lost4good

This is the continuation of our trip Adelaide – Doha – Netherlands – Middle East cruise – Saudi Arabia – Thailand. It is not finished but as we are leaving today for Athens to take a week cruise through the Suez Canal then to Saudi Arabia for a week and several cities there then two weeks on an island in Thailand for Christmas then Bangkok for a week for New Years and before and finally winding toward home early January when I will be able to upload additions to this and finish off our Netherlands trip before leaving for the UK for a month at the end of February and the States for March and not sure after that. Of course, we will have a cruise blog and a Saudi Arabia blog and finally lots to say about our adventures in Thailand for a month by then.

We are doing this one differently. We are using Narda’s notebook as the basic template of our Dutch journey…because she is our Dutch girl, having been born in Utrecht and migrating to Australia age four. She is our Dutch speaker/interpreter. I will scribble notes in between her twenty-three pages..

This house exchange is number 26 – I have lost track a bit. We have this wonderful place for six-weeks. The two-story flat is across from the largest park in the area, Juliana Park.A wonderful walk to the shops as this is the time of the year of changing leaves. More on that later.  Because I knew you would ask…tell me more about Juliana Park I have copied the following info. With links included to find local areaas.

The 9.5-hectare park is bordered by the neighborhoods 
of Elinkwijk , 
Egelantierstraat, Mariëndaalstraat and surrounding areas , the 
Utrecht-Amsterdam railway line , and 
Amsterdamsestraatweg . The park is known for its animal meadow, home to rare animals such as (white) deer, alpacas, and rare ducks.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julianapark_(Utrecht)

Adding, this was after midnight. Dark, no one around, two elderly people (that’s us) with luggage walking alongside a dark park – lost.

Quess what? We survived thanks to a 20 something on his bike looking at his GPS and who hotspotted us to his phone and walked us to our flat as Narda explained above.

The next day we started to explore our park across from the street. And lucky for me I got to test my drone. I asked Narda’s cousin who is my drone mentor (remember in a previous blog he showed us in our visit to Muiden, Netherlands in April 2023 see https://neuage.me/2023/04/02/uk-nl/ – scroll down to Muiden) about a license and of course one needs one in the Netherlands to be a ‘pilot’ but we believe mine is too small. I looked up the webpage for this type of caper and I got confused with all the Dutch rules and realized I was unable to read the Dutch so gave up and flew my drone. see my clip below. https://youtu.be/5xXMItmYKp4?si=bwlq01p8bPaQmKwz

One day as we rode our bike home, a few blocks from home; we were lost at the time as we usually are, we came across the street Narda was born on.

We like second hand shops, they are called Kringloops – and they are quite frequent. There are two near us. Narda’s winter coat from Australia didn’t survive our years of winters worldwide so she bought a new one which you will see throughout this story. Six euros. I bought some great headphones so I could play my foldup piano that I talked about in the last post – Doha – without Narda hearing me struggle to what I learned seventy years ago. They were a euro. I lost my ear pods in Doha – but as I told the story of losing other things there and what we went through to gather them back into our life I didn’t pursue trying to get the airlines and the airport and the hotel and anyone who would listen to help me search for my EarPods. https://neuage.me/2025/10/20/doha/

I also get empty antique looking tins – these are for coffee.

Noontime concert Utrecht. At today’s free lunchtime concert in Utrecht on 24 October 2025, the performers were students from the Royal Conservatoire The Hague (Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag). They presented a classical program as part of the regular Gratis Lunchconcerten series at TivoliVredenburg. Here is our YouTube clip of it. To save bandwidth (and cost for more webspace the link is below. https://youtu.be/RausqHYlaoE?si=_I3FTAtw885qfLAA

We went to m u s e u m s p e e l k l o k Utrecht where machines make music. From the largest turning organs to the smallest music boxes. Mau likes museums and whenver she is with us we end up at a museum. She goes to lots and we go to one or at most two. This museum was really good. https://youtu.be/DyUL4CIHEx0?si=UWKFFIGe_OaVjI9I

We took a bus to the sawmill De Stir is an industrial monument and a quintessentially Dutch symbol, located at the bank of the Leidsche Rijn. The millers keep the mill alive every Saturday! When there is enough wind, the mill turns and planks are sawn from thick trees. And we got to spend a wonderful Saturday there. Quite the place. see our clip

Some of our first few days of wandering about in Utrecht.

I like Utrecht. Amsterdam is too large. We needed to get our train legs on and the closest train trip of lots of fun is Amsterdam. Only about half an hour away. 23 euros (about $40 Australia/$25USD) each way so we won’t do this too often. We bought a day pass, 9euros, and took lots of trams around town. We went to Burger King, something we never do in Australia, because they have vegetarian burgers, which I like and Narda looks over and beyond for something meatier. We took a ferry, walked heaps then went home. Here is our video from the day – two – minutes..https://youtu.be/3aC8_EA_YfA?si=lluxqbuRXxZW4HqC

We went for a bike ride to the next village over, Maarseen, and I tested my drone and it tried to get away from me. see https://youtu.be/iTCil9igvNk?si=gEDLsUrCjDenJjvh

As one often does when back to Utrecht we visited the Dom. We even went to a free concert there.

We did our first car trip taking country roads. Narda is doing the driving as she got an international license and I like to take photos and video as we drive, and insurance is getting too much for me to drive as I close into 80 years old in two years. It was the first stick shift that Narda has driven in decades so that was one challenge. Another challenge is driving in the Netherlands. Bike everywhere, they rule and seldom look when going across roads. A couple of times we discovered we were on the wrong side of the road. Once we were on a three-lane road when we saw three lanes of cars coming at us and quickly went over on to the bike lane to the alarm of bike people and did some strange manoeuvre to get back into the correct spot. That has happened twice on this trip. Anyway, we had a great drive, stopping at a classic old hotel for coffee and apple pie with cream.

We ended in the village of Huizen where I got to pilot my drone some and we had a great lunch met some refuges that lived on the ships in port. Although the oldest mention of Huizen dates from 1382, there may have been a settlement there as early as the tenth century.

The refugees are part of the national asylum system, and as such come from diverse countries of origin. The most prevalent nationalities among asylum seekers in the Netherlands in 2024 and 2025 are from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Eritrea. Ukrainians are in a different area.

Zuylen Castle has existed since the thirteenth century! See when we visited here in 2018 and when we staying then on Tugboat Anna https://neuage.me/2018/12/08/utrecht/

Zuylen Castle was built along the Vecht River around 1250. The foundation stone of the square residential tower, with walls over 2.5 meters thick, was laid by Steven van Zuylen. The castle owes its name to its builder, a member of the Van Zuylen family. It held a strategic position along the Vecht River and was surrounded by fertile soil deposited by the Vecht over the centuries, making its location very favorable.

https://slotzuylen.nl/

A couple of days in Maastricht Netherlands. We came here to catch up with Ian and Kees. Our only other road trip on this six week stay. I like road trips, Narda likes trains and buses. Narda’s cousin said yesterday that we should take the train, it is much easier. Oh boy! I got my way. Of course, we got stuck in traffic for hours, my bad, but fun was had by all and I got heaps of photos and gave my drone a shot. We have caught with Ian and Kees in seven cities and five countries. For example, they had breakfast with us when we were working in NYC in about 2008. We visited their home in Spain last year and caught up with them in Valencia too. We have seen them a few times in the Netherlands over the years in various places. We had breakfast with them just a month ago in Adelaide and of course we were at their wedding in Belgium (three day party in a castle), I think about 2008, we were living in NYC at the time and came over for that. Bottom line, we had breakfast with them and they later took us to the amazing cathedral bookstore.

We got severely stuck in traffic…hours, finally took a country road which too was backed up.

• Ian & Kees took us to a bookstore in the Dominican Church. Two hundred years ago, the church lost its sacred function, and it has served as a snake house, bicycle shed and carnival temple for many years since. The church was built by the Dominican order between 1265 and 1294 and is considered the first Gothic church in the Low Countries.
• Decline and repurposing: Following the French army’s capture of Maastricht in 1794, the church’s sacred functions ceased. It was used for various secular purposes, including storage, a concert hall, and a bike storage facility, before its transformation into a bookstore.
• Modern use: In 2006, the church was renovated by architects Merkx + Girod and became a bookstore, featuring a towering steel book stack and a cafe.
• Architectural features: The church retains its historic Gothic architecture, including high ceilings, ribbed vaults, and stained-glass windows, with the modern bookstore design carefully integrated to allow visitors to see the original frescoes on the walls and ceilings. 

The 13th-century Dominican Church in Maastricht, the first Gothic church in the Low Countries.

We stayed at the Fitzroy Hotel. A good boutique hotel, a bit pricey but hey one must sleep somewhere.  https://fitz-roy.nl/en/  Narda has even a longer history with Ian as she worked with him decades ago in Adelaide. He was her boss in the music department at the school they taught at.

We stopped in Heusden, a couple of hours after wherever. Taking country roads we were sent scurrying across the Rhine a couple of times or it could have been a couple of rivers – water pretty much looks the same no matter where it is. The ferry was a few euros – unlike the free ones over the Murray in Australia but it was good – in other words the boat didn’t sink or anything unusual. Heusden is a great place, however, as Narda points out there was lots of construction and we got stuck on very narrow streets with a car too big for the streets but thankfully Narda got us through, even when some grumpy driver told her to reverse instead of squeezing forward but Narda doesn’t take being told what to do (I know). Finally, huffing and puffing we got to the hotel, told them we were parked very illegally, and where should be deposit our automobile?  Anywhere we could find to park that was legal pretty much was the reply, an hour+ later we found someplace several blocks from our hotel. After a grumpy start to the evening we found the town quite beautiful. Several restaurants looked quite inviting but the one we chose was a pancake place where everything was a pancake. Called De Pannekoekenbakker, they had a pancake with everything imaginable. I got something vegetarian and Narda got the roadkill supreme. See https://www.pannekoekenbakker.nl/menukaart for a list of their savory and their sweet pancakes. Both of us enjoyed our pancakes and went around the town in the rain and had a groovy time if such a time is imaginable of two elderly people in the rain in the dark and often lost.

The next day we were able to move our car closer to the hotel, walk around in the rain, I got to use my drone and we had a wonderful breakfast served by a very camp Muslim from Bangladesh.

After Heusden we stopped in to visit Fred and Chantel. We have done a couple house exchanges with them one for three-months and one for a couple of months. See https://neuage.me/2022/05/15/holland2022/ & https://neuage.me/2020/04/10/rotterdam2020/

We had to take one ICE fast train whilst in Europe and decided to give Cologne a shot. We have never been there, though we had an exchange in Berlin a few years back. https://neuage.me/2019/01/20/berlin/ The big attraction seems to be the Christmas Markets of which there are many. The train trip was the goal though and though we did not reach the 300 kl/h I had hoped we did get into 200 for a while. The ride was a bit over two hours arriving at 11 am. We managed to grab some lunch in the dining car with me eating an alleged vegetarian curry worst and Narda eating the ‘real thing’.

The central station is closed to the ICE due to construction, but we managed to stumble through a few up and down tracksides and finally got on some local train that took us into the centre of Cologne. The most impressive structure in Cologne is the massive cathedral. The Dom. It is the largest Gothic church in northern Europe and was built over a period of 632 years, from 1248 to 1880. We were lucky to hear the massive organ playing for about ten-minutes which is now background music to a few of our YouTube clips.

Outside of the Cologne Cathedral is one of the larger Christmas Markets, Narda got the traditional drink at the Cologne Christmas markets; called Glühwein (a hot wine that contains varying spices, and includes rum) which was a bit strong and warm and tasty according to my source (Narda). As I have not had any alcohol since 2005, I could only observe and wonder.

After a few hours of taking photos and going wow we went off in search of a hotel room. We thought we had booked one weeks ago but realized that we had booked a hotel in Athens which we thought was for this date in Cologne. This is what happens to old people. Muddled stuff. Nevertheless, we went to at least five hotels only to be told they were full due to folks flocking to the Christmas Market. Damn! Finally, someone said try a hostel. We turned up our nose and thought we were too old for such a caper. However, with still no one giving us a room we did go to the suggested hostel. A&O Hostel. It was a very clean place and the person at the desk said it was full. We left thinking perhaps we should go back to Utrecht as we basically just came for the train ride. The front counter dude came out and said wait, there is a room available at another one of their hostels. An actual hotel room. The first four floors are dormitories, and the top floor is a hotel. A&O Koln Neumarkt  https://aohostels.com.

We took the train to Neumarkt as instructed but managed to get hopelessly lost. Our sim card from the Netherlands did not work for Wi-Fi in Germany so standing on a random corner somewhere in Germany Narda saw a delivery person and asked about where the hell was this bloody hostel, though not exactly in those words. The person hot spotted us so we could use GPS to get to the hostel, which turned out to be quite OK. It was 90 euros, half of what the hotels were charging but still very expensive for a hostel. The room was fine; we had our own bathroom and a bit of a view.

We decided to stay another night and explore Cologne.

The next day we bought a day pass for 9 euros that allows 24 hours of travel on buses, trams, trains and subways. We spent the day going random. Ending up at some station in the country we thought we should go back to the city. Two people our age, elderly, said we should walk five minutes and see the Rhine. It took us half an hour to get to the Rhine, though we did find a great little café for coffee and sweets.

The next day we hoped the ICE back to Utrecht.

more from random wanders in Utrecht

What could be better than watching a great free lunchtime concert for an hour with Narda’s cousin, Hans Biemond & his partner? Narda has photos of her and Hans from before she migrated to Australia in 1958 or so. We watched the Codarts Symphony Orchestra doing Beethoven & Brahms stuff @ TivoliVredenburg. Apparently the conductor, Johannes Leertouwer, is quite famous in this neck of the woods and Hans was quite happy to see him. The folks played well featuring Johannes Brahms’ Akademische Festouverture (1881) & Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symfonie nr. 6 Pastorale (1808). Not that I know one from the other I copied this off of their flyer.

The day before our last day here or was it the day before then? It snowed in the morning. Narda had us at 5 am out walking in the snow. It is rare here so early in the winter. We love the snow and miss it. Our biggest snow times were when we lived in Northern China for three years and when we lived in northern New York for four years. I grew up in Saratoga country – way up north in New York and have always lo9ved the snow. We don’t get any in South Australia.

We stopped at this really cool looking pub, one day on our bike ride – ordered coffee – I went inside to use the loo, missed a step, fell forward landing on a knee or two and a couple of elbows, which was OK, just a few more black & blue spots which I am used to accumulating. What wasn’t OK was a waiter came running over to help me as if I were an elderly person who had just missed a step and fell.   Nevertheless, I taped together my bruised ego and went outside and finished my coffee. Not sure why these things happen to me, Narda never falls, I usually do at least once every whenever. Not to worry, I keep going forward. They say most elderly deaths are from falls so I will need to be aware of this when I become elderly. This is what happens when one is on a flight and is bored – just ramble on and on. We are on the flight from Amsterdam to Athens and I am squashed into my seat with nothing to do. Goodbye Netherlands, hello middle east. On to a cruise tomorrow through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea on the way to Saudi Arabia. I haven’t looked at the news lately I am sure everyone is being nice to one another in that area.

My son, Sacha, came over from Melbourne just before we left and gave me my 78^th birthday present. A selfie drone. How much fun. As I child I always wanted to be a pilot. Made heaps of model airplanes, read lots of flight magazines. I was obsessed with flight. Never made it as a plane pilot – the 1960s came along and I went off to San Francisco from New York, did the 60s with lots of flights, at least in my head but that was it for about a decade. Now about sixty years later I finally can fly, sort of. What is great about a selfie drone is that it can follow me. There are other things it can do but I haven’t had anywhere to really try it. One option made it go straight up and at about 20 metres up it won’t couldn’t back down until I managed to shut the whole thing down. I can  control it from my phone except for when it goes straight up so I haven’t been game to try it again. As a selfie drone it follows me until I turn around and put my hand out then it comes to me and lands in my hand.

There are a lot of things it can do and I will let you know probably when I get back to Adelaide. Don’t think I will give it a shot on the cruise as we go through the Suez Canal or in Saudi Arabia. Maybe when we are in Thailand. We are there for Christmas with Narda’s son, Brendan, over from Pakistan and wife and two-year old. A week on an island at a resort then a week in Bangkok for New Years before going home. So lots of stuff ahead of us to talk about and share. Cheers.