Zaandam: A Fairytale Town Near Amsterdam

After our Christmassy time in Bruges, Claudio and I took the train to Ghent, then to Antwerp, and finally all the way to Amsterdam. It was the first time either of us had visited the Netherlands, and I was very excited to at last be in this country, which is so close to England, but which I'd never been to before!

Arriving at Amsterdam Centraal, and then coming out of the grand station entrance to views of canals and traditional Dutch houses was a very special experience... but I'll get to that in my next post! 

After finding some food near the station, we managed to navigate the public transport system and find our way over to Amsterdam Sloterdijk station in the west of the city, where our hotel was. We unpacked and got settled into our room, and then had to decide what to do with our first evening in the city. As we were going to go back into the centre the following morning, I thought it would be a good idea to go somewhere outside of the city. 

Then a thought came into my head: I remembered once seeing a picture of an extraordinary building near Amsterdam (I think I probably first saw it in Jack's Flight Club: The Detour a few years ago, and I kept it in mind for whenever I would finally visit the Netherlands). The building was massive and appeared to be made up of lots of traditional Dutch houses stuck together. A quick Google told me that it was a hotel called Inntel Hotels Amsterdam Zaandam, and that it was located in Zaandam, a small city to the north west of Amsterdam. I then discovered that Zaandam was just a short train ride away from Sloterdijk station!

So a short while later, we arrived at the weird and wonderful hotel.

It was so cool to see it in real life!

What I didn't know before going, was that the rest of Zaandam is also built in a kind of fairytale style and is incredibly pretty. 

We had a very nice evening strolling along the picturesque high street, with its canal and various Christmas lights. It was the perfect start to our stay in the Netherlands!

A Christmassy Trip to Bruges

My first proper solo trip all the way back in August 2015 was to the beautiful city of Bruges (or Brugge) in Belgium! Although I'd been abroad alone twice previously for language trips, where I'd stayed with host families and studied at language schools, this was the first time I'd travelled solo purely for fun. I was a little bit nervous beforehand, but everything went to plan, and I had a fantastic few days walking all over the city, cruising round the canals by boat, exploring the various museums and shops, and of course, eating chips, waffles and chocolate!

I was really enchanted by the little city, which looked like something out of the pages of a fairytale storybook, and I always hoped to return one day. And since getting together with Claudio, who had never been to Europe when I first met him, I'd always wanted to show him Bruges, as to me, it's really such a quintessentially European place.

So after our wonderful few days in Paris, we took the TGV to Lille, followed by trains to Kortrijk and then Bruges, arriving in around three hours, without having to show our passports once (I love train travel on the continent!).

It was already dark and quite rainy when we arrived, so we weren't sure about going in to the city centre that evening. But after settling into our hotel and eating some (surprisingly good!) pasta at the train station, it had stopped raining, and we could hear some kind of event going on in a big square nearby, so we decided to go and investigate.

It turned out to be an outdoor Christmas party that was being broadcast on TV! We ended up staying there for a little bit to listen to the music.

We then went for a bit of a wander and eventually found ourselves in the city centre after all! The traditional buildings were all lit up with Christmas lights, and there was a Christmas market in Grote Markt, the city's main square. It really felt like the most Christmassy place I'd ever been to!

The next morning, we walked into the city via a different route, passing by the Poertoren (Gunpowder Tower) and Minnewater Park. I remember really liking this part of this city on my previous visit, as it's so peaceful and picturesque.

Of course, being in Belgium, we had to have waffles for our breakfast!

Our first bit of sightseeing of the day was at the Béguinage, or Begijnhof, a circle of traditional white houses that make up a little community where religious women live. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful places to see in Bruges.

We spent the rest of the morning wandering through the picture perfect streets of the city.

As Belgium is one of the world's chocolate capitals, it seemed only right to take the opportunity to pick up some Christmas presents from one of the many little chocolate shops in the streets of Bruges. As there are so many chocolate shops, it was hard to choose which one to go to! So we turned to Rick Steves' Europe (a travel programme we used to watch a lot on YouTube, back when we had our apartment in Santiago) in order to decide. As Rick Steves went to Dumon Chocolatier in his episode about Bruges, we decided to go there too. It turned out to be a good choice, as the Christmas presents ended up being well received!

After our shopping, we went over to Rozenhoedkaai (Rosary Quay), which is where you find arguably the most picturesque views in the entire city.

We also visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood, an unusual-looking church where you can see a tube that supposedly has the blood of Jesus Christ inside it.

By this point in the day, it was definitely time for some lunch, so we bought some chips and mayonnaise (another Belgian classic!) from a van in Grote Markt.

Afterwards, we decided to go on a boat trip along the canals, which is one of the nicest ways to see the city. Because there were quite a lot of people on the boat, it wasn't ideal for taking pictures, so we mostly just sat back and enjoyed the views.

After the boat tour, we went to a balcony that Claudio had noticed near Rozenhoedkaai. This is another beautiful viewpoint over the city's canals.

By now, we were very cold and it was starting to get dark. So we decided to go to a bar for some Belgian beer! Claudio chose a chocolate-flavoured one and I chose a cherry-flavoured one! I don't normally like beer that much, but these ones were very tasty, and it was nice to be inside the cosy bar.

We chose to end the day by visiting the Historium, Bruges's history museum. This isn't a normal history museum - it's a fully immersive experience, where you enter into a story about medieval Bruges, and learn about the city's history in the process. It's very fun and educational at the same time.

To make it even better, once you've gone round the museum, you can go out on a balcony overlooking Grote Markt. The views are absolutely amazing!

It was the perfect end to a lovely 24 hours in Bruges!

Although for Claudio, Bruges was never going to wow him in the way that Paris did, he still enjoyed our time in the city. What I liked about it was that it was a bit more of a relaxed time than our time in Paris (and later, Amsterdam), because we could just walk everywhere, and we didn't have to book anything in advance. It was nice to be spontaneous and just enjoy all of the city's sights, as well as its food and drink.

But the next morning, it was already time for us to move onto our next country! We had an exciting couple of days in the Netherlands coming up...

Château de Vincennes

On our last morning in France, we travelled just outside of Paris, in order to visit Château de Vincennes. This was a place that neither Claudio or I had heard of before we even arrived in France - in fact we only found out about it because the last station on Line 1 of the Paris Métro is called Château de Vincennes, and we googled it to see if there actually was a château there. We were really impressed by the pictures we saw on the internet, and so we decided it would be a nice idea to go there, especially as it's just three stops away from Porte de Vincennes, the métro station near the hotel where we were staying. 

For some reason, the château is really off the tourist radar, compared to Château de Versailles, and there were just a handful of other visitors there. But the place is really amazing, with big towers, a moat, a beautiful church, and a classically French palace.

It took us a while to actually find the visitors' entrance, but eventually we managed to get our tickets, which gave us access to both the church and the main tower (le donjon).

The interior of the church was really beautiful.

Inside le donjon, we looked around various rooms and learnt about the history of the château as a royal residence and prison. (Of course, as with most historical places and museums, it's hard to retain much of the information afterwards!)

We also went up on the roof, where we had great views over the rest of the château and the town of Vincennes.

One of the most fun things about our morning in Vincennes was that there was a big film/TV shoot going on at the château, and we could see horses and carriages and lots of actors in Victorian clothing! It would be interesting to know what they were filming!

To sum up, our morning at the château was a really nice way to round off an incredible few days in France. I hope it won't be too long before we're back in the hexagon again, whether that's for another holiday or to actually live there (which is something I'm feeling quite open to!).

After collecting our bags from the hotel, it was time for us to head to Gare du Nord and set off towards the second country of our trip. We were about to spend a very Christmassy couple of days in Bruges, which I'll be writing about next!