Our Fall Break

Well, it has been two solid weeks since I last posted and lots has happened in the interim. The main reason for the hiatus was that last week was Fall break for me and my kids and our whole family took the opportunity to tour around Holland and Belgium for six days.

Two weeks ago today we flew our of London's Heathrow airport and into Amsterdam, where we spent the night at a funky hotel called the Orange Tulip. The following day we visited the Anne Frank house -- which was deeply moving for me, as I remember reading Frank's diary when I was in high school. We also visited the Jewish Museum, a group of four old synagogues that have been turned into a museum of the Jewish community in Holland. They had a special children's museum and Aleeza and Sebi got to make challah as part of a hands-on demonstration. Afterward, we wandered up and down the canals[Unfortunately, the kids got an eyeful of the city's notorious Red Light district as we were searching for a place to eat that evening.] We also managed to eat some famous Belgian "frittes" and stopped for lunch at a Pannekoeken Huis where the kids had children's meals that came with all sort of stuffed animals, toys and candies as "special surprise".

Towards evening on Monday we went back out to the airport, picked up a rental car and drove to Antwerp (in Belgium) where Jackie lived for a couple of years in the late 70s. We spent two days in Antwerp. It is a delightful place with an enormous cathderal and old town square. We got to see the famous Rubens' Huis (which has been restored to look like it was when the painter lived there in the mid 17th Century) and visited another museum with an impressive collection of Flemish art. The food was not great, sadly, but we did eat more frittes and I managed to get some OK mussels one night.

From Antwerp we then traveled to Bruges, which is very well preserved and beautiful medieval city with lots of architecture dating from the 13th and 14th centuries and so picturesque canals. It was a great town to stroll around and we spent most of our time there just drifting from sight to sight. We did see the "lace museum" (which I found a bit dull), a church with a creepy-looking altar decorated with death's heads and bones, and visited the "Chocolate Museum" (the highpoint of our stay in Bruges from the kids' point of view).

Finally, on Thursday, we got back in the car and drove to Leiden (in Holland) where we spent four days with Jackie's old friend Marit. Marit is half-Dutch, half-Hungarian and Jackie met her when she was living in Budapest. She's now married to a French architect and carpenter, Eduard, has two children (Milo, 6, and Noor, 2) and is working as a career councilor. Jackie hadn't seen her in 18 years and yet the two of them were so natural together it was as if they'd been living around the corner from each other all this time; they spent much of the time we were reminiscing about the good old day, talking about old pals and acquaintences, etc. Marit's husband Eduard runs his own house restoration business and -- having done an architectural internship in the U.S. years ago-- spoke very good English; we had long conversations about his business and about his experience trying to fit into Dutch culture over endless glasses of wine and beer. Marit was very nervous intially about having us stay with her for such a long time because she was afraid it would upset her kids but it turned out that Sebi and Milo were able to play together nicely (despite the lack of a common language) and Aleeza loved playing with Noor.

Marit and Eduard had to work on Friday, so we took the train into Amsterdam where we got to see the impressive Vincent Van Gogh museum and had yet more frittes.

Over the weekend we just hung out in Leiden, went to the market and took the kids to the park to play football. Jackie, Marit and I took Sebi and Milo to a cool water park where the boys got to paddle rafts around these winding canals and under these little bridges. Sebi loved it. On Sunday before we caught our plane to London we all went for a hike in a wind-swept park near the North Sea coast that was full of high sand dunes and twisting trails. It was striking because it didn't look anything like the stereotypical image of Holland and in fact resembled the great sandy expanses of Cape Cod in Massachusetts more than anything else. It was awfully cold and windy but it gave the kids a chance to run and climb. We were all pretty worn out by the time we got the airport that evening.

All in all it was a nice break. More later.