Tulips and Beer

 AMSTERDAM BEFORE THE CRUISE

We stayed at the Leonardo Museum hotel, across a side street from Rijks Museum. According to our travel agent, Cookie, we had a “Cozy Room”. We laughed and said we wouldn't worry about falling because there was nowhere to fall! We got in, tired and hungry. The hotel had a restaurant, but they were on break, so we ended up at an Irish pub (in the Netherlands!).  It had a stained glass window of St. Prosper and I texted my Catholic friend to see if there really was a Saint Prosper (there is!)

After a good night's rest, we spent most of the day on a hop-on-hop-off-bus/boat. We quickly figured out the boat was the best, as it was basically a canal cruise with stops. The city is beautiful and they have killer bikes that own the red sidewalks. My job became keeping Dave "out of the red"!! We had thought about renting bikes or using the ones on the boat but figured out quickly we would not keep up and would be an accident waiting to happen. Though Dave opined, “I never fall on the stationary bike!"  We peered into the windows at a bike rental shop, and I decided I wanted the one where Dave would pedal, and I would sit up front like Cleopatra in a glorified wheelbarrow!

 

We got sucked into the Heineken Experience. It was Gen Z Hell. We were herded through multimedia exhibits like a bad Disney ride. I am not used to crowds, and worried about Covid and wished my mask was not back at the hotel. Later we saw other venues labeled The (fill in the blank) Experience... Van Gogh, Dutch Masters, etc. I guess the younger set will spend $$$ on experiences vs. museums or exhibits.

 

The Anne Frank House was very moving, especially since she was Abbie and Ella's ages while hiding in the house. Walking through the original bookcase and realizing she never was free but lived there for over two years was chilling. The rooms were not furnished, but the pictures helped you imagine life in the annex. In the museum part, they had pages of her journals and a book with the thousands of names of the Jews from Amsterdam that perished. To think each of those names had just as rich of a life and trauma as Anne, but all that is left is their name makes you shudder at the inhumanity of authoritarianism/fascism.

 

The bookcase that hid the entrance to the Annex

Anne's First Journal

Clay sent us to a pub that was around the corner from the Anne Frank House. It only sold Dutch beer, and we enjoyed some cheese and sausages. Around another corner was a Tulip Museum. Though small, we got a good introduction to tulip farming and learned that tulips actually came to the Netherlands from the Himalayan Mountains via Turkey and the Middle East. The bulb frenzy was one of the first documented financial bubbles that burst!!  They should have called it the “Tulip Experience” to get the Gen Z crowd!!

 

The Rijks Museum holds many of the Dutch Masters and all I could think about was how much Keith would enjoy it. I sent him a Rembrandt Primer of my notes. We walked almost 2 miles just on one floor as we zigzagged through the galleries with a great guide. The building is built in the style of a cathedral (the architect was Catholic and as a result, many of the Calvinist citizens wouldn't visit the museum when it first opened including the mayor.) The Night Watchman, which is Rembrandt's "Mona Lisa”, is actually in the place where the altar would be and is HUGE!!! It is encased in lucite as it is being repaired but is still on full view. In fact, they live-streamed the restoration when the museum closed for Covid. There were other features that looked religious but were actually secular. For instance instead of Saints on the stained glass window there were pictures of the Dutch Masters, and the murals were events in Dutch history.  A few random facts I learned:  Bagpipes, footwarmers, thistles (male), and ivy (female) are symbols of sex in Dutch portraits.  White gloves held by a man mean “I’m available and don’t have to do menial work.”  People paid to be the faces in the portraits, even if the painter painted them in comical or compromising ways.  A chicken is a sign of victory.

 

Our lively guide - one of the best of the trip!

The Happy (and comically inappropriate!) Family

The Watchman, being restored, enclosed in a lucite "room"

THE RIVER CRUISE

 

Settling in on the AMASerina was nice. Our room was still cozy, but we had 2 chairs looking out a sliding glass door and the Dutch countryside.

 

Our home for 7 days

In Hoorn, we visited a tulip farm. We had hoped to see more tulips. They had one plot of yellow tulips they were getting ready to de-head and another plot of mixed tulips for the tourists.

 

The mixed field was for tourists, and the yellow field was being de-headed.  They de-head the tulips so that all of the energy goes to the bulbs.  Cut tulips are grown in greenhouses.

In Middleburg, we went out to the Delta Works and learned how the Dutch claimed lowlands from the sea with dykes, windmill pumps, and canals. After the great flood of 1953, they had to reclaim the land using dams built from caissons used to create an artificial harbor during the landing at Normandy (Emily and I had seen them there.) Almost one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level. They pay a special tax depending on where below or above ($0) sea level they reside.

 

The day the boat docked in Ghent, we signed up for walking tours of both Bruges and Ghent. The Bruges guide gave us waaaay too much information so it became the "forced march". As a result, we skipped the afternoon tour and took a well-deserved nap. It did turn us off to going back to Bruges later, as we felt we had really seen it, and it was a little touristy.

 

A Rubins in a cathedral in Bruges

One interesting story she told us was about William the Conqueror.  He was held briefly in the prison in Bruges where he had to watch the execution of his friends, one of whom was named Tommy Longneck.  He then stocked the canals and lakes with swans so that Tommy Longneck would be remembered. I don’t think I’ll be able to view a swan again without thinking of that gruesome story!

 

This sculpture in a square in Bruges used the cobblestones as a blanket.  It is a famous Japanese anime and was there to attract Japanese tourists (and Deb!).

At Antwerp, we opted for the Floralia Flower Show, vs. the Diamonds or Chocolate tour. After all, this is our Year of Flowers, starting with the Rose Parade in Pasadena! The gardens were on the grounds of a castle that has been privately owned by the same family for over 1000 years!!! What kind of pressure would that put on a group of siblings or heaven-forbid an only child!!!! The gardens are only open to the public for 6 weeks each year, and they rent out part of the castle for weddings. The grounds, complete with a moat and guillotine gatehouse, were stunning, and the greenhouse had stunning cut flowers, miniature azaleas, and arrangements.

 

The castle is behind me and the gatehouse to the right.'
The moat is in between.

I had never seen minature azaleas.

Rotterdam is a very modern city because it was completely bombed during the war. We saw some really interesting and avant-garde architecture including the cube houses built with 45-degree angles over a bridge! We toured the Delft pottery factory and learned how the Dutch mimicked Chinese porcelain with kaolin earthenware.

 

These cube houses are on a bridge over the city,

The Night Watchman, in Delft tiles.
I kept taking pictures of this girl's long curly hair to send to Ella!

I opted for a nap on the afternoon that Dave went to Kinderdijk to see the authentic Dutch windmills.  Their sides are made of thatch.  While we saw many modern windmills, all of the old ones are now preserved as historic monuments.

How did they get it that thick?

The piece de resistance came as we sailed back to Amsterdam to the Keukenhof Gardens. After the wars it was hard to restart the bulb trade, so the gardens were established so that the different growers would show off the varieties of their bulbs in bloom. It quickly became a tourist mecca. My favorite was a re-created windmill that serves as a viewing platform over the fields. The masses of colors exceeded my expectations! We laughed and said if we had a nickel for every phone photo clicked that day, we could put Abbie and Ella through college! We definitely clicked our share.

 

We met some interesting people on the cruise. On the first night, we dined with a radiation oncologist and a radiation specialist, and their spouses. The specialist now does all of his readings from home! They were on their 1st Anniversary cruise and we felt like the wise old owls. Then there was a large group from Salt Lake and Idaho. We asked one couple why they moved from Sacramento to Boise and they said, "Politics". Needless to say, we did NOT discuss politics with them!!! On about day 2 or 3, we met Laura, an elementary school principal traveling alone because her companion got quarantined with covid on the first day of the cruise. They moved her to a staff room on the lowest deck. We had the same politics and could talk about education. Jean and Jason, a mother/son team from Texas also often joined us and we enjoyed their company a lot.  Next time I should take pictures!!

 

FOUR DAYS IN BELGIUM

 

After the cruise, we enjoyed 3 days based in Ghent. Dave quickly learned the train and tram system and we traveled on them frequently. Our hotel, The Carlton, was within easy walking distance from the train station and it had a lovely LARGE (comparatively) room and some nice restaurants nearby. On the first day, we took a canal cruise to see the city. One day we traveled back to Antwerp where we window-shopped in the diamond district and toured the Red Star Line Museum. This was where the European immigrants who came to Ellis Island embarked from. The museum gave a great history of immigration from early man to the present day. Prejudice, war, and poverty are the driving forces that keep the melting pot stirred. One day we walked all over the old part of Ghent. We went to the contemporary art museum. It was fairly small and more avant-garde for our taste, but, as I tell Abbie, it is good to expose yourself to many forms of art. In between our roaming, we followed Clay's pub trail suggestions. They were great every time. In Antwerp, we were greeted by an old man with red glasses when we rang the bell under which the sign said only come in with cash....credit cards =  NO beer. And you had to agree to TASTE, not drink, the beer. We met 4 guys on a beer-tasting trip from Minnesota and we swapped beer pub stories. In Ghent, we had to go back out, pub-hopping after sightseeing and we still didn't complete Clay's list! You always have to leave something to come back to! In Brussels, we "pubbed" our way to a place near the "pissing boy" statue that our Minnesotan friends recommended and found one more on our own.

 

Clay remembers this barkeeper in Antwerp. She was the wife of the guy who insisted we taste, rather than drink beer.  They gave him an opener like the one on the table.  

Dave studying the catalog of cellared beers.
Our "new friends" from Minnesota are at the next table.

Unlike Tommy Longneck, my neck is too short for this!  
Dave was really glad!

We enjoyed setting our own pace during our "extra" days in Belgium and slowly walked, taking in the sights, food, and beer. We were thankful for Sharon's suggestion of taking our walking poles from Peru. They were very helpful for balance on the cobblestones.

 

Clay taught us that our 1st beer should be the house special
and then study the catalog for the 2nd. This place was just a little creepy.  Note the dolls hanging from the ceiling and the wild boar's head in the next photo.

In Brussels, our most unique glass. 
Note the copper kettle is cut apart as an "umbrella" in the background.

The countryside is very flat until we got to Brussels' gentle hills (except when walking up them!). One of our guides commented that he realized this the hard way, when trying to bike in America and missed his flat countryside. Another guide also told us that The Netherlands is just 2nd behind the US in produce exports because they make wide use of greenhouses and can get 10 crops per year in them. We did see acres and acres of greenhouses, and every bit of land is used for houses, crops, grazing, etc. We saw sheep grazing on the banks of the interstate highway (no mowers!!), The plots are small; but every inch is used. I guess you become a good steward when you must reclaim the land from the sea.

 

Belgium had castles straight from the storybooks!

Dave has a uncanny knack for taking me by really cool art shops....when they are closed!!

Having taken a break from traveling during Covid, we made a few "rookie" mistakes. We thought we had to start the hop-on tour at the beginning when there was a stop right at our hotel. When we maneuvered the subway (Metro) there we really reverted back to rookies when we bought day tickets and only used them once. When we got on our first train out of Amsterdam, we realized about halfway through that we were sitting in First Class instead of 2nd where we bought our tickets, but no one checked or asked us to move. (After several Flemish and French announcements, we finally were able to translate 1st Class in red seats, 2nd in blue. Frankly, color was about the only difference, if you weren't in a private room.) Several times we took free rides on the trams when we couldn't work or find the credit machine. We noticed only about half of the folks swiped a ticket or card, so maybe we weren’t rookies after all!

 

 

How do you find your bike!?
We came away with a better appreciation for bikes and public transportation!

 

Even the UPS "trucks" are bikes!  
We never saw an Amazon truck.

THINGS I BROUGHT I NEVER USED

Short sleeve shirts (too cold)

Bergen stocks (too cold)

Heavy coat –layered instead

3 new shirts - wore them, but no one ever saw them under all the layers!

3rd pair of pants - of course, the 2 I wore could stand up on their own by the end)

Binoculars

Umbrella - used the ones on the boat

Pocketbook-used pockets

 

 

WHAT WORKED WELL

Puffy vest - great zippered pockets just right on its own or with the rain jacket

Rain jacket

Walking sticks

Dave's multi-jack charging station with a European plug

The neck pillow was bought at the airport

Pillows speaker

Pen flashlight

 

On my way over I read a novel that had the analogy of the weatherman and the weather. The weatherman plans, calculates, and predicts. Then the weather comes along and just happens. Some of us are weathermen, and some of us are the weather. I'm glad I married a weatherman 50 years ago!!