Stockholm. June 8, 1996

We get up on the late side after an on and off sleeping night. We eat breakfast at the hotel, the SAS Radisson Royal Viking.

Today we are sightseeing in the old town.

Mary sightseeing by the harbor in Stockholm
John beneath the Swedish flag

It is very crowded. I buy a magnet, a Tshirt for Jon, a book for Sarah, and a Viking for the windowsill.

A crowded, narrow lane in Gamla Stan (old town)

We head over to the Royal Palace and see the changing of the guard. It is all very stately until the military band breaks into “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Kind of weird. We look in some glass shops but don’t find anything we want. We head back to the hotel around 3 PM. Nap time!

Mary waiting for the changing of the guard
John by a statue in the palace grounds
Changing of the guard in Stockholm (Stock photo)

Later we eat dinner in a restaurant in the cellar of the town hall called Stadshuskällaren. It is where they hold the Nobel ceremonies. I order a salmon roulade as a starter and follow that with veal. At last there are some vegetables!  John has veal pate and a entree of monkfish.

Interior of the Stadshuskällaren,

It is all good. We walk back to the hotel in the dimming light around 11 PM.

HP conference Sweden, Finland. June 6-13, 1996

June 6-7, 1996

The flight seemed very long on AA via Chicago. We do not sleep much. We arrive in Stockholm on Friday, June 7, 1996 at 9 AM. The airport seems to be out in a forest somewhere. We take a hotel shuttle downtown to Stockholm. It is very pastoral on the way in.

John finds that he has a meeting and must leave for it by 10:45 after we have only just checked in at 10AM. He takes a shower and is on his way. I, on the other hand, sleep off and on until he gets back around 3PM. Then we both nap until 6PM, shower, and walk to the old city.

Stockholm is a beautiful, clean city with shops, restaurants, and waterways. There are old buildings with picturesque tops. We walk around the old city and decide to have dinner at the restaurant, Stortorgskallaren. It is in an old wine cellar and is a very intimate setting with European (glacial) service. We have wine and kind of a carpaccio of reindeer with mousse, lettuce and lingonberries. The deer is a little gamey but good. The next course is salmon with horseradish butter and we finish up with brandy. It is all good.

Inside Restaurant Stortorgskallaren

We walk around for a while after dinner and then back to the hotel. Even at 11PM it is still light out.

Amsterdam and the rest of the trip 4/18/1996

As often happens when I am writing these travels blogs, towards the end I give up. I know the next day we go see the Anne Frank House which is emotionally wrenching.

Anne Frank’s room

On our way back to Frankfurt airport we stop in Koln and visit the cathedral.

Mary and Sarah in front of Koln Cathedral
Koln Cathedral

 

Amsterdam. 4/17/1996

Today John leaves to deal with some problem in Manchester, England.  Sarah and I decide to skip the tour  (probably a good idea given yesterday) and sleep in instead. We have a very expensive breakfast (66f) at the hotel.

After breakfast we go to the Hard Rock Cafe and get t-shirts for Jon and Sarah. Then we are off to the Rijksmuseum. We rent the audio guide and spend 3-4 hours there. It is very enjoyable. I like “Woman at her Toilette” which I find out is actually a painting of a prostitute. There is a symbolic bed, candle and dog that clue you in to the meaning of the painting. Other favorites are Allegory of Winter and Old woman in Prayer.

Woman at her toilette, Jan Steen
Old Woman at Prayer, Nicholas Maes

We go to McDonald’s for a late lunch and get back to the hotel around 4:30PM. John gets back around 6 PM. We have a drink and then dinner in the hotel.

Amsterdam. 4/16/1996

Today our guests’ tour takes us to see the Vermeer exhibition at the Mauritshuis. It is very crowded but absolutely wonderful. I am sad that John will not be able to enjoy this. We get headphones for explanations. I like every painting. Vermeer has always been a favorite of mine. We buy postcards, a hard bound book, a keychain and a t-shirt with a picture of the The Young Woman with a Pearl Earring (for Sarah.) Next there is a walking tour of The Hague, followed by a terrible Dutch lunch.

This is the title page from the book we bought at the exhibition. There were over 30 of Vermeer’s paintings. It was truly wonderful.

Sarah and I argue about what to do next. She doesn’t want the lunch, her feet hurt, and Mary Spicer and others are leaving the tour for shopping.  I know what a voracious shopper Mary Spicer is and I am afraid Sarah will be very unhappy going with that group.  Perhaps we should just exit the tour and go back to the hotel but I hate to miss something that might be interesting.

So we yell at each other and are grumpy the rest of the afternoon. We see a short tour of the Delft factory (another buying opportunity) and havwe a walking tour of Delft. Then we sit in traffic for 2 hours getting back to Amsterdam. This does not improve either of our moods.

Delft Blue Pottery Factory

Tonight is the social evening. I have been to several of these before and they are often fairly tasteless. But tonight is not as lewd as usual. There are arcades and bumper cars, ice skating, and all sorts of food. There are lots of people and noise. We stay until 10:30PM. Sarah comments that it would have been more fun with people her own age.

The tour of Amsterdam for guests. 4/15/96

We get up early and take the tram to the RAI. John goes off to work and we join the guests tour. We see Mary Spicer and also Grete Dietzl whom I met in Maastricht. First we visit a diamond factory and see how they are cut, polished, and rated. They encourage us to buy something. We do not.

Next there is a boat ride through the canals of Amsterdam. We have a typical Dutch lunch on board. This consists of a cup of soup and rolls stuffed with very little meat. Sarah has cheese and tries a croquette that she does not like. We are served coffee and tea. The charge extra for water.

Canal ride in Amsterdam

This is followed by a two hour walking tour which is exhausting. This is followed up by a trip to the Rijksmuseum. People are upset that this was left to the very end and we only have an hour. There are good explanations of some paintings. Sarah and I enjoy the genre paintings and she likes the mythology ones.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Dutch genre painting, Jan Steen’s The Merry Family

We are left in the city center. I help Mary Spicer, George, and an Italian lady get trams back to the RAI. WE go back to our hotel. We have dinner at an Italian place nearby. The waiter is charming and the food is good. He gives Sarah the whole selection of desserts.

Kuekenhof Gardens and on to Amersterdam. 4/14/96

We have breakfast at the hotel. Luckily it is included because a tour group was there first and ate everything. We set off for the Keukenhof Gardens. The weather is clear.

The flowers are way behind schedule, though, and almost the only things blooming are crocus. The indoor exhibits of the chrysanthemums, iris, and freesia are lovely but outside is disappointing. We do get to see some very randy peacocks, though.

The only picture I can find of the garden is this one of the peacocks who were drawing quite a crowd

We leave in the early afternoon for Amersterdam. We find our hotel with no problem (unusual)and go to the convention center so John can register.  He makes a fuss that there are no tram passes for Sarah and I and gets them for us. We go to the Okura—John for a meeting and Sarah and I to see Mary Spicer. She is not in but we have an expensive lunch there.

In the evening there is the reception. Sarah and I get bags for goodies but there is not available. Sarah shows her juggling skills and wins some beanbag juggling things.

Brugge and Zoetermeer. 4/13/96

We have breakfast at the hotel and head for Bruges, Belgium.  t is cold and winday again. Bruges is a very cute and well preserved city. We look around the Markt and decide we will take a tour. We have coffee and pie until tour time.

Market Square, Bruges

The tour is an hour with headphones and commentary in English. Bruges is a town built on commerce and has the first stock exchange and coined the work, bank. There are many beautiful houses and canals. We go to see the Michelangelo statue afterwards but the church is closed for lunch.

Michelangelo Madonna and Child in Bruges. Only statue outside of Italy

Getting back in the car we take the shore road along the North Sea to The Hague and take a ferry and a stop at McDonald’s. Sarah is homesick for familiar food. We go along the dikes and massive flood gates. There are wide beaches beyond the dikes.

Flood gates in Netherlands

We get Zoetermeer and have a very difficult time finding the hotel. Anita has booked us into a Golden Tulip in the middle of an industrial park. It is like a weird ghost town. We have a triangular shaped room with a king sized be and an awful rollaway for Sarah. She says she will be okay on it. We have a small Pizza and drinks in the bar and then we are off to sleep.

Brussels. 4/12/96

John goes to work. Sarah and I have breakfast in the hotel. The room itself is beautiful with a very ornate ceiling. Sarah discovers that the eggs are soft boiled which is quite a surprise when you crack them like you expect them to be hard boiled.

It is very cold and windy. We go to Grand Place. We cannot find the Mannequin Piss. A museum that we want to visit appears closed. We walk around the square and buy a Godiva Chocolate bar and a magnet. We look in the shops and go to the Saint Michel cathedral.

We were never able to find this 400 year old statue/fountain

It is lunch time and we decide on an Italian place in one of the little alleyways with food displays. It is not French food but at least we are not eating at McDonald’s.

Rue des Bouchers – Amazing Street of the Butchers in Brussels

After lunch we walk back to the hotel and put on warmer clothes. Then we walk to the art museum which seems like a long way uphill. There are many Flemish religious paintings and also quite a few Reubens. We are pretty tired out and decide to go back to the hotel through the Grand Place. I buy a purse, a key chain for Sarah and also a miniature oboe.

Fine Arts Museum of elgium

John comes back and we go down to the bar while Sarah showers. When we come back at 7:15 she is asleep. We decide skip supper and sleep. We all sleep for nearly 12 hours!

Reims, France and Brussels, Belgium. 4/11/96

We decide not to eat at the Metz Mercure and leave to go To Reims. We stop at a roadside place and have croissants and a hot drink. It is pretty good for highway food.The countryside is rolling and treeless. I imagine it was once forested but all has been sacrificed for agriculture.

We arrive at Reims and visit the cathedral. There are beautiful windows but the cathedral is wider and less soaring than the one in Metz. There are beautiful rose windows—2 on the front facade. The outside stonework is eaten away by acid rain. It is amazing how much devastation has been wreaked. There are 3 Chagall windows behind the altar and other modern ones mixed with the older ones.

Sarah inside a cathedral (not sure which one)

We have lunch at McDonald’s. It is very crowded with people and dogs, too. Then we are off to Brussels. I, of course, miss the turn we want and we take the highway the whole way. It is probably for the best as it is now raining off and on.

We have a hard time finding the Hotel Metropole. It is a grand old hostel in a Times Square-like location. Anita’s choice is not too bad although far from John’s work. The room is very large. We eat at a nearby Pizza Hut. John seems a little better but now is coughing. He keeps saying he is fine.

Hotel Metropole (while looking for a picture I discovered that the hotel has recently closed and will probably not reopen 5/22/20)