Rotterdam The Netherlands

     Our Easter week end was taken up with two very Dutch activities. On Holy Saturday we spent the day in the Keukenhof Gardens, the premier place to see tulips and other spring bulbs. On Easter Sunday we went to visit one of the few places in Holland where the windmills have been preserved as they were in 1740 and where they are still working.

     These places are close to Rotterdam. We reached Rotterdam from Middleburg via a zigzag course of canals, traversing the Oosterschelde, and entering the Rhine River. Rotterdam lies at the mouth of the Rhine and Maas Rivers. It was named for the 13^th Century dam built on the Rotte River. Rotterdam is an amazingly modern city. It was almost totally destroyed during WWII. When it came time to rebuild the city the Dutch decided to make modern buildings and use many different styles of architecture. The strangest was the cube apartment building where each apartment was a cube on end. I have no idea how they put it all together and what it would be like to live in one of those units with the slanty walls.

Don at the Keukenhof Gardens

     We went by bus to the Keukenhof Gardens. These were the kitchen gardens for a castle in the 15^th century. They evolved into a park with large trees and other plants. In 1949 twenty bulb growers decided to use it to showcase their spring flower bulbs. It is open to the public 8 weeks a year when the bulbs are blooming and is really quite spectacular. We saw fields of tulips, hibiscus, daffodils, crocus, lilies, and iris. Five pavilions showcased these flowers in addition to orchids and roses.
     The Kinderdijk was very interesting. About 1/3 of The Netherlands is below sea level. The windmills were used to pump water from the land into the rivers. As the land sank, they needed to use more than one windmill to lift the water into boezems (water storage basins) from one height to another. The land reclaimed by this process is called a polder. At Kinderdijk they had 19 windmills preserved to carry this out. We were able to go into one windmill to see how the family lived in the one small room at the base of the windmill. We saw how the “sails” were moved and that the position of the sails was used to communicate among the millers.

Middelburg The Netherlands

     We left Ghent during the night and arrived in Middelburg early in the morning on Friday, April 14. Overnight we had left Belgium and we were now in The Netherlands. We sailed down the Ghent Canal into the Westerschelde (estuary of the Schelde River) and up another canal to Middelburg. Middelburg is the capital of Zeeland (the settlers of New Zealand came from here), and is one of the oldest cities in The Netherlands. It was an important trading city for the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and very wealthy during the Middle Ages and into the 1500’s. It is located in the middle of the island of Walcheren (since drained and diked to become a peninsula) and was the middle of three cities built to fortify the island. After the island was flooded in the 1950’s they began the Delta Project to build watergates, dikes, locks, and other special formations to close off the rivers and inlets from the sea and to control the water flow over the land.

     We walked with our guide into the city through the east gate. Everything in the city is circular – it is surrounded by a canal and dikes and the streets circle around the main square which is basically the site of a tenth century abbey. The church has a tall spire which has been nicknamed Long John and is a landmark. We walked by row houses which were clean and beautifully kept. Most of them have been designated historical landmarks and the owners are subsidized for taking care of them. They have a special plaque indicating this and the name of the original owner is often attached to the house.  The current owners may have their name over the doorbell, but not on the house! Another fun thing is that they have a sign for their mail box which says what kind of mail they want and do not want i.e. No junk mail, please! Wouldn’t we love to have that privilege?

     The town square was dominated by an extremely ornate, 15^th century Gothic town hall.

It was covered with statues of counts and countesses of Zeeland. The building was completely destroyed in WWII and rebuilt using the existing brick and stone. What a marvel!

Brugge Belgium

     Thursday, April 13 found us docked in Ghent Belgium. We arrived during the night chugging down the Schelde River and back inland through the locks of a canal. After breakfast we were separated into four groups (there are 165 people on this cruise) and boarded buses for the drive to Brugge Belgium. All we saw of Ghent was the industrial harbor area – too bad, it sounds like a lovely city.

     But, Brugge is very special in its own right. It is another medieval city which has happily retained most of its charm due to unfortunate circumstances. With its inland port it became a prominent trading center, especially in cloth.The wealthy merchants built many beautiful buildings. However, in the 1400's Brugge lost its harbor area due to the river silting up and other circumstances and the city came to a virtual standstill. They did not have the money or any reason to modernize; so much of the city looks just the way it did in the 1400’s.

     It took about an hour to drive from Ghent to Brugge. Our bus let us off just outside the city gates and we entered through a beautiful park and walked over one of many bridges. We were looking at a lake called the Lake of Love (Minnewater – sounds like Minnesota), which was the original commercial harbor area. The lake was filled with beautiful white swans which are one of the symbols of Brugge.

     Moving on we passed a group of small houses which were called the Beguinage. These were from medieval times when women who had no family wanted to live together, but not as religious. Now it is a convent. We walked along the narrow streets admiring all the old houses which reminded me of row houses. There were different styles of architecture and exterior surfaces, but they were all built together sharing a common exterior wall. 

     Brugge is also a city of canals – originally built to carry commerce. In fact Brugge is often called the Venice of the North. We had a lovely cruise around the historic canals and saw all the beautiful old homes built right on the water’s edge.

    In addition to canals and bridges we saw the Hospital of St. John which was built as a hospice in the 12^th Century; the Markt, which formerly had many guild halls, and all that is left is its 13^th century belfry called the Belfort; the Burg, which is the heart of the city dominated by the Town Hall which was covered with statuary; several churches and many other magnificent buildings.
We had time to shop for my favorite Belgian items and try Belgian waffles before we headed back to the bus and returned to the ship.

Antwerp Belgium

     On Tuesday, April 11, we were taken by bus to our boat, the River Voyager, which was docked in Antwerp. The Voyager is a fairly new ship and looked very much like a barge when we first saw it sitting at the docks on the Schelde River. It has 4 decks. Our room is on the second deck. The room is amazingly large with a large window and sliding door, but no balcony. The dining room is at the bow of the ship on this deck. The deck above has more rooms and a lounge area at both ends. And the top deck is totally open with deck chairs and a running track. The lowest deck is for the crew and all things necessary for running the ship. This will be our home for the next ten days. We were quite shocked when our ship started going up and down until we realized that we were close enough to the ocean to experience tides. This was the only place we had tides - all of our other dockings were on canals or rivers controlled by locks and dams.

     We spent the next day and a half in Antwerp. Antwerp was an important port in the 1500’s, taking over the business from Brugges when their river entrance became silted up. Because of all the wealth from the trade there were many beautiful, expensive buildings built in this period. The magnificent City Hall takes up one entire side of the town square. Beautiful guild houses with step gables take up the other three sides. In the middle of the square is the Brabo Fountain with a statue on top of the legendary hero of the city who killed a tyrant who was exacting tolls from merchants using the port.    

     The Cathedral of Our Lady is the largest Gothic church in Belgium. One tower is over 400 feet and the other was never finished. Inside we saw a spectacular exhibit of Rubens paintings. It was a special exhibit of paintings from other museums in addition to the ones that belonged in the church.

     The things to shop for in Belgium are Belgian lace, Belgian tapestries, Belgian chocolate, Belgian beer, and Belgian fries (which must be eaten with mayonnaise). So, I have been enjoying looking for those items as we are walking along the cobblestone streets of the cities. We are a little early for flowers, but we have seen tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, and iris – which is the national flower of Belgium (I guess they are saving the tulip for The Netherlands).

Our first days in Belgium - Brussels

     Welcome to Belgium and The Netherlands. I hope you will enjoy joining us on our cruise through the rivers and canals of these countries.

     We left home on Saturday, April 8 and when we got to the airport learned that our flight was cancelled. We had to wait around for a different flight which took us through London and then on to Brussels. Needless to say the first couple of days were rather lost in the fog of jet lag.

     When we came to it was Monday, April 10 – and by golly it WAS Belgium! We basically had a day and a half to explore the huge (over 1 million people), modern city of Brussels filled with the new and the old. Our hotel was situated in the middle of the city near the small ring road. We saw many of the sites on our city bus tour and on our several walks around the neighborhood.

     I was amazed to learn that Brussels is the de facto capital of Europe. It was one of the founding members of the European Union and houses the headquarters and many branches of the governing bodies.  It also has the headquarters of NATO and many headquarters of International companies. Consequently there are many large, new buildings to accommodate these organizations.

     Brussels is right in the middle of Belgium and is its capital. The northern section of Belgium is called Flanders and speaks mainly Flemish. South of Brussels is called Walloonia and speaks mainly French. There is also a small section where German is the main language. There is over 1700 years of history here, but Belgium has only been its own country since 1830 when it won its independence from The Netherlands. The southern section is mainly Catholic because it came under the influence of Spain for awhile in the 1500’s. Due to religious wars the Protestants fled to the north which means Flanders is mainly Protestant.

     In the midst of all this Brussels thrived and grew because it was the crossroads of trade. Its Gran Place or main town square has been called one of the most beautiful in Europe. There is a magnificent town hall with a 314 ft. belfry. It is surrounded by guild houses from medieval times. Many were rebuilt in the late 1600s after being destroyed in a bombardment. Each house has a symbol, sign, or shape to tell what occupation the guild members had. Now they have become museums, restaurants, and shops, but the buildings are still beautiful displaying a variety of architectural styles.

     Of course, we had to make a walk to the tiny statue of Manneken-Pis (the peeing boy). We probably wouldn’t even have noticed it if not for the crowd of people taking pictures. On our drive and walks we also saw both of the royal palaces and the cemetery; the Chinese Pavilion & Japanese Tower; Parliament Building; lots of statues and fountains; the Galeries Saint-Hubert which is a glass vaulted shopping center – the first indoor shopping mall; the Congress Column; the Atomium – a remnant of the 1958 World’s Fair; Liberty Park; the Square du Petit Sablon surrounded by bronze statues representing the medieval trade guilds; Notre-Dame du Sablon Church with its baroque pulpit and magnificent stained glass windows; and we saw our first tulips in the Parc du Bruxelles.

     On our last day in Brussels we did manage to spend a couple of hours in the Fine Arts Museum where we chose to pay for viewing the section containing the Old Masters.