort and waited outside the entrance to the harbor for the green lights. The harbors here use International Port Traffic Signals. When we arrived, it was red for a ferry coming out plus a flotilla of really little sailboats for a children’s regatta. Then it switched to green-white-green, which means you need permission to enter. We waited awhile green-green, meaning we could go, but I wasn’t sure they were going to show that, so I called for permission. They said to wait. We had to wait through another red before we finally got our greens.
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| From our stern looking back at the entrance to the marina |
Then once we were in, we called Mercator Marina. It’s inside a lock, so we needed to let them know we were coming and get instructions. The fact that we would have to go through a lock to get here was one reason I’d picked Nieuwpoort instead to start out with, but we’re going to have to do locks eventually, so we might as well get used to it. This was a good place to learn, except for the crowds lining the lock walls watching us. The short story is that we had some problems and got turned sideways in the lock, but we got straightened out again, didn't break anything, and learned from our mistakes. The major thing was that we didn’t have our lines set up right, and the bowline got fouled, so we didn’t get tied off quickly enough. When we left the lock and tied up to wait for the bridge to open, we did better.
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| Tall ship Mercator, for which the marina is named, securely anchored off our bow |
Once we got settled, we went exploring. There’s a huge grocery store just across the drawbridge from us, so we picked up a few things and dropped them off at the boat and then walked along the Kappellestraat, the major pedestrian-only shopping street, which is on our side of the bridge. We walked all the way to the beach, not that far really, and on the way back finally found our frites and beer in a little café (more a Belgian fast-food place) that appeared to be on the edge of the respectable part of the shopping district. A bar called Bada Bing was across the way and a tattoo parlor just down the street. One medium order of frites between us satisfied our craving, so now we can see what else Belgian cuisine has to offer. It looks like it’s mostly chocolate, waffles, and pancakes. Whether the pancakes are Dutch style or French crepes, we’ve yet to discover.
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| Treats we have been resisting, but it isn't easy |
What are the odds? Well, actually in August, I guess they aren’t that great. The locals say this weather definitely isn’t normal. Summer weather is usually nice.
Yesterday we walked to town to find a baker and get more baguette. Also on the agenda was Belgian beer and frites (French fries but better). Alas, they don’t seem to sell just an order of frites where they also sell beer. We saw a couple of walk-away frites places, but when we gave up and went back, they were closed. We did have a local beer, though.
Not on the agenda but a real bonus was an outdoor art show that was going on around the town hall and market plaza. We liked several of the artists, enough so that if we were still buying art, we would have been tempted. And even though we weren’t buying, it was fun to look.
I’m using my Dutch more and more. It’s really helpful in the stores where the signs are in Dutch, but I’m also trying to speak more. Clearly my accent is terrible, and I’m sometimes misunderstood or not understood at all, but I’m trying not to switch back to English. John noticed in the marina office that the staff bore with me and didn’t switch to English until they noticed John and I speaking English with each other. So there’s hope. For his part, John really likes
We arrived and tied up at the reception dock here at 7:30 a.m. after an exciting night of threading our way through well-marked and lighted channels from Calais in the dark. We aren't sure if we'll stay here more than one night. A local has already advised us to go on to Oostend, so if they have room for us, that's what we'll probably do. Stay tuned for updates.
We're making good progress on our way to Nieuwpoort, going faster for six hours and slow for six as the currents change. But I revisited the mileage tables and discovered that Nieuwpoort is about two full days from Cherbourg, not the day and a half I thought. It doesn't really matter; it's just two nights out instead of one. But in case anyone is counting the hours until our arrival, I wanted to let you know.
-Shirlee
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Later this morning we’re leaving
Originally from the
Getting to ride in a car to the store and cart back provisions was a much-appreciated treat, but the trip yesterday to the
Another thing I forgot to mention falls in the small world category. Between the
Andrew also brought word of the other boats we’d been traveling with:
