Wandering Around Haarlem
It was cold in Holland at the weekend, as you can see from these pictures of Haarlem.
The interesting picture is that of the statue of Laurens Janszoon Coster.
It is claimed that he invented printing with movable type a few years before Guttenberg. So that is why I am interested, as that was my father’s profession!
Wandering Around Willemstad
I went to Willemstad a few years ago to see an old friend and last week in Holland, when I went to the Watersnoodmuseum, I passed the town and paid a second visit.
Watersnoodmuseum
This is a museum at Ouwerkerke in the Netherlands, dedicated to the North Sea Flood of 1953.
It is an impressive museum that opened a few years ago.
It is actually built inside four giant Phoenix breakwaters or caissons, that were originally built to be part of the Mulberry Harbours used for the D-Day invasion in the Second World War. They had been used to plug one of the last gaps in the dykes in November 1953. The construction of the caissons is clearly visible, both inside and outside.
Having lived in Felixstowe as a teenager some years after the disaster, it somewhat saddens me that we have no museum to the floods in the UK. Thirty eight people died in Felixstowe and I can still see the marks of the flood on the walls of the houses in my mind.
Being a Coeliac in Holland
I travel to Holland quite a bit and to Den Haag in particular. In fact, I’ve just come back from a few days in the Dutch capital.
So how do I manage as a coeliac in Holland?
On last Friday, I went for lunch in a cafe in Amsterdam called Puccini. It’s in the Staalstraat fairly close to the Amstel River and the Town Hall and the new Music Theatre. Most of the food was the usual bread offering, but they gave me a delicious salmon salad with no problems. Just remember that gluten-free is gluten-frij or gluten-fry! At least if they know about gluten, you will get food without a problem.
I would say that the level of knowledge in restaurants and cafes in major cities is about the same as in London or Cambridge.
But the biggest help is Albert Heijn. This is the Dutch equivalent of Waitrose or an upmarket Tesco Metro. You don’t have to know your Dutch, as every one of their own label products is labeled with the gluten-free symbol, if that what it is. If you’re still not sure, you can usually check the ingredients, even if they are in Dutch, as food names seem to be similar, even if the spelling is unpronounceable.
Wandering Around Den Haag
You may not have noticed, but I don’t like places being given two names. That is why this post is called Den Haag and not The Hague.
These are some pictures that I took over the weekend.
Wandering Around Amsterdam
I took these pictures in Amsterdam over the last few days.
It was cold, but at least it was sunny!
Fast Train to Rotterdam and Den Haag
It has just been announced that Thalys is now running fast through to Amsterdam. So I looked up and see if I could book from Ebbsfleet to Rotterdam for a reasonable price at a reasonable speed. I actually would go to Den Haag, but couldn’t find that on the Eurostar web site. Or should I say, I could find it, but I couldn’t book it!
In mid-January, I have found that I could do the trip in three hours and forty-seven minutes for a return cost of £127.50 with a credit charge of £3.
So how does that compare to easyJet?
easyJet on the same days costs £47.98 with a charge of £8 for the credit card.
The parking at Ebbsfleet and Stansted are about the same and I suspect you can get them for about £70, with perhaps an extra tenner for diesel for Ebbsfleet. And then you have the trains at the other end, which would both be just a few Euros.
As to time, the flight takes about five hours door-to-door and the train takes about six and a half.
So is it a no-brainer to take the plane?
No! I hate airports and all of the ridiculous rules. Not all are security too!
So it is perhaps why I actually prefer to take the boat. The last trip, I used Stena from Harwich and because I had a problem with the Lotus, I came back the same way. It is not really such a long trip in terms of time, as I would do Harwich-Hook overnight. But then coming back, you have the annoying delay, whilst they keep you on board, so you might have breakfast. I don’t, as their offerings are not gluten-free!
I normally go over using Norfolk Line from Dover to Dunkirk, which usually takes about eight hours door-to-door. That may be a lot slower, but I can fill the car with all the goodies that expats can’t get in Holland. And I can also take my Brompton!
Cost of the ferry is usually about £60 with perhaps about the same amount for diesel. I know that calculating the cost of motoring on the fuel cost is not valid, but it is the way we always add it up!
So perhaps, the easiest and most relaxing way is to drive via Dover. At least you get a nice break on the boat and can listen to BBC Radio 5 Live all of the way. And it’s only three hours slower than the plane.
Limping There and Back
As I drove to get the boat at Harwich, the Lotus Elan developed a gearbox fault. What it meant was that I only had second, fourth and reverse gears.
I was faced with a dilemma, in that did I drive back home and get the Jaguar or did I continue. To complicate matters, I was also going to see Ipswich play Peterborough, so I’d miss the match, if I changed cars.
So I continued.
It now should be said, that the engine of the Lotus can drive the car happily in second and fourth, so without any mishaps, I managed to drive from Ipswich to Harwich carefully at about fifty-five. I had dreaded getting on the boat, as on some ferries, you have to drive up a steep ramp, but in this case it was almost level, as they weren’t using the upper decks at all. I only had a few kilometres to go on the other side, so it was a chance worth taking.
I did check in with a friendly forum called Lotus Elan Central and this identified the problem as a gear cable. So I didn’t need to get any serious help in Holland and just drove back to the boat last night.
It was then a quiet drive home through the villages on a getting-better-sort of Sunday. Weather wise that is.
The question that has to be asked is, how many performance cars could have limped home so successfully? As a point here, my 2.2 litre diesel Jaguar always needs to start in first, as it has nowhere near the power range of the Lotus.
Two Elans in the Dark
My yellow Lotus has found a friend; a red one in Holland.
What do Lotus Elans do when they meet each other?
Seriously though, the red one is a left-hand-drive example from the second series, so it’s about three years younger than mine. Note the different wheels! The newer car also has sixteen inch wheels, as opposed to my fifteen.
The Anonymous Widower 