Keukenhof Gardens

Today, we made it to Keukenhof Gardens, the highlight of this week’s vacation.  The weather wasn’t the best today, predicting rain all day but we managed to get to Keukenhof early and able to walk around for a couple of hours before it started to rain.  So it worked out well!  Keukenhof is the biggest Garden in the world with absolutely beautiful gardens of flowers.   It is only open for 8 weeks every spring and completely closed down the rest of the year.  They completely dig up the entire gardens, treat all the bulbs and then get the gardens ready again for the following year.  It was beautiful as you will see from the pictures I post below.

So our week’s vacation has now come to an end.  As I write, Brian is packing his bags itching to get home to see our grandchildren and of course Timmie!  We have come to realize that shorter vacations are more our style.  It’s nice to get a way for a few days but it still is nice to get home.

This has been our second trip with Scenic Riverboat Cruises, and we were definitely not as impressed with this one as we were the first one we took from Budapest to Amsterdam in 2012.  Although they have improved some things on the ship itself, like retractable windows on the balcony and no charge for alcoholic beverages; we didn’t find the food was as good.  We also did not have a very good cruise director and it makes all the difference when you have an enthusiastic director like we did on the other Scenic Cruise.  Some of the crew were very attentive to people but there were others that didn’t give you the time of day.  We also had a couple of tour guides that were not the best and at some points, we walked away from them and did our own thing.  We did meet some very nice people though on this trip, especially Jane and Doug, whom we have been sharing our experiences with and dining together at lunch and dinner.

Our plane takes off early Monday morning and we will be home on Monday around noon.  It has been good to get away and we did enjoy ourselves! 

Here are some of the beautiful pictures we took at Keukenhof Gardens today:

This is not as clear as  I would have liked but this was taken through the bus window as we on our way to the the gardens. 

Brian always finds the ladies to take a picture with!

We stopped for a “Koffee” and apple pie!

Will see everyone soon as we now head home!

Horne, Northern Holland

We had quite the busy day yesterday with a walking tour of Edam and Volendam in the morning and then a cycling tour of Horne in the afternoon.  All the small cities are now all starting to run into together and although very quaint and lovely to see, it is hard to keep in your mind which one is which!!  Last night they walked us to a church where we had a typical Dutch dinner with the locals.  We sat at tables of eight and at each table was a local resident who answered questions or told us what it was like to live here. It was a nice ending to the day and then we boarded the ship and through the night the ship was on its way to Amsterdam.  Today we finally get to see Keukenhof Gardens – the highlight of the trip for us!  I am going to post a few pictures here and hopefully get this sent off before we leave this morning. 

This is the local church in Edam.  It really is only half a church as they couldn’t afford the upkeep, so they demolished the back half of the church!

Interesting little home with gable frontages.

Eating a Belgium waffle with cheeries and cream!!  Could not resist!

These were the choices of waffles!!  Very hard to make a decision!

I had to take a picture of this fish store – I know my brother, Roy, would have been eating all the mussels and cockles and eel!  Not our thing for sure but amazing the amount of people eating this!

On our bike ride, we finally came across a Tulip field!!  Beautiful!

At our dinner tonight the waiter dropped a whole tray of drinks on Brian and the local resident sitting with us!!  I felt sorry for the waiter, he felt so bad.  They moved us to another table. We all had a good laugh though!

Our table of eight after being moved to a new table! 

Cheers Roy!!  Brian tried the local beer!

Well, we are off to Keukenhof soon, I hope I can get this posted before we leave!

Kinderdijk and Delft–May 1, 2015

Today we arrived in Kinderdijk which is the only place in the Netherlands where they actually have working windmills.  Kinderdijk is 10 feet below sea level and in order to keep the land dry and safe for people to live on they have to pump the water into reservoirs which then eventually empties into the Rhine River where the river is at a lower level than their dikes (dijk). 

This is a map of the area and all the area on the right hand side of the map will drain water from rain right down to Kinderdijk in the area where the guide’s hand is pointing out.  They built 19 windmills in order to pump the water into the reservoir to keep land dry and safe for people to live on. Nowadays, they have big turbines which of course pumps more cubic meters of water in a minute than the windmills do but in the early 1500-1600’s, it all drained by the windmills who had millers living in the windmills with their families. 

This shows the windmills with the canal of water in the dikes and the reservoir is on the other side of this canal.  It really fascinates me how they figured all of this out so many years ago.

This is the modern version of the windmills today!!!  Big turbines pump the water at 100 times the rate of the windmills!

This is a picture of a miller and his family of 13 children.   Unfortunately the mother had a terrible accident when she was trying to save one of her children from being too close to the windmill arm and she ended up being hit by it which killed her at the age of 42; so the miller was left without his wife raising 13 children on his own.  It is amazing how they lived in a windmill with that many children!

This was a living room kitchen of the windmill which was the only warm room in the entire house.  The master bedroom is the back of this room. Can you imagine crowding 13 children into this room every day!

This was the master bed and there was a place for the baby to sleep just above the bottom of the bed and the potty (bathroom) for them was at the foot of the bed. 

This is the wheel that that turns to move the water.  See the staircase in the distance.  You had to walk up these narrow stairs for every level of the windmill.  I wonder how many times their children would fall down the many steps!

This shows the back of the windmill and this is how the miller would turn the top part of the windmill so that it could catch the direction of the wind.  I didn’t even know they could actually turn it at all!

Yes, leave it up to me find someone walking their dog!

From Kinderdjik, we were bussed to Delft and visited the Delft pottery factory where they make the blue and white pottery, all hand-painted. 

This is one of the master painters.  You see the vases in the front part of the picture; they start with the one on the left and after going through the different processes of being in the ovens to the end product after painting.

After visiting the factory, we were then taken on a walking tour of the city of Delft. This piece cost 13,000 Euros.

The market square of Delft.

It was certainly a pretty little town.

Of course, another “Cheese” store!!

We then had the Captain’s Farewell dinner last night having Chateaubrand for supper.  We met another couple over the last few days from the Toronto area and we had supper together last night. It was quite a nice evening.  Today we have another full day of adventures, a walking tour of Edam and Volendam in the morning, a cycling tour of Hoorn this afternoon.  Tonight for supper they are taking us into Oosterkerk for a typical Dutch Dinner with the locals.  As our cruise director would say “chow for now”!

Veere, Netherlands–April 30, 2015

Last  night we had a fantastic six course dinner at Portobello Restaurant.  I couldn’t even begin to tell you what we had as it was all in Italian but we were absolutely stuffed to the gills.  In fact, I couldn’t eat breakfast this morning as I was still full.  Last night in the lounge they had Guess that Tune and artist contest.  We had a group of 6 as a team and you not only had to guess the tune but also got extra points if you got up and danced between the questions.  We paired up with two other couples who were also from Canada (Kingston area).  We thought we had done well but another group of people beat us out by a couple of points but it was all in all  a fun night. 

This morning, we took a bike tour of Veere and surrounding area.  We biked about 10K and the guide took us to a cheese farm along the way.  They certainly make a lot of cheese here!  It is just like going to Niagara area with the wine making; here it is all cheese making.  The cheese is really good though.  We came back for lunch and then we had the afternoon to explore Veere on our own and it was a beautiful, peaceful little town to visit. 

We had a seafood buffet tonight and the ship left right as we were eating dinner and we passed right though a lock shortly after.  We are heading to Kinderjik and Rotterdam and will arrive there tomorrow in the morning sometime. 

Here are a few pictures from today:

Trying to get my helmet on.  These were electric bikes so it was nice to have the option to use the electric part.  I didn’t use it at the start but then tried it and it was quite enjoyable not having to pedal so much!!

Stopped for some information about this little street along the way.  It is not so comfortable riding a bike on the cobblestones though!

We stopped at a cheese farm along the way.

Of course, I always find the dogs………..he is part of the cheese farm family and just wanders around greeting people.

This little calf reminded me of Maverik; loved to give kisses!!!  They had about 7-8 young calves in the farm.  Of course they use the cow’s milk to make the cheese.  This was a very unique barn as it was electronic; it automatically will open the doors to let out the cows if the weather is good; if not, the doors shut and they are not allowed out.  Very high tech!!!

Some of the homes we passed by; this one was unique as it had a tractor under a car port!

About 10 minutes before this picture was taken, it had started to rain with a huge black cloud coming over and within  minutes it had moved on and we had bright blue sky again although it is still very cool and windy – it is only about 10 degrees.

This town had little statues all over the place.  I find the children….

Brian finds the ladies……

The homes have lovely little manicured lawns.  The residents seem to have a lot of pride in how nice their town looks. 

Of course, everything in the Netherlands and Holland has water and canals everywhere!

So we had another great day and now looking forward to what tomorrow brings.  We are certainly having a great time but the time is certainly flying by quickly!