Hanging out in Holland

Just spent a weekend in Holland. Love that country. So well-run.

It's only an hour flight from London.

Lexi had a softball tournament in The Hague on Friday and Saturday and Chris had meetings there the following week so the three of us joined up for a weekend together in Holland.

It was a weekend of memories as we had spent the summer of 2005 in The Hague when Chris worked there.

Went by our apartment from that summer. Here is a photo of the tram that Chris took to work each morning running in front of the apartment building:

Apartments from our summer of 2005

Trams run every few minutes to easily get you around the city.

Better yet, bicycles are the way to go! It's such a flat country and that makes for easy cycling.

Some of the many bikes parked

Bike paths are laid out so well along the streets that you feel very safe in your own lane. Kids grow up on bikes. When they start driving, they have a healthy respect for the bikers.

The order of precedence on the road is: bicycles, trams, pedestrians, cars.

Cars must yield to everyone else and cycles don't have to yield to anyone.

Special bikes let parent and children all ride together:

Cute, isn't it?

We rented bicycles from our hotel for the day and rode around. Such memories of 2005.

On our bike ride

We rode all over the city, got a little lost at one point, but found our way again.

I wondered why I wasn't more adventurous when we lived here to just go out exploring. The kids were 10 and 14 at that time and I remember being nervous about them out on the roads.

Or maybe it was just me not feeling brave enough. I think living four years abroad has made me more adventurous.

We stopped for hot chocolate in the town center plaza and soaked up the warming April sun.

These Eco Toilets that get set out on the weekends amaze me.

Males only please!

Back at the hotel, the lobby had modern decor, including this glass enclosed fire pit that caught my eye.

We are back in England now but the tulips Chris brought back help keep the memory of the weekend (and 2005) alive.

Nothing says Holland like tulips

Grace and Favour Apartments

Hampton Court Palace, where King Henry VIII lived in the 16th century, is a 15-minute drive from our house. It's a popular historic attraction for Americans who live around here to visit and to show to their visiting guests as well.

Hampton Court

My American Women's "English Experience" group recently took a field trip to Hampton Court, but this time we got to see areas of the palace that are not open to the public.

After 1737, when royalty stopped living in the palace, rooms were created from the large expanse to form "Grace and Favour" Apartments. These residences were offered rent-free to those who had given dedicated service to Crown or country. Usually, widows of servicemen were offered the apartments. The residents were generally of a notable status or ranking but who had fallen on hard times financially. So from about 1750 to 1950, portions of the palace were like an apartment block of housing. This is not something they tell you about on the regular tour of the grounds.

One of the Grace and Favour Apartment dwellers

We started our special tour with the Historic Royal Palaces curator by having tea, coffee, and cookies in one of the former apartment rooms. I like how our English Experience trips always start out in such a civil manner with refreshments.

While the refreshments were genteel, the apartments we saw were in disarray, almost in shambles. The rooms have sat empty and unused for years but you can still get an idea of what they were like. The apartments span different time periods, some had fireplaces in each room for warmth, some had light bulbs hanging down low from the ceiling in order to provide maximum light from the dim bulbs. One bathroom still contains a claw foot tub. You can see where wardrobes stood by the lack of paint on the wall when the rooms were painted around them. Ancient looking light switches were obviously added when electricity was installed.

We were allowed to take photos but were asked not to put them on social media sites since the apartments are not open to the public. I took a couple of pictures from general public areas. This one shows the stairs leading to some of the apartments. An iron gate keeps them private.

Private stairs to the apartments

This is a picture showing the progression of doorbells and nameplates through different time periods:

There is still a basket on a rope and pulley at the top of some of the stairwells. The elderly living on the top floors could have their groceries delivered in the basket on the ground floor and then they could draw the basket up to avoid using the stairs. The curator said one of the former grocery boys is still alive and remembers delivering to Hampton Court.

In 1838, just in the middle of the 200 years that residents were living in the Grace and Favour Apartments, the young Queen Victoria opened the palace to visits by "all her subjects without restriction". The residents complained of the visitors sticking their heads in their windows and gawking at them. I guess that's the price you pay for living rent-free in a historic royal palace.

The question is what to do with these former living spaces? It would be nice to restore them but to what time period? Visitors to the palace want to see authenticity so the curators must be careful not to change them too much. It is one of the challenges of presenting a landmark with 500 years of royal history.

To learn more, visit these websites:

http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/anewcommunityandrestoration

http://www.hrp.org.uk/Resources/Grace and Favour - A handbook of who lived where in Hampton Court Palace 1750 to 1950.pdf

College-Hopping Spring Break

Miles travelled:  10,000+

Length of trip: 19 days

School days missed: 3

Cost of trip: $1,000's

Number of oceans crossed: 1

Number of flights: 8

States visited: 6

Cities stopped in: 9

Schools visited: 5

Malls shopped at: 2

Prom dresses purchased: 1

Prom dresses tried on: 18

White graduation dresses purchased: 1

White graduation dresses tried on: 12

American jeans purchased: 4

Number of hotels stayed in: 8

Number of rental cars: 2

Number of meals eaten out: 55

Daughter being able to choose which University to attend...   Priceless