We're in the Netherlands!

Hello all,

We arrived in Haarlem, not far from Amsterdam, last night, after leaving Mechelen early in the afternoon (we went on a nice tour of Mechelen in the morning). As we left Mechelin, Lydia kept asking if Margaret could stay a little longer. And, she almost got her wish. What was supposed to be a two and a half hour journey to Haarlem turned into a remarkable odyssey. I won't go into all of the ridiculous details here, but the train that we boarded in Mechelen on its way to Amsterdam (stopping in Rotterdam, where we were going to switch trains to go to Haarlem without having to go through Amsterdam) stopped in Antwerp, deposited passengers (except us), and then went back to Mechelen. We have no idea what we did wrong. We had reviewed the board. Karen had helped us figure out what we were doing and what we should be looking for. Yet, we still ended up back in Mechelen. So, we went back to Antwerp, where we had to wait around a bit before our connection to Rotterdam arrived. So we passed the time by eating:

Like so many of the train stations we've visited on our trip so far, the Antwerp Central station is a gorgeous old (late nineteenth-century) edifice in the midst of a spectacular renovation. It is full of air and light and beauty (at least the parts not still under construction, as in the picture of the kids, above). Here's a shot from the ground level concourse of the modern part of the station showing Joseph on the balcony level, with some of the old structure behind him):

After not quite an hour in Antwerp, we boarded another train going through Rotterdam. And then, in Rotterdam -- and this is where we really went wrong probably -- ended up on some local train stopping at almost every station between Rotterdam and Haarlem. The theory was that this would be faster than staying on the Intercity train to Amsterdam and backtracking on a slow train to Haarlem. The problem with the theory was that the slow train was indeed, very slow. (Lest anyone accuse us of uncritically celebrating European infrastructure, let it be noted that the Rotterdam train station was a pit, comparable to New York's Penn Station at its 1980's worst.)

We arrived in Haarlem sometime around 6:30. Our two and a half hour journey turned into about five hours. Oh, well. We still managed to find our hotel (one-room with a tiny kitchenette) and a food store and we explored our sleepy little town. We are very close to the central square and the big church in the center of town. The church bells chimed at 7:00 this morning. Time to get up and get ready for a big day of exploring!

From what we can tell, this may be our first day in a long time that will feature some amount of rain. We have been remarkably fortunate in the weather department, so we really can't complain.

Our plan is to head to Amsterdam and try to explore a museum or two. Either today or tomorrow, we will visit the Anne Frank House.

Not sure when we will post more photos. We will try in the next couple of days.

Hope all is well.

Cheers,
Susan