When we returned to Columbia from Brazil in
late January 2014, we found it was still winter. While taking a walk on a nice days, we encountered
a couple who lived a block over. They couldn’t
wait to tell us that they had a buyer for their house, and it was two women
married to each other, just like Diane and I.
The buyers were both musicians which also intrigued us. We hoped the sale worked out so that we would
have the new couple as neighbors.
Meanwhile, there was a doubleheader coming
up. Starting in early April, we had
back-to-back trips that each began in Amsterdam. The first one ended in Amsterdam as well,
making it easy for us to go from that trip to the next one. The first, called Holland in Springtime,
we booked directly with National Geographic.
Their staff had been very impressive on our Columbia River trip, and this
tour intrigued us. It would not be on
one of their big ships, but rather a chartered barge that could maneuver through
the canals of Holland.
Our first day in Amsterdam, we took a long
walk in this very picturesque city going from one canal to another while
viewing notable buildings. The Concertgebouw
is the home of the Dutch Symphony Orchestra and the Rijksmuseum is known for
its collection of Dutch art. We toured
the Van Gogh Museum. We stopped in the
Amsterdam Museum to see their current exhibit that included a portrait by
Rembrandt of his wife Saskia. We picked
a place for lunch as we walked along the quieter streets away from the
tourists. We made it back to our hotel
for a late afternoon meeting of our tour group which included a welcome
reception and dinner. We were pleased to
discover that we would not only have the National Geographic guide for the
entire trip, but also an expert art historian.
Canal
Concertgebouw
Rijksmuseum
Exhibit at the Amsterdam Museum
Rembrandts painting of his wife, Saskia
The next morning, our group was divided in
half for a three-and-a-half-hour tour of the Rijksmuseum. It is the national museum of the Netherlands
dedicated to Dutch arts and history. They
provided each group with a docent to show us the highlights. After lunch on our own, our group boarded a
canal boat for an hour of viewing Amsterdam from the canals. Leaving that boat, we walked to the
Noordermarkt (a farmer's market) and then toured the Anne Frank House.
Vincent Van Gogh painting of the Farm Cottage in the Rijksmuseum
Tour group in canal boat
Farmer’s market
We were happy to go meet our ‘home’ for the
next seven nights, the barge Magnifique.
The room was the smallest we had ever stayed in on a boat. When we emptied our suitcase, it wouldn’t fit
beneath our bed as it had on other ships.
We had to take it down the hall and put it in a closet beneath the steps
to the main level. There was very little
space for hanging clothes and one floor-to-ceiling cabinet with foot-and-a
half-wide shelves for the rest of our belongings. After we finished unpacking, we looked around
our room and decided that it didn’t feel small, just snug. It would be fine. The main deck had booths and
tables where we sat to eat our meals. There
was an efficient kitchen for the boat’s staff and guests and a well-stocked bar
for happy hour. We settled down for our
first night’s sleep on the water, although the barge was at dock since it
didn’t travel down the canals at night.
Barge Magnifique
Our room
Where we ate
The kitchen
In the morning, the barge began to leave
Amsterdam, and we watched as its smoke stack was lowered so that we could go
under the low bridges. Diane and I now
really felt like we were off on another adventure. We headed west on the North Sea Canal taking
in the sights along the way including our first windmill and then turned south
into a canal heading towards the harbor of Haarlem. The barge stopped there to let us out near
the Windmill De Adriaan rebuilt in 2002, but the original dated from 1779. The mill had been a distinctive part of the
skyline of Haarlem for centuries.
Lowered smoke stack
Windmill De Adriaan
Our group walked through the city streets,
by the canals and into the town square. We
first visited Grote Kerk or St. Bavokerk, a Reformed Protestant church which
was a former Catholic cathedral. Since I
played the organ for many years, I was intrigued by the one I saw here. It was Holland's largest pipe organ, having
more than 5,000 pipes. It was an eye-catcher, a Müller organ dating from 1738,
the most depicted instrument in the world. It was played by both G.F. Händel and the
ten-year-old Mozart. It covered the
whole west wall of the church, towering almost 100 feet above the ground. There
were two enormous ‘pedal towers’ in which pipes of almost 32 feet were placed. The organ was richly gilded and decorated
with more than 25 larger than life-size statues, many of them women with one
breast exposed. John Ashcroft, Attorney
General both of Missouri and the U.S., would not approve, having covered up
partially nude statues in the U.S. Great Hall of the Department of Justice. We listened to the organist, and then he invited
us to come up and watch him play. The
organ had three keyboards, a full set of pedals and two sets of stops, one on
either side of the keyboards. It was
amazing! Our visit to the Frans Hals
Museum was anticlimactic after that. It
was a gallery in a 17th-century building dedicated to portrait painter Frans
Hals and the Dutch Old Masters.
Organ pipes as seen from the church
Behind the scenes
Me (and others) watching the organist
describe the organ
Frans Hals painting of female hero of the
Dutch War of Independence
While we ate breakfast the next day, the
barge made its way to Lisse. We passed
farm fields full of colorful blooming tulips, so it was not surprising that we
would be visiting the Keukenhof Gardens, one of the world's largest flower
gardens. Every year more than seven
million flower bulbs representing 800 varieties of tulips are planted by hand
in the autumn to flower the next spring.
After entering, what first caught our attention was the musical calliope
which you could hear everywhere. The garden was not all tulips, but also other
flowers and trees, all arranged and intermixed in a variety of patterns with
complementary colors and heights of plantings. After re-boarding, the barge continued along
the famous Flower Route, stopping in Leiden, known for its centuries-old
architecture, as well as being home to the country’s oldest university and the
birthplace of Rembrandt. Our walking
tour there confirmed to us that its large number of canals and bridges were
second only to Amsterdam.
Tulip fields
Calliope
Scene at the Keukenhof Gardens
Our first visit the next day was difficult
to believe. I’ve never seen anything
like it! We stood on an elevated
observation platform in the center of the room that featured the largest
circular painting in the Netherlands. Surrounding
us we could see a very realistic, detailed painting of a high sand dune
overlooking the sea, beaches and a village, all populated with people. We were in the Panorama Mesdag, a
purpose-built museum for the panorama, a cylindrical painting (also known as a
Cyclorama) more than 45 feet high and almost 400 feet in circumference. Unbelievably, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, the
artist, completed it in just four months.
Observation platform
Beach scene showing detail
Then we continued to the nearby city of The
Hague, home to the royal family and seat of government. There we toured the Gemeentemuseum to see the
collections of the Mauritshuis Museum, while it was being renovated, including
works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and other Old Masters, as well as the museum’s own
holdings of more modern artists. We then
toured the city of The Hague including the Peace Palace that houses the
International Court of Justice. In the
afternoon we visited De Porceleyne Fles (The Porcelain Jar) in Delft, the only
Dutch pottery maker still in operation.
There we toured the factory, learning the history and process of Delft
pottery making. Our barge continued to
our night’s docking.
A Delft plate
When we woke up, we weren’t in a canal, but
in the very large port of Rotterdam. It
is a city that had to be almost completely reconstructed following WWII which explained
the very modern skyline. Soon, we were
on the move to Kinderdijk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is known for its 18th-century windmills
and water-management network that features 19 mills and three pumping stations,
plus dikes and reservoirs to control flooding of the low-lying land. Our barge catered to bikers, and at this stop
we were offered the opportunity to use the bikes onb0ard. Diane and I found ones that suited us, put on
our helmets and rode down the path that took us by many of the windmills. There was a stopping place where we had the
opportunity to go inside one of the windmills that was occupied by a family. Unfortunately, on the way back to the barge,
going over an uneven surface I fell and injured my upper lip, not seriously
though.
Windmills, me and Diane
Entering Gouda
Organ in St. John’s
We were still in Gouda the next morning and,
as we walked toward the city square, we were told about the brass plates in the
pavement outside certain houses. Each
one represented a victim of Hitler’s Nazi extermination program. When we entered the square, we watched how
the wheels of cheese were brought to market and sold. Then Diane and I had our usual good time
walking around the market where local people had brought all kinds of products
for sale. We were all offered
another biking opportunity that afternoon, but, after my fall, I was not
interested. We stayed on the boat,
enjoying the sights as the barge made its way to our final destination of the
day.
Brass plates
Wheels of cheese in market
We had an early breakfast before our behind-the-scenes
look at the flower trade at the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, the largest in the
world. Flowers arrive there from all over including Europe, Israel, Ecuador,
Colombia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The flowers
are first given a bar code and examined for quality so that they can be graded
on a scale (A1, A2 and B). Then the
flowers are sold using a Dutch auction in which the price starts high and works
its way down. Bidders only have a few
seconds to bid on the flowers before they are sold to the new owner. We viewed the room where live bids were made
and the computer screens where online bidding was also done. Looking down at the huge floor where the
flowers were loaded on carts made us think of Amazon warehouses in our country.
Flowers come in
Flowers go for bidding
The bidders
Our last afternoon, we slowly cruised back
to Amsterdam. Once there, we went to the
National Maritime Museum and enjoyed viewing their figurehead collection. Then our group went on a boat cruise of the
city's canals. In the evening, we had a farewell
celebration with our fellow travelers and the ship’s staff. We would enjoy one more night in our snug
room before heading to the next part of our doubleheader.
Figureheads
Farewell celebration aboard the barge
