Holland travel NOTES (north to south)
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CLICKABLE MAP - http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/nl(.html
Amsterdam, Netherlands Hotel Information, Rate Comparison- Direct Prices, Discounters,
Consolidators (AMS-all) - http://www.accomodate.org/NL/AMS_d.html
MAY-JUNE: SCHEVENINGEN sand sculpture (do GOOGLE search)
http://www.postwarmedia.nl/howams_pg/signsandsounds.html
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NORTH OF AMSTERDAM:
* Giethoorn - beautiful valley on canal ("the Dutch Venice") - on east
side of Holland.
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AMSTERDAM:
http://www.accomodate.org/NL/AMS_d.html - search "nouveau" - many
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[Wired October 1995] Deductible Junkets
- Water taxi (about US$40 an hour): Disembark at Café Sas, which looks
like a transplanted Jamaican shanty-bar on Marnixstraat. Designed by a deranged
Dutch artist, the café boasts a canalside terrace, eclectic music, and
cheap food. Brewhounds should order a witbier (white beer) such as Hoegaarden
or Dentergems, with a slice of lemon. In addition to the standard café
fare, De Balie offers public access to De Digitale Stad, an Internet site founded
by the city as an experiment in electronic community.
- Brown cafés: Global Chillage or High Times.
- Remodeled canal house that serves as home to the Netherlands Design Institute,
organizers of the ultrahip Doors of Perception conference. Check out their current
exhibit.
- Supper Club, where roller-skating waitresses deliver an imaginative menu as
you recline, bacchanal-style, on pillows.
- For a late bite, try Cantina West in the Westergasfabriek, an old gas factory
that's now an arts center (ask if credit cards are accepted before you order).
- Catch hot British or American bands at the famous Paradiso, a converted church
complete with spinning cross at the top.
- Swing by De Nieuwe Silo, an old grain silo west of the Centraal Station, the
site of a Thursday-night roller disco and other weekly parties.
In the '60s, the city purchased thousands of white bicycles as public transportation
for Jan Citizen. Alas, the spirit of Detroit prevailed - the bikes were quickly
stolen, painted, and sold. Some Wired advice for any like-minded future politicians:
Try Pantone 804. It's not as easy to cover up. Jessie Scanlon
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Vondel Street Constantijn Huygensstraat - Feb. 29, 1980 & April 30.
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Amsterdam evening:
- spirits: De Drie Fleschjes - Graventstraat 18
- juniper-scented or black currant gin: bruinekroeg (brown cafe) - Hoppe (Spui
20) / white cafe: Luxembourg (Spui 22)
10:00 on -
Melkweg - Lijnbaansgracht 234
Paradiso - Weteringschano 6
12:00 on - discos:
Escape - Rembrandtsplein 10
Odeon - Singel 460 (yup)
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Sloten - village "built for elves" (part of Amsterdam - 6 km west of
city center)
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SOUTH OF AMSTERDAM:
Frans Roozen nursery - Vogelenzangseweg 49 - daily 8-6 April & May. (west
from Amsterdam to Haarlem, then south OR after Lisse take A44 west, then N208
north, after Hillegom turn west on N206.)
Keukenhof - bulb garden - just west of Lisse, southwest of Amsterdam - Take A4
south 7 miles. (April 1 - May 23 daily 8-6:30) - 70 acres, 6 million bulbs. Less
crowded early on weekdays.
Floriade - keep going south another 16 miles, then east on A12.
SCHEVENINGEN: International Sand Sculpture Festival - mid-May to early June -
seaside of The Hague, south down the coast from Amsterdam on the A4 / E22, then
west on A12 / E30.
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DID: Nationale Park de Hoge Veluwe - Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller (red
deer rutting season: Sept to Oct)
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ROTTERDAM:
Shipping containers are fast becoming the bricks of 21st-century architecture.
Innovative builders in the US and the developing world first turned these vessels
of the global economy into houses and schools. Now the Dutch firm MVRDV wants
to turn 3,192 of them into City Container, a temporary structure in Rotterdam
Harbor. The walls (stacked 15 high), floors, ceilings, beams, and elevator cars
would be made of steel boxes. The complex would house galleries, hotels, restaurants,
and performance spaces for the planned Biennial of Architecture in the Netherlands,
which is in the works for 2003. [WIRED August 2002]
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http://www.archnet.org/calendar/item.tcl?calendar_id=15784
1st International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam
May 7, 2003 through July 7, 2003
Conference
Rotterdam will host the first International Architecture Biennial from May 7 -
July 7, 2003. This large-scale event will be held every two years in the Dutch
port city of Rotterdam, itself recognized worldwide as an architectural trendsetter.
The first architecture biennial focuses entirely on the theme of ?mobility?, examining
the issue of modern-day mobility and the consequences for architecture and urban
development. Architects, civil engineers, urban planners, traffic experts, landscape
architects, students, filmmakers and photographers from around the world will
spend two months presenting plans and exchanging ideas in the form of exhibitions,
lectures, publications, debates, films and excursions. The curator is Francine
Houben, partner in the Mecanoo architecture firm and professor at the Delft University
of Technology.
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Southwest coast: Zeeland
Across canal between the Schelde and Rhone from Flanders, Belgium.
Redbrick roads. Zeeland is where the Rhine, the Schelde, and the Meuse fray their
passage toward the North Sea, forming islands and estuaries.
"the fairest part of Holland," a region of "old, lost worlds and
low horizons."
Goes, Veere, Zierikzee: pocket-size ports with side-paddle boats moored tightly
together. Style invented in 1700s. Some go out for shrimp, mussels, and fish.
Veere is now an elegant center of pleasure-boating, cut off from the open sea,
on the man-made Veerse Meer.
Veere is lovelier than Delft. Cobbled streets with medieval and Renaissance ladder-roofed
houses file off the long port that ends at the former arsenal, where bulwarks
face the Meer. Then there is a long grassy dike, the Torenwal (Tower Quay), where
people stroll. The old tower, the Campveerse Toren, at the point of the harbor,
is now fully restored, including, inside it, the oldest inn in Holland.
1421 - 10,000 died when villages were destroyed by a storm that inundated the
Delta.
1953 - storm at high tide burst the dikes and killed 2,000.
Zierikzee - on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland - long mall that ends in a little
port guarded by a fourteenth-century tower. Lots of antiques dealers, selling
garnet, coral, and gold jewelry that embellished the black costumes of Zeeland
commonly worn until the 1950s. The port of Goes seemed more crassly commercial.
You could miss seeing the teeny town if you didn't turn right into a narrow lane
at the Tel Aviv Schoarma restaurant - you would have missed another scene worthy
of a great painter.
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