River Cruising the Netherlands and Belgium

1) On embarkation day, I arrived in Amsterdam at 7:30am and took a cab to the pier where I met some of the debarking passengers from the previous voyage. They showed me where to leave my bags to be delivered to my cabin later and I waited in the lounge. Around 10:30, a buffet lunch was served of soup and sandwiches. Additional passengers from my voyage had begun to arrive and after lunch, some of us shared cabs to the Ann Frank House and museum. The museum was wonderful and afterwards we walked through the famous "red light district" before finding cabs back to the pier.

2) In the morning we took a motorcoach to the Rijksmuseum where we saw Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" among many other wonderful paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists. After the museum, we took a canal cruise through Amsterdam where we saw many of the wonderful gabled facades of homes built over the past 700 years. We then had leisure time in Amsterdam which I spent at the Van Gogh museum (you can't pronounce his name"Van Go" in Holland, it is pronounced "Van Hock") . Lucky me, I came to the Netherlands during the celebration of his 150th birthday and there were many special exhibits. That evening at dinner, the captain came to the dining room and announced that he was sure we were wondering why we weren't sailing yet. It seems that the harbormaster in Volendam went home that day before signing the overnight berthing permit for our ship. We stayed docked in Amsterdam an additional night and the tour director was able to arrange for the buses to pick us up there to begin our tour the following morning.

3) Our buses took us to a heritage village called Zaanse Schans where 70 homes from that area have been reassembled and are lived in today. All the houses are 300 to 400 years old. Many now house artisan shops including a wooden shoe factory. It reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg with windmills. After we left Zaanse Schans, we visited a cheese farm near Edam where we got delicious samples and got to see the baby goats and sheep. We returned to the ship which was now waiting for us in Volendam for lunch. Volendam is a charming fishing village, we only had about 45 minutes to look around it after lunch before we reboarded our motor coaches to Edam where we took a walking tour. Edam was where most of the cheeses were sold, hence the name for a famous cheese. We then continued by motorcoach to Hoorn where we had another walking tour on the way to the pier. Hoorn was a site for the main offices of the Dutch East India Company(the first multinational corporation to exist). We then sailed overnight to Arnhem.

4) Our motorcoaches took us to the "Het Loo Palace" once owned by Prince Charles of the Netherlands and his wife Mary Stuart of Scotland. The gardens at this palace rival those at Versailles and have a taller fountain at one end. The most interesting fact about these gardens was that they were the first to include floral borders instead of topiary hedges. We then returned for lunch on the ship. In the afternoon 2 optional tours were available, one to an open-air museum similar to Zaanse Schans and the other to the Kroeller-Mueller Museum which had another special Van Gogh exhibit. I went to the Kroeller-Mueller and saw 40 Van Gogh paintings and 187 of his sketches. My daughter is very jealous. We sailed this evening for a few hours to the college town of Nijmegen where we docked from 8:30pm to 3:30am. Some of my fellow passengers spent the evening in the Holland Casino there, I walked a little after dinner, but was too tired to jon them.

5) We arrived in Dordrecht at 8am and began the day with a walking tour. This city is an important commercial center at the junctions of 3 rivers. Even now approximately 1,500 vessels pass through it daily. In the 14th century it was the wealthiest commercial town in the Netherlands due to the stop-over tolls they charges on goods coming from the Rhine. After lunch aboard the ship we visited Kinderdijk, a UNESCO heritage site with 19 windmills erected to drain the excess water from the reclaimed land called polders. During dinner, we sailed on to Antwerp where we docked at around 11pm.

6) We boarded our buses at 8am for Brussels where we had a walking tour followed by an hour and a half at leisure to wander and shop. As it happened, the youngest Prince of Belgium was to be married in Brussels the following day so we couldn't go inside the Cathedral which was already decked out with the flowers for the wedding. We did see many other weeding decorations throughout. Belgian waffles really are the best!!! I opted to return to Antwerp at noon and have a tour of Antwerp in the afternoon. One tour bus remained in Brussels until 3:30pm for those who wanted a full day there. I had lunch on the ship, then a walking tour of Antwerp. Belgian lace is beautiful and the chocolates...(yes I did get sugar free).

We stayed docked in Antwerp overnight again.

7) Today was an all-day visit to Bruges, the "Venice of the North". We began with a walking tour from the outskirts where our tour buses had to stay. We saw bobbin lace being made and many wonderful buildings. We then had 4 hours of leisure time in Bruges to shop and dine on the famous mussels and waffles and chocolate. I also took a canal cruise tour. We were met in the central plaza for a shuttle bus out to our tour buses back to the ship in Vlissingen.

8) At 6:30am the ship moved from Vlissingen to Middleberg where we disembarked for a walking tour and the ship continued to Bruinisse. Middleberg was a town with the major shipbuilding industry of the Netherlands during the heyday of the Hanseatic League and the Dutch East and West India companies. The town hall was spectacular. We then took motor coaches to the Delta Works Expo, a museum adjacent to the dam project that protects the Netherlands from flooding. The construction took 30 years and was completed in 1989. We then returned to the ship and sailed all afternoon to Rotterdam where we docked at 6pm.

9) Today was our longest touring day. We left the ship at 8am and drove through Rotterdam on our way to Delft. Rotterdam was completey destroyed during WWII and has been rebuilt in the style of an American city with many skyscrapers. It is still a thriving cargo port considered by many to be the busiest in the world. In Delft, we visited the cathedral where the royal family is interred in vaults below the floor. The monuments inside were spectacular. We then had time to shop for Royal Delftware before the buses took us for lunch at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen , a beach resort on the North Sea. The Kurhaus is a 5 star hotel and the decor was beautiful. We then continued to the culmination of our voyage, the Keukenhof Gardens. We had 3 and a half hours to wander through the gardens and greenhouses where the tulips were blooming. The gardens are as extensive as the Butchart gardens in Victoria, BC. I learned a lot about the bulb industry in the Netherlands and have ordered bulbs to be delivered in October in order to make my first attempt at a flower garden. We returned to the ship where it docked in Utrecht at 6:30pm and the ship sailed for Amsterdam while we had our farewell dinner.

The following morning, we debarked and flew home.

Food and service aboard the ship was excellent. The tour director had 2 assistants and there was a member of the tour staff on your bus with you at all times with cellphone in hand. The local guides in each city were excellent. I was surprised at the pace of this river cruise, we only had one afternoon where we were not out in a town sightseeing. Because most of the towns we visited had cobblestone streets and sidewalks, and most of our tours were walking tours of 1 to 3 miles in duration, I think you need to be prepared for the exercise.

Kathy Biancalana
Cruise Expert, Vacation Planner
Cruises International
1-800-255-7447 ext. 122
www.cruisesinternational.com