My travel buddy (D) lives in Amsterdam, and after many trips together around Eastern and Southern Europe, I decided to go up to Holland for a long weekend. 30 April is a big Dutch holiday called Queen's Day (Koninginnedag in Dutch). It is a cross between July 4th and President's Day. The goal for the weekend was to celebrate Queen's Day, to taste as much aged cheese and Belgian beers as possible, to head to Belgium, and to sightsee around A'dam and Holland.
I arrived on Thursday and spent the day working in the Holland office. After work on Thursday, D and I met up with a girl that I went to high school with in Indiana. She is living in a suburb of Amsterdam with her husband and son. It was great to see her and catch-up. Given that we hadn't seen each other in 15 years, it was strange that the first time we saw each other was in A'dam. I guess that girls from Noble County can get out sometimes!
Many of you know that I really like beer and cheese. Holland and Belgium are centers for these fermented delights. There are 7 Trappist breweries in the world and 6 of these are in Belgium and one is Dutch. Several of these are readily available (though not cheaply or freshly) in the US. I'm sure that many of you have tried Leffe and Chimay. However, the rarest trappist is from a monastery called Westvlerteren. They do not make beer for commercial distribution. You have to call the beer hotline to get some and drive up at your allotted time to pick it up. And you can only get 24 0.33L bottles at a time. So you can't really find this in bars or other shops. But D knew of one pub in Amsterdam that had the Westvleteren. I tried the Westvleteren 8 (like a dubbel) and it was incredible. It definitely makes my top-5 beer list. After trying that beer, all of the other delicious dubbels and trippels that we sampled over the weekend were good, but just not as good as the Westvleteren. I also got to try Croquettes and fried potatoes (frites) on Thursday; so the eating began.
Friday morning, we were up early to begin the Koninginnedag celebration. The entire town participates in a free market in which you can buy or sell nearly anything from old Barbie dolls to a chance to smash a tomato as it rolls down an opaque tube to the chance to throw eggs at peoples heads. It was pretty unreal. We bought some bright orange cowboy hats to wear around. Everyone was wearing orange. In the morning, things were pretty tame. We had a melted cheese sandwich (imagine a grilled cheese made with delicious cheese) that we bought on the street. We got takeaway beer from a local microbrew, DePrael. Takeaway microbrew? I love this place! At first, it wasn't too crowded.
As the day went on, we continued to walk around town, seeing the festivities. The canals had some party boats on it too.
Canal at noon.
Canal at 2pm
Canal at 6pm
The streets and canals were jammed by 8pm and after seeing too many drunken people, we decided to head back to D's place. We picked up some Indonesian food. I can't really get much international/ethnic food in Belgrade, so this was a real treat too.
On Saturday, we got up early and drove out to the Tulip fields. The weather was bad; it was pouring and quite cold. But it was really amazing to see these stripes of color that are the tulips.
The closer rows of green are the harvested tulips
Another not-in-Kansas moment
We then continued driving to Belgium. We wanted to see the Westmalle monastery/brewery. This is one of the 7 Trappist breweries. You can't actually go inside, as it is a working monastery. However, we did drive up to it and the grounds were quite beautiful. We parked and went on a nice walk around the area.
The brewery side
The monastery
The picturesque grounds. I love when the trees make a canopy over the road.
As I mentioned, you can't actually go in the monastery/brewery, but across the street there is a restaurant where you can try their beer and cheese. It was very cool to be eating the cheese and sipping the beer while seeing the cows and brewery.
After our snack, we continued on to Brugge. Brugge is considered to be the most well preserved medieval city in Europe. It certainly was pretty.
We walked around for a few hours, eating frites again (apparently a specialty in Belgium) and I had a real Belgian waffle. The waffle dough is very thick, almost like cookie dough, and I got my waffle with chocolate and whipped cream. Hey - I said it was self-indulgence weekend! It was really good and took me about 20 minutes to eat it because it was so rich.
We were tired and approaching hyperglycermia, and it was time for a break. We went to this very quaint pub called 't Brugs Beertje which means "the Little Bear". They had many different Belgian beers and we got to sample a few. We also had some more cheese.
Amazing little pub
We also went shopping and bought some gifts for people and I got some hard-to-find Belgian beers to take back to with me to share with friends in Belgrade.
This time of year in Northern Europe, the sun is out until about 9:30pm. So as dusk approached, we sat down on a sidewalk restaurant and had mussels and frites. So I think that I did all of the stereotypical food and drink things - frites, walffes, mussels, trappist beers, and cheese. It was a wonderful day.
Brugge is a really beautiful city
On Sunday, we went out for Pancakes (yes, a proper noun). My pancake was about 10 inches round, and I got onions, bacon, cheese, and mushrooms in it. It almost tasted like a hashbrown. It was amazing.
After breakfast, we went to a few different cheese shops, and sampled some cheeses and bought some for dinner and for me to take back with me to Belgrade. I tried this incredible aged goat cheese that tasted like a Gouda and even had calcium lactate crystals! We spent entirely too much money on cheese, and then walked all around Amsterdam. The weather was very cold (45F) and raining, but it was nice to be outside. The city had recovered from the debauchery of Friday, and the trash and port-a-potties were mostly removed. In the afternoon, we went to Ij brewery that is in an old windmill. It is very no frills, and we tried their beers and some soft cheese that is made with their spent grains and some uncured/uncooked sausage (ossenworst). It was so good.
't Ij brewery in Amsterdam
We took the tram back to D's and relaxed some. We then ate a feast of cheese, meat, pate, and some bread with olive oil from his family's grove in Greece. It was delicious.
I highly recommend that everyone takes a weekend like this at least once per year to enjoy the things in life that you really enjoy.
Great pictures! I definitely need to get to Europe to enjoy some decent beer and cheese. I grew up in Wisconsin, but I doubt anyone from Belgium is going to visit and write home about the wonderful pitcher of Old Milwaukee with fried cheese curds. :-)
ReplyDeleteLooks like an awesome trip.