Leiden in August

In the past few years Monica and I have taken it upon ourselves to visit the various cities in the Netherlands. We’ve already visited a bunch of cities all over the Netherlands, but had not yet been to Leiden and last weekend we made that our destination. Leiden is a city with a very rich history and also an important point for the American history (but as is fitting for a good blog, we’ll get to that point a bit later 😉 ). Friday we drove to Leiden and arrived in the early afternoon. After we checked into the hotel, we went on to discover Leiden.

It soon became apparent that there’s really a lot of bridges in the center, over a 100 according to Google. And the canals in Leiden and the Rhine river really make it a lovely place to walk around. Much like the numerous parks and squares.

Leiden has a very richt history. It is of course the birthplace of Rembrandt, but also a point in passing of the Pilgrims. They fled England in the early 1600’s and lived in Leiden for some years before moving on to America. They brought some of the Dutch traditions with them (such als the civil marriage) and are the ancestors of many current Americans including several of the former Presidents (The Bush family and the Obama’s among them). That’s a part of history I genuinely didn’t know. There’s a lot of information int he Pieterskerk (after Petrus or Saint Peter). The coat of arms of Leiden is also a set of keys, crossed.

In the center you can also find the Burcht of Leiden, built in 1060 as a for of defence. It’s a bit of a steep climb to reach the top, but the view is terrific!

During the day we stopped at some locations for a coffee, a bit of lunch and in the evening we went to Paco Ciao for dinner, a fantastic restaurant with huge amount of atmosphere and great, great food! Absolutely a huge recommendation to go if you’re in the area!

After dinner it was dark outside and we slowly made our way back to the hotel to get a good nights rest for the nest day.

The next morning we prepared well. We had our plan for the day and headed out. First to the botanical garden. The Hortus botanicus in Leiden is a huge and impressive location. It’s the older botanical garden of the Netherlands, established in 1590 with botanist Carolus Clusius as its first prefect. He is also the one that first introduced Tulips to the Netherlands, now the flower most associated with our country.

The Hortus has a huge variety of flowers, divided in several themed gardens and also there’s an observatory on the grounds where an exposition on Plants & Planets is currently on. It’s an interesting exposition and starts with an impressive art installation.

Afterlunch at the Hortus we went back into the center and visited the market. It’s a great sight along the ‘ Nieuwe Rijn’ and with a good summers day also many, many people were out enjoying the market and the terraces. We had a delicious Onigiri and Mochi to go and ate it watching the boats in the Rijn pass bij (there were a lot of boats all day long).

After the market we had one more activity on the list: a tour by boat. For a good hour we enjoyed the views and the stories told by our guide. Apparently there was a modern art-artist that as a form of conceptual art decided to live like a bird in a self made nest high up the wall of an old building and made a big mess of things living as close a bird-like experience as possible until people in the area got fed up with him. Also stories on the history of houses, statues and many other facts were very entertaining and with this kind of weather the tour could have lasted for much much longer.

To end our day we bought a pizza, sat ourselves down in one of the parks and just enjoyed the last hours in the sun before we headed home again. It was merely two days but the amount of experiences, the terrific food and drinks in the city, the buildings, locations and everything made it to feel like an amazing experience. We’ll definitely return to Leiden. Rather sooner than later!