Sailing into Amsterdam, from the harbor to its 165 canals brings back memories of many, many years past when Marsha and I first discovered this wonderfully diverse and eclectic city.

The first order of business was to hop onto a canal boat to get a feel for what’s going on in the more than 60 miles of intracity waterways. Besides bustling commercial, commuter, and tourist activity we were really struck by the sheer number and styles of houseboats, from really simple to elaborate, custom-built floating homes.

Most or the houseboats were beautifully maintained with decks and flower (and vegetable) gardens, and open views into the cleverly engineered and designed inner spaces of the homes. We passed the area where seven bridges could be seen in a straight line (sorry about the reflections from the canal boat windows). Nearly 1,300 bridges, many of them drawbridges, make for good excuses for being late to work (sorry…the bridge was up). The canals range from tiny and one way – hardly able to navigate the canal boat through – to expansive waterways.

Many of the huge number of 16th-17th-18th century houses line the canals. These mostly brick canal houses show off their distinctive stepped gables and forward slanting design. Huge fires in the wooden structures of the 15th century assured that brick would be used from then on. The “lean” of the narrow houses assured more room in the upper floors and allowed for heavy furniture to be hoisted cleanly from the beams (with block and tackle) at the top of the structures.

And, what would any tour of Amsterdam be without a look at the still burgeoning diamond industry, although we could probably have done without, based on it’s pretty checkered history.

After another delicious and too much to say no to – lunch back on the boat, we decided to walk into the center of town, and on advice of the concierge, find the tram that would take us to our favorite, the Rijksmuseum. It was bloody hot, so hot that we decided to stop in at the cool (both meanings) Basilica of Saint Nicholas located in the Old Centre district, very close to Amsterdam’s beautiful main railway station. St, Nicholas is the patron saint of both the church and the city of Amsterdam. The basilica is the city’s primary Roman Catholic church.

The unusual heat was well into the 90s with full sun, but we trudged on from shadow to shadow toward the train station.

Around the corner from the Basilica we found this extremely busy street full of bars, restaurants, and rows of “head” shops…yes it is Amsterdam. The entire area was decked out in Pride flags and paraphernalia, and bursting with joyous people having a lot of fun – even in the heat.

We continued on, trying desperately to find the most direct route to the rail station. It was an almost impossible task with levels of roadway that became “autos only” or “bicycles only” or went underground or over bridges preventing us pedestrians from reaching the station – literally right in our line of sight. We finally guessed right and found the tram stop in front of the station. We were dripping sweat from our skin and clothing. After 20 minutes, no #2 or #12 tram arrived and it was getting close to museum closing time. Couldn’t even get an Uber as we were in a no auto zone and couldn’t tell them where to pick us up! Some things are just not meant to be.

So we headed back to the cool comfort of our little river boat, only to almost jump out of our skin from the horn of this enormous Holland America ocean going vessel, a reminder of our personal vowel to never sail on a ship that holds more people than our home city! We waved politely as they ponderously drifted by. 178 people on our boat seemed even more like a nice, friendly neighborhood.

Too soon…we packed our bags for an early start to the airport the next day for our direct flight back to Philly.

Farewell to The Netherlands and Belgium…and farewell to you. We’ve really enjoyed sharing our journey and adventures with you – as always. Where next? Maybe you have some good ideas you’d like to share? We’re thinking, perhaps, Scotland. We’ve seen some interesting, in-depth offerings that are beginning to stir our built in travel genes. Let’s see what happens. We’ll let you know. In the meantime, safe travels to all!

Marsha & Joel

We sailed through a beautiful sunset on our way to dock at the town of Enkhuizen, close to Hoorn, our next exploration destination. Look carefully at the horizon and the endless string of wind turbines. We’ve seen them by the hundreds all along this journey. As the Dutch say, “God created man, but man created The Netherlands.” In their constant contest with water the Dutch learned early on about the power of wind – and the ability to harness it. Let’s make sure we learn from them.

I think it’s fair to say that the charming old town of Enkhuizen is enamored with sailing. Indeed all of The Netherlands’ charm, history, and commerce is imbued with moving across waters. Think of the Dutch East India Company established to manage trade with Asia, Dutch imports and exports, and Willem Schouten, from Hoorn, who sailed around the tip of South America and named Cape Horn (Hoorn).

Back in the saddle again. We loved our e-bike tour of Kinderdijk yesterday so much that we opted to do a peddling tour on the important dikes outside Hoorn and into the beautiful city’s suburbs and downtown.

Hoorn was built around the horn-shaped harbor on the Zuiderzee (former inlet of the North Sea). The Zuiderzee silted over and flooded frequently with exceptionally high tides. In 1920 the Dutch hatched a plan to build a 20-mile long causeway and dike rising 24 feet above sea level. What a strange treat it always is to ride a dike along fertile, reclaimed land on one side, and the sea looming feet above on the other. Awesome and scary.

A thatched working mill near a building originally part of the Zuiderzee Works (The Netherlands largest hydraulic engineering program of the 20th century). The small windmill is among many others that work constantly to keep the farmland workable.

We continued off the dikes and into the local traffic (negotiating the roundabouts was a little intimidating) while we stopped here and there to regroup and see some “landmarks” of interest. A bit hard to shoot any photos from the bike, but cruising along with autos, motorcycles and other local bikers gave us a good perspective of the local real estate, supermarkets (Aldi’s is everywhere), shops, schools and parks. Life goes on – beautifully – there.

A welcoming little coffee and snack shop along the water (isn’t everything) gave us a chance to rest our bottoms and join/watch the local folks beat the heat (still unusually hot for this part of the world) at the adjoining “beach.” A short ride took us back along the dikes to where we started for the short bus ride to the ship. Hard to believe, but tomorrow we’ll be in Amsterdam for our last full day of the journey.

It’s always fun to ride the top deck as you go through locks and under drawbridges. There are also many fixed bridges that have just a tiny clearance for the ship. The chairs are put down, the rails are on swivels to lay flat, and even the pilot house is on hydraulics so it can be lowered below the level of the upper deck. Of course passengers are verboten when “we’re comin’ to a bridge.”

After dinner, as the sun was setting, we took a stroll on the top deck to burn a few calories. We did a simultaneous double take, surprised by the image in the distance that appeared to be a man squatting on a narrow strip of land. None of us had any idea what it was or how it got there.

Another amazing sunset seemed to make the figure come to life…

… in fact illuminated a beating heart.

“Exposure” is a site specific installation by the inspired British artist, Sir Antony Gormley. It’s set on a thin strip of land in Lelystad – on our way toward Amsterdam. It’s really worth your time to check out Gormley’ incredible body of work.

With some unexpected, even surprising images in mind, we let ourselves drift off with thoughts of our last day — tomorrow — as we reach our final destination, Amsterdam.

“What’s that kid doing with his finger…”? Sometimes fairytales do come true. It (could have) all started here, in Kinderdijk (“children’s dike”), named possibly by the legend around St. Elizabeth’s Flood in 1421 where a local boy inspected and helped save the dike — or as some say because much of the dike building work was done using child labor. You decide.

The village of Kinderdijk has been shaped by Rhine Delta waters and is most known for its 19 beautifully preserved (and working) 18th century windmills. It’s surrounded by low lying polders – tracts of land reclaimed from the sea by the power of the windmills and enclosed by the dikes. The town was given UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1997.

In order to get an in-depth and up close look at the area, and the mills we donned some bike helmets (the locals wouldn’t be caught dead in them) and E-bikes to “power” ride along the dikes and polders. The e-bikes (if you’ve never been on one) are quite a trip. As you push down on the pedal you can feel the electric motor kick in and literally propel you along with very little manual pressure. You can control the power, but we were careful not to put it into the “Turbo” setting.

We stopped at a working “demonstration” windmill to get a better understanding of how how the mills work and the families that inhabit and run them. There is a long wait list for people who would like to live in and operate one of these mills. Rent is free with the obligation to keep the mill working. “Owning” the windmill is forever, with most inhabitants passing it down from generation to generation of the same family. Our name on the wait list will probably stay on the list for millennia. This windmill keeper also tended goats and built her shed out of the willows that grow along the dikes.

Living and sleeping arrangements are quite compact, having to work around the intricate mechanisms of the windmill itself. Some of the families have to be careful not to become too large because of the tiny shared beds of the owners. Since the blades of the mill have to be turned toward the wind (a whole story in itself), one of the two entry doors — the one in front of the spinning blades — must be carefully locked. You don’t have to imagine what would happen if you forget and walk out the wrong door. The speed of the blade, sometimes more than 90 mph at the tip, has killed many a keeper. You also have to make sure the kids don’t get too close to the exposed wooden gears in the center of the living space. Uhm. Maybe we’ll take our names off the waiting list….

It was time to hop back on the e-bikes and pedal along the beautiful Kinderdijk countryside admiring the stunning wildflowers, enjoying the unusually warm and dry weather.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

— Noel Harrison

Back on the Kvasir, we arrived in Enkhuizen at about 10 pm making ready to hop on our e-bikes again tomorrow to explore more of the Dutch countryside and the beautiful town of Hoorn….

We woke up at the dock in historic Dordrecht and our first view is an old windmill (a landmark that’s not really in use). We grabbed some (way too much) breakfast (again) and met a guide with our group to explore the downtown and harbors before our departure at noon for Rotterdam.

We walked across some drawbridges that allow the smaller vessels in and out of the narrow canals (they call them harbors) to the main harbors. Dordrecht is a city that operates as much on water as on land. Water is both the beauty and the challenge of the Netherlands. Our group got separated by the sudden opening of the drawbridge (above). The gate in the foreground controls pedestrians, bicycles…and tourists.

The old city gate to what most people concede it the oldest city in the Netherlands. The coats of arms above the gate are a warning to potential invaders of the group strength of the combined local houses and guilds. It was one of the Netherlands most prosperous ports, rivaling both Rotterdam and Amsterdam…at least from it’s chartering in 1220 (it was founded in ~1008).

The picturesque older streets and narrow passageways are at every turn. Notice the brick building leaning “precariously” over the street. Houses like these were built just like that on purpose. Why? Since there were no street signs or house numbers at the time, these “standouts” acted as landmarks so you wouldn’t start walking all they way down the long street only to find you were in the wrong place.

Indeed some quirky things about Dordrecht. The nobleman’s dog’s nose (outside a cathedral) is rubbed to a sparkling shine by locals (and tourists) to ensure they will have a good and lucky day…do not pass without rubbing! We noticed a reflection on a rooftop. On closer inspection, some creature (who knows what?) protecting…who knows what?

Finally a door in a really strange place. The story is that a wealthy man’s son wanted to marry a woman of lower class. The father wasn’t happy, but built the woman a house. Only problem is, he put the doorway on the second floor (with no steps or ladder) and essentially imprisoned her. So, the son simply looked elsewhere for a mate.

Farewell to Dordrecht and back to the boat where lunch had some spectacular deserts as we sailed away toward Rotterdam. It was a beautiful day to walk around the top deck and watch the wonders of the way to the large port city.

Spectacularly designed drawbridges saluted us as we made our way on the spreading and meandering Rhine, competing along the way with endless lines of barges carrying the worlds goods to and fro. The art of the bridges was a harbinger of the incredible modern design of the buildings in Rotterdam.

The old SS Rotterdam, now a multi-star hotel, graces the harbor as we pass by some combinations of old and new, and spectacular modern design. Rotterdam was settled ~900 AD as a model of then modern architecture. Unfortunately though, the city was almost totally destroyed by the Luftwaffe during WWII. It had to be rebuilt from the ground up. The city council “bravely” decided not to re-create the Golden Age look, and opted for a forward looking vision. The number of innovations in engineering and art is astounding.

Impossible and impossibly beautiful creations grace the Rotterdam skyline. A fitting backdrop to the natural and artificial waterways that link to the Rhine and central Europe…recognized as the “Gateway to Europe.”

A meaningful last view as we make our way to where the Lek and Noord Rivers meet and the village of Kinderdijk…and its quaint surprises. So gather up your helmets and biking shorts. Tomorrow we explore like the “natives.” Right.

We took a little side trip today into Wesel, Germany (not the picture above). Wesel itself had some military importance that can be seen by the 17th century citadel that was largely dismantled after WWI by the Allies. The citadel area now serves as the cultural center of Wesel, but we soon see it is not the reason we are here. It’s been overseen by Spain, the Netherlands, France and Prussia. Peter Minuit, the founder of New Amsterdam (New York City) was born here.

But, our interest was in the nearby city of Xanten in the time of Rome and today. The photo above is of the ancient Roman archeological site that has been in a continuous state of excavation for many years.

We explored the ancient aquaduct system the Romans used to source their water. The digs are going on all over the expansive site with archeologists and students from all over the world. They even live on site in existing buildings converted into little “hotels”. The site was at the far reaches of the expanding Roman empire, and was left to be inhabited by the “lesser” of Roman subjects who would have to deal with the cold weather and rain that most nobles enjoyed in territory closer to Rome. But Xanten was of strategic importance to Rome and needed subjects to keep it alive and flourishing.

The reclaimed and restored bath houses though are quite spectacular and probably to make up for some of the less comfortable surroundings. The engineering of the water heating systems was ingenious. The water’s path through the walls and floors maintained a beautiful temperature year round. The heat was never shut off. Later conquerors of the area found out why when they would turn off the heat when not in use. The cycle of heating and cooling made for serious cracks in the walls and floors.

When the people came in for their daily (rich), weekly (middle class), monthly (all the rest) baths, they would first rub themselves down with olive oil that (supposedly) captured the dirt, and scraped it off with metal blades before entering the water. They all used the same water of course.

Xanten’s mini coliseum has been carefully resurrected to reflect it’s ancient grandeur. Being so far from the center of the Empire, Rome would send groups of traveling gladiators for the local’s entertainment. What’s a Roman city without the obligatory death and destruction (hey, look at some of the movies we produce).

After Marsha did her little Caesar routine, we had a few minutes to explore the beautifully kept, immaculate little town. Obviously a more upscale community, even the construction areas didn’t seem to be dirty. Pleasant people walked around and even the e-bikers were polite and considerate.

Xanten Cathedral owes its name to Victor of Xanten, a member of the Theban Legion who was supposedly executed in the 4th century in the amphitheater of Castra Vetera for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The cornerstone of the cathedral was laid in 1263 and Construction lasted 281 years.

The grandeur of the cathedral is evidenced by all the ancient construction and even modern candlesticks both inside and out.

The reconstructed walls used some of the original Roman stones. You walk up and place your open hand on those blocks, and you see flashes and images of togas and sandals, and gladiators in the first century BCE…or is that the eccentric neighbor walking to the market?

Tomorrow we’ll be welcomed (we hope) into Rotterdam. Now for a pot of pfefferpotthast to weigh us down for the night.