Poppy bought a bike in Hoenderloo (near Hoge Veluwe) and rode it back to Rotterdam last weekend, so she had the wheels to join Molly, Jonathan and me on an easy ride to Den Haag by way of Delft. We got to Den Haag pretty quickly, so we decided to go to the Mauritshuis Museum, known for housing Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring. We saw a long line of people and assumed they were waiting to get into the museum, so we took our place in line to go through a metal detector and have our bags x-rayed. Ummm, we were wrong (not for the first or last time of the day). Apparently, we happened to be in Den Haag on the day that many of the national monuments and museums are open to the public for free. We waited in line for 30 minutes to tour some legislative chamber, or something of the sort. After our 5-minute tour of some unknown place, we decided to ask someone where Mauritshuis was so we could see what we came for.

After an hour or so of contemplating art, we went to the beach near Scheveningen. Jonathan thought the North Sea looked inviting, so he stripped down to his boxers and jumped in. Poppy, Molly and I passed on doing that. We wandered along the beach for awhile, ate ice cream, and ran into Greta purely by chance. Greta had come to the beach by train, so we made plans to meet up in Rotterdam and go out to dinner. We thought it would take us a little more than an hour to get back. Not so.

The network of bicycle paths in the Netherlands is fantastic. You can bike all over the country, mostly on paths reserved for bicycles and scooters. Here’s the big but: The signs are really confusing. We followed the signs pointing to Rotterdam and thought we were getting close when we saw a sign that said it was only 19 kilometers away. We rode for quite awhile in the direction of Rotterdam and then saw another sign — that said it was 19 km away. I suspect the signs may just direct unsuspecting cyclists in huge circles. We took a few more wrong turns that took us through some beautiful countryside and eventually got back to Rotterdam, but I think we probably rode quite a few more kilometers than 19.

Hoge Veluwe covers more than 5,000 hectares of land, which includes woodland, bogs and sand drifts. It was amazing. There are free bikes to ride around the park, and it’s definitely the best way to see as much as possible if you don’t have a lot of time.

The museum was named after Helene Kröller-Müller, a private art collector who decided to open a museum to show her collection. The museum has the largest private Van Gogh collection in the world (besides the Van Gogh family’s), as well as works by many other notable artists. In addition to the collection inside the museum, there is a sculpture park on the grounds of the museum.

After hours of wandering happily around the park and the museum, we had a delicious supper at Poppy’s hotel (she decided to stick around for another day), and then the rest of the group had to leave to get back to Rotterdam. On the bus ride to Utrecht, Molly and I had a fascinating conversation with a guy named Harry, who told us about the work he had done to help digitize the Dutch National Library’s archives. We’ll have a chance to see some of his handiwork next week.

The canal tour was lovely. I had taken a tour of Amsterdam’s many canals a week earlier, but the two experiences were completely different. Last week I went on a sunny Saturday, and the canals were jammed with people partying in their boats. We bumped a few people and canal walls, and the driver (captain?) had to take an unplanned route because the usual way was too congested. It actually turned out to be pretty interesting because he also turned off the recorded tour and told us what he knew about the areas we floated through. Today the weather was drizzly and cold, so the canals were considerably less crowded. The iSchool group filled one half of the boat, with Chinese tourists taking up the other half, so we listened to the tour in English and Chinese. The tour was interesting but uneventful (no bumper boats this time). Unfortunately, many of the most interesting things seemed to be on the Chinese side of the boat, so we didn’t get to see all of them as closely as we would have liked. Ah, well.

After the canal tour, I tagged along with Molly to the Hermitage Museum. The museum is a new addition to Amsterdam’s art scene, having opened in its current space in June 2009. Before that, the building was an actual hermitage, a home for many of Amsterdam’s poor, for more than 300 years. The current exhibition contains works of Matisse, Picasso and Kandinsky, along with the works of others from their respective art movements. I was absorbed in colors and lines for more than two hours before deciding to move on.

The next museum I visited was the Verzets Museum, which commemorates the lives of some of the people who were involved in the Dutch resistance during World War II. I came away from the museum both inspired and discouraged. Many of the individual stories of heroism were amazing, but Hitler still controlled the country for several years. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were murdered during the German occupation of the Netherlands. At the end of the museum was a portion dedicated to the Dutch living in Indonesia during the war. It was interesting to me that the Dutch were deeply engaged in resisting German occupation at the same time their country was occupying Indonesia and committing injustices and brutalities against the people who lived there. A lot to think about there.

The last part of my day was the least enjoyable. Urg. The Netherlands uses a card with an embedded chip for people to pay for travel on public transit. People load money onto the card and tap it on a card reader to pay for trips on trams, trains, subways, etc. It’s all very practical and efficient – except when it’s not. During yesterday’s trip to Hilversum, the card reader didn’t register when I tapped my card at Centraal Station to leave Amsterdam. If you tap the card at one station without a corresponding destination, you’re charged the maximum fare for the type of trip you’re making. For trains, the maximum fare is €20. I didn’t realize my card hadn’t registered in Centraal, so I tapped my card at the reader in Hilversum. When I left Hilversum several hours later, I tapped the card at Hilversum and then again at Centraal when I got there. I thought everything had worked out correctly until I took a tram last night. When I got off, my balance read €2. I had been charged €40 for a roundtrip that should have been about €10. So after my museum-filled afternoon, I went to Centraal and talked to a super nice (and attractive – I think they’re all supermodels here) guy at the service desk. He explained to me that unfortunately, he could not refund any money directly to my chip card; refunds can only be deposited into Dutch bank accounts. I, alas, don’t have a Dutch bank account, so I begrudgingly added €30 to my card balance so I can keep using it for travel. There are several morals to this story, but the one I’ll keep closest to my heart for now is: Make sure you hear a beep when you tap your card.

I was especially impressed by the setup of the children’s section. The circular bookshelves create little private areas with sofas and cushions so parents can comfortably read to their children, or children can read to themselves with little danger of being interrupted. I mentioned the book labels earlier; the labels on the children’s books are adorable. There’s a ghost sticker for scary stories, a wizard’s hat for stories about magic, and so on. And fiction books are intershelved with nonfiction books, something that’s rarely done in the United States. Everything seems to be arranged to help kids easily find the kind of books they’re looking for, and maybe even find some they’re not looking for.

After seeing just one library here, I’m not going to proclaim Dutch libraries superior to U.S. libraries. After all, we do have some really great libraries in the U.S., too. But if I keep seeing this kind of quality at other libraries I visit, I’ll definitely be a convert.

Once our appetite for frites was sated, we walked to Begijnhof, a home for single Catholic women who didn’t want to take the vows to become nuns. The women worshipped in a small, hidden church in the courtyard in the middle of the houses. Begijnhof houses are still reserved for women. Apparently we still needed some churching, because then we went to Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, or “Our Lord in the Attic” church, and Sint Nicolaaskerk (St. Nicholas’ church). According to Lonely Planet, the church was built in 1661 during the Calvinist era. At the time, it was illegal for Catholics to openly attend a Catholic church, so a wealthy businessman built a chapel in the upper stories of his home. Amsterdam officials turned a blind eye to Catholic worship as long as their church didn’t look like one. Sint Nicolaaskerk most definitely looked like a church, though. I’ll have to look up a little more history to see why it was OK. It was nice to sit quietly inside the chapel before going to our first group dinner as a class.

Greta and I waited at Koffiehuis van den Voksbond for about half an hour because someone *cough*Trent*cough* led the rest of the class horribly astray from Centraal Station. It was actually kind of nice to have a chance to enjoy the funky decor before the rest of the group got there. Supposedly the coffee house (no, not that kind) began as a charitable eating place for dockworkers. It has an ever-changing menu of really good food (some people said amazing, but I wouldn’t go that far). I started my meal with a smoked mackerel, grapefruit and avocado salad that was a perfect balance of smoky, salty and tart flavors. It was the best course of the meal. My main course, asparagus risotto, was nearly perfect, but the rice was just a touch too crunchy. Other than that, everything was cooked perfectly, and the flavor was fantastic. I finished up the meal with cardamom creme brulee, which could have been wonderful. I’ve had too many good creme brulees, though, to be impressed by something that was a little too runny and wasn’t topped with properly caramelized sugar. It was OK, I’ll give it that. Overall, though, I was pretty satisfied with the day.