For our first trip together this year, our MDVP crew decided to visit Amsterdam to admire all the pretty flowers. Coming from Ottawa, Vic and I have grown up accustomed to seeing the Tulip Festival come around the city every May. In 1943, future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was staying in Canada for safety during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. The future Queen became pregnant, so the Canadian government (as an act of good faith) decided to temporarily declare the maternity ward at the Civic Hospital as extraterritorial, thereby allowing Princess Margriet to keep her solely Dutch citizenship. In 1946 as a thank you, Queen Juliana sent 25,000 bulbs and 10,000 bulbs every year afterwards.
Now that we’re done with the history lesson, we can see why tulips have a special significance to Vic and I. Having grown up with the Tulip Festival every year, it was an absolute pleasure to be able to go to the Netherlands and experience the tulip fields first hand. We were able to explore Amsterdam, and then make our way through areas outside of the city for a more in depth look at them!
Biking through Amsterdam
It’s 2019 and it’s the year of my dirty thirty. It’s also the year that I finally learned how to ride a bicycle. I know what you’re thinking, you’ve gone 29 years without knowing how to ride a bike!? Well, yeah… growing up, we didn’t have bikes. Obviously my friends tried to teach me around the neighbourhood, but we were kids, and we would always decide to just walk around to do something because it’d be faster to do that rather than teaching me how to bike. By the time that we had bikes around the house (mid teenage years probably), to be frank, I was too embarrassed to learn how to ride a bike. What about the next 15 years or so? It’s simple, I was just being stubborn about not wanting to learn how to ride a bike.
So once we booked tickets to go to Amsterdam, I knew that I would need to learn since the city’s infrastructure revolves around biking. There are main roads where goes car, a divider, a bike lane, and then a sidewalk. Bikes have their very own lanes to go along the major roads, and along smaller roads, they push to the side like any other city. I tried to learn how to ride a bike before I left Toronto, and I had the basics down. But I was biking on a big empty sidewalk at night, and then I was thrusted into biking on bridges with slopes. The first day and a half was rough, since I wasn’t used to going up hill all the time, and I became super frustrated. Thankfully, I had my Merrell Ascent Valley shoes on to help me get comfortable on the bikes. Since the sole isn’t super thick, and they have leather upper, I didn’t need to worry about the shoes getting damaged since I knew they were built for some wear and tear. I was much more comfortable riding around in the Ascent Valleys compared to the chelsea boots, and they held up in the tulip fields. By the end of the trip, I was biking with one hand waving at the camera!
Visiting Museums
Amsterdam is a city with a vast history and culture. It doesn’t have the same levels of fame as Paris or London, but it was incredibly beautiful to be around. Surrounding ourselves in the culture of the city was amazing, but to take in the history through museums was incredible. It was something that all four of us agreed on, we needed to visit museums to have a real understanding of the city and the culture of the country.
We visited the Modern, Contemporary, and Street Art Museum (MOCO). The museum featured artists such as Banksy, KAWS, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring just to name a few. These artists take many regular views of society that we constantly see, and sometimes take for granted, and they add their own message to it. Many had political messages, sarcastic, and ironic takes on contemporary issues such as consumerism, immigration, and war.
We also spent a day visiting the Voorlinden Museum in Den Haag (The Hague) and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. We arrived at the Rijksmuseum around 1 o’clock in the afternoon and we immediately booked it for the library. We had each seen photos of the magnificent library on Google and Instagram, so it was the obvious answer that we all wanted to visit it first. Little did we know, the actual library is not available for the public to enter.
It’s separated into two floors, where the bottom floor can only been seen through doors. The top floor, you’re able to look at the library from a balcony without crossing a barrier. Needless to say, we spent at least an hour within the library alone, each wanting to capture our own photos. Not wanting to pull my phone out at each instance, I was reliant on my Bulova Classic Watch to get me through the time in the library. We arrived when it was relatively busy and had a few minutes of freedom before a tour bus arrived! I kept a close eye on my watch because I was insistent on going through the rest of the museum (we did pay for it, after all..)
How to stay healthy while traveling
I’m a firm believer in enjoying and indulging when you’re traveling. Unless you’re work requires you to travel every other day, you should treat yourself! You work and you work in order to be able to travel, so enjoy it! When I went to New Orleans, I ate so much jambalaya and fried chicken, I was in heaven. In Amsterdam, I had a lot of Heineken, coffee, and sandwiches (I love sandwiches…). Each day, I tried to start my way the same way. Our AirBnB had roof top access and you better believe I used it!
I know what you’re thinking, “why workout if you’re traveling, didn’t you just say to enjoy yourself?” Yes I did, but I like doing push ups; and if I can do it on a beautiful rooftop, then I’m going to take advantage of my situation! At the end of the night, I take my skin care routine as seriously as I take my fitness routine. I started using the new Estee Lauder Nutritious Micro-Algae line, including Pore Purifying Cleansing Jelly, Pore Purifying Shake Tonic, and Pore Minimizing Hydra Lotion. The use of the combination made my skin feel extra clean and soft, with a hydrating healthy feel!
More Fleurs Please
As I previously mentioned, the main reason we went to Amsterdam was for the fleurs, so many fleurs! The whole point of our trip was to enjoy the tulip fields and that’s exactly what we did. We visited Keukenhof Gardens and it was more cost effective to rent a car from Sixt rather than taking a train out, just make sure you don’t speed! The roads are not specifically patrolled by police, but the speeding fines are based off of camera use. Cameras will identify your vehicles speed, and a ticket will be mailed to you so it’s all done automatically and there’s no hiding from it!
We wandered Keukenhof in our Merrell’s, enjoyed all the flowers you could imagine, and then drove around to other tulip fields! It was truly an amazing experience being completely engulfed in tulip fields, where it’s as colourful as you can see
