Rotterdam (or Anywhere) – Page 10 – Adventures in the Netherlands & around the world

Zomerlicht @ Pampus

17/08/2017 Hanneke

In an article about original places to have dinner in the Netherlands, I read about Zomerlicht (Summer Light): a pop up restaurant / event on the island of Pampus, just outside Amsterdam. I’ve always wanted to visit Pampus (I’m an island girl!) so this sounded like a really fun opportunity. We were told to meet up at 19:00 in the harbour of IJburg, from where partyboat Sailboa would take us to Pampus.

On board, we were all given a big key with a number, this was their way to keep track of drinks for each couple/group. Already on board, you could start your trip with a drink…

There was a nice holiday/adventure atmosphere on board. The crossing to Pampus took half an hour, and luckily it stayed dry. Well, from the sky that is – there were a couple of waves crashing onto the front of the boat 😉 The crossing took half an hour. Here, we are nearing the island…

It had been a rainy day, but the clouds started to clear. I loved the views while coming in to the jetty at Pampus.

When we arrived at the island, we were welcomed by the host of the evening, who took us into the fort, through very colourful corridors. We were served a welcome drink (gin & tonic) in a very pink room. After that, they served delicious sweet potato and coconut soup, and then left us to explore the fort and the island by ourselves.

Pampus is an artificial island, built on a sandbank. This sandbank used to stop ships from coming in to the harbour of Amsterdam until the tide was high enough to pass. There’s a famous Dutch saying “Voor Pampus liggen” or “Laying for Pampus” which means lying down knocked out, which stems from the ships having to wait. They started building the island and the fort in 1887, and although there were 200 soldiers stationed on the island during World War I, it never saw any action. When the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike) cut off the IJsselmeer from the open sea, Pampus lost its strategic position and it was abandoned soon after.

Especially for Zomerlicht, the fort was lit beautifully. It was a lot of fun to walk around the corridors while they kept changing colours, and exploring all the rooms.

Such pretty lighting…

And the colours really changed to all colours of the rainbow…

Outside the fort, but inside the outer walls, was a photo exhibition of all the other forts in the defence line of Amsterdam.

We climbed on the wall surrounding the fort, to get a good overview of the building:

Then we walked around the shore of the island and enjoyed the views in all directions…

Until our stomachs told us to go to the restaurant area. Here they had set up food stands where you could get different dishes – here the mussel spaghetti. Michiel had a very nice selection of different fish. There was bread and dips, and cheese plates to go with it.

This was our view during dinner, I just had to walk outside and take a quick photo of the sunset. A group of volunteers were camping next to this house, they were staying there for a week and were working on renovation of the island.

After finishing our first course, we went for a sunset walk. This almost looks like it was taken from a tropical island instead of a fort island outside Amsterdam 😉

It was a beautiful evening as the sun was setting in the direction of Amsterdam’s skyline…

Peaceful views from the jetty…

A panorama showing the jetty, with on the right the Sailboa and behind it the restaurant where the dinner took place.

When it got dark, we saw all the city lights of Amsterdam on the horizon: a pretty sight!

They lit a couple of campfires and the atmosphere was really nice. There were lots of different places to sit and enjoy your meal. We had another course of meat and potatoes, which was really tasty. The only downside was that the organization was slightly chaotic and at times there were long lines for the food. Luckily the food was worth the wait!

The view from the top of the island – a magical evening! Around 22:00, dessert was served, as well as tea and coffee with really good chocolate.

At 23:00 we all boarded the Sailboa for the journey back to IJburg. What a wonderful night!

Zomerlicht is taking place each Thursday, Friday and Saturday until 02 September, and there are still tickets available for most nights. Much recommended! Tickets costs €57.50 and include the boat transfer, dinner and a welcome drink. Check the website of Zomerlicht (only in Dutch…) for more information and tickets.

If you just want to visit the island of Pampus, it’s open daily except mondays until the end of October. For regular visits, the boat leaves from Muiden, and a return ticket plus entrance to the island costs €17.50. For more information, check their website. If you’d rather leave from Amsterdam, you can do so by using Amsterdam Tourist Ferry which leaves daily at 11, and a return plus entrance to the island costs €20. This is the same company that runs the Sailboa ferry that we took to Zomerlicht.

Venice

29/07/2017 Hanneke

(We visited Venice in late April – I’m only a little behind with my blog…)

After our weekend in Modena, we drove to Venice. We left our car at one of the cheap car parks out of town, and took a bus to the city centre. From there we took a water bus to Giudecca (an island just across from the “main” island in Venice), where we were met by our AirBnB hostess.

On our first afternoon in Venice, it was rainy and windy. It turned out to be a Bora event – katabatic wind, which is what my PhD was about – so quite fun to experience! This was the street that our AirBnB apartment was at, almost next to the women’s prison…

We went for a short walk around Giudecca, but we quickly retired to our apartment as getting soaked wasn’t that much fun…

The next day we took the waterbus for a long time, to the island Murano. The day started really sunny and it was so pretty. Murano is famous for all the glassmakers located there, and this artwork in front of the bell tower represented that.

Murano was a nice place to start in Venice, as it wasn’t so crowded here. We enjoyed walking along the canal and looking at all the small shops selling beautiful glass items.

Such a colourful sight!

We visited one of the glass factories and watched a demonstration. I bought some beautiful turquoise glass earrings – the perfect souvenir! In front of the glass factory we had great views towards Venice over the lagoon…

There was laundry drying everywhere…

We took the boat back to the main island where we continued exploring all the narrow streets and canals.

The buildings in Venice are really old and it shows! I loved these kind of scenes…

Finally we reached Piazza San Marco. It was REALLY crowded around the piazza. That was exactly as everyone had told me before our trip, and what I was most worried about – that Venice is nice but the crowds of tourists will drive you mad.

And yes, there were a lot of people here. But if you went just a couple of streets away from the most famous places (like Piazza San Marco), the crowds are gone and the city is yours to get lost in.

So to conclude, I would still recommend Venice – it’s old, it’s incredibly beautiful and fun. It’s easy to understand why so many tourists flock to the city, but I was glad they don’t venture very far away from the famous sights so you can still find peace and quiet in the city!

The next day was very sunny. This was our view walking towards the waterbus stop on Giudecca – and the yellow boat is actually an ambulance!

We wondered around the many colourful streets and canals again, and enjoyed the sunshine.

Gondola’s in front of Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute…

The classical image of Venice, with tourists in a gondola…

Another famous hotspot in Venice is Rialto bridge. It was really crowded with people and I actually had to wait for “my” turn to take a photo from the railing, haha… But the views from the bridge were worth a little wait.

Lots of boat traffic on the Grand Canal…

I loved the view from the bridge, you could almost imagine being way back in time.. not a car in sight. But of course you’re surrounded by people taking selfies on their smartphone, so this illusion doesn’t last very long 😉

Panorama from the Fish Market. Just steps away from Rialto bridge but here we were nearly alone.

Street scene in Venice.. I loved getting lost in the narrow streets.

We tried to get really lost, but actually you easily find signs pointing to the nearest point of interest.. oh well. Lots of cute little bridges…

Two pigeons in two old windows…

After dinner we went for a sunset walk to get some photos. It’s even more beautiful at that time of day…

We spent some time on The Ponte dell’Accademia watching the last sunset colours disappear…

Venice at twilight is really pretty!

Finally, the blue hour – all the lights are on and the sky is a deep blue colour. Loved this view!

It was fun taking long exposures of the boats passing underneath the bridge.

We spent three nights in Venice and really enjoyed our stay. It was the end of our Italy road trip, after Venice we drove back to the Netherlands (two days of driving).

Denmark

12/07/2017 Hanneke

Apologies for the long silence on this blog! A lot has happened in the mean time: I have left Norway after nearly 10 years, and moved back to the Netherlands after more than 13 years abroad! I’ve moved in with Michiel, in Rotterdam – exciting times!

I’ve taken my car with me, so last week we drove from Oslo to Rotterdam. We didn’t have a lot of time, but we managed to spend 3 wonderful days driving along the west coast of Denmark, which was so much fun! Here are some photos…

We took the ferry from Langesund to Hirtshals, arriving in the evening. We spent that night in Lønstrup, a small village about half an hour south of Hirtshals. It was REALLY windy, impressive to watch the sunset and crashing waves from the beach and dunes at the coast.

We climbed to the top of the dunes, but it was SO windy that I didn’t want to stay there – I thought we might actually be blown off by the wind…

Lucky panorama of the sunset, with a bird silhouetted in front of the sun…

Michiel on the narrow path that followed the dunes. There wasn’t much beach left at the bottom of the dunes, coastal erosion is a big problem here.

The light was so beautiful that evening, I took a lot of photos!

A very happy Hanneke in her element: beach, dunes & wind!

We followed a path to another stretch of the coast…

And watched a beautiful sunset, and big crashing waves!

The next morning we drove a short distance south of Lønstrøp, to a big parking lot from where you can walk to Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse – a really impressive place. This is from the start of the walk…

And here we had reached the 60 m high sand dune – and felt like we were in the Sahara!

Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse was built in 1900, but in more recent times it was threatened by continually shifting sands as well as coastal erosion. There used to be a couple of buildings next to it, which used to serve as a cafe and museum. In 2002, everything had to be abandoned due to the sand swallowing the buildings. The two smaller buildings were eventually removed, and only the lighthouse is still standing. It is expected to fall off the cliff in the next 15 years, but until then, it is a really impressive place to visit and experience the power of nature!

The views in the other direction are really impressive – it feels almost surreal to be on top of this huge sand dune and look out towards Lønstrup and the surrounding countryside!

Couldn’t help myself, I had to take this really cheesy photo…

Later that day, the weather turned cloudy and even rainy, so I didn’t take a lot more photos. We spent the night at Nymindegab, these two photos were taken the next morning right next to our hotel…

Our last stop on the coast was Rømø, a Danish Wadden island that can be reached by a bridge (or a causeway rather). We had some amazing cakes in a coffeeshop / antique shop, and drove around the island. At some point we wanted to go to the beach and looked for a parking place – we didn’t see any though and suddenly we were driving ON the beach! The beach is huge here, and they let cars drive on some parts of it. A bit strange, but quite fun!

I know neither my dear Subaru or me are ‘sexy-model-on-fast-car’ material, but I still like this photo!

After our visit to Rømø we continued into Germany and home to the Netherlands the next day. It was a really busy week, but I was glad we were able to spend some time exploring Denmark’s west coast – we both want to come back at some point!