River Cruise: Holland

Our eight-day cruise began in Amsterdam on Wednesday April 3. After arriving in Amsterdam via train, we checked onto our boat and were immediately treated like celebrities. The crew was so pleasant, helpful and happy to make our experience enjoyable. It was great! I had my own room on the boat, which was amazing, and I enjoyed settling in, unpacking my clothes, and pretending the boat was my real house.  :)

Our ship Uniworld cruise line ship, the River Ambassador.

My glorious room! Look at that giant, soft bed!  

 Very pretty bathroom, too.

It looks really small in these photos, but it was actually
a nice sized bathroom.

At night, they come turn down your bed and set
out cozy slippers for you. We felt like royalty!

We settled in that evening, feasted on a gorgeous dinner, and called it a night. It was an easy, relaxing day. Just what we needed.

The next day, we began our tour of Amsterdam with a trip to the Anne Frank House. When I first read our itinerary and saw we would be visiting Anne Frank's home, I was so excited. I've always wanted to see it and couldn't wait to walk through those rooms and imagine what life must have been like for the Franks, the Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer. You're not allowed to take photographs inside the house and museum, but the tour was pretty amazing. It's a one-way, self-guided walk through the home, and you actually walk through the hidden passageway behind the bookcase. The home has been emptied of most furniture but still gives you a good idea of how life was. What does remain in the house, however, are Anne's hauntingly innocent photos of celebrities, places she loved and other trinkets that she had pasted up onto the walls of her bedroom. At the end of the tour, a special exhibit is set up to show you her actual diaries. In the exhibit there is a terribly sad video in which Otto Frank states that he realized by reading Anne's diaries after the war that he never really knew his daughter as well as he thought he did, that none of us will ever really know our children as well as we think we do. It was a sobering, amazing experience to be inside the secret Annex.

After our heavy tour, we got to lighten things up a bit with a fun canal cruise. We learned all about Amsterdam on the cruise and had a chance to take lots of pictures. Ever since I've been small I have loved a good boat ride, and this was no exception. It was a great way to spend the early afternoon.

Our tour guide telling us about Amsterdam. Behind her
is the side of the row of buildings in which the Anne
Frank House sits. 

One thing we learned was that the houses are too narrow
for large furniture to be brought up through the doorways
and steps, so these hooks are building on most of the
buildings. You can lower the hook, then hoist up your
furniture and bring it into your house through the large
windows. Just one of the many clever things we learned
about the Dutch people and their resourcefulness. 

Amsterdam is all canals with incredibly gorgeous, tall, narrow canal houses.

This is the type of boats that take you on canal rides.

The view from inside our boat.

Bikes are a VERY BIG DEAL in Amsterdam. There are literally thousands
of bikes all over the city. I got a kick out of these floating bike racks. 

I also loved seeing all the neat old boats tied up along the canals.
So many of them had fabulous names, too.

Later in the afternoon, we had some free time. So naturally, my parents and I decided to head out to the Red Light District. You just cannot visit a place like Amsterdam without at least a quick walk through this seedy part of the city that has made is so famous. However, all three of us found the district to be quite depressing, actually, and didn't end up spending much time there (well, clearly we wouldn't have anyways...). But we did have one humorous encounter with two nightclub bouncers who offered us a "family discount" so that my parents could take me into the club and give me "a proper Dutch education." Umm, no thanks, but thanks for the laugh!  :)

On our way back to the boat, we stopped at a little bar for a quick pint of Heineken, which was originally brewed in Amsterdam. But that's as wild as we got in terms of trying out the local delicacies of Amsterdam, and we are all just fine with that. 

Where we stopped for a pint.

Mom sensibly ordered a small one. Being a lush, I needed the big one.

Home Sweet Home

The next morning we were up bright and early for another full day exploring Holland. This morning, we went straight to the Keukenhof Gardens, the world's largest flower garden. It is famous for its amazing floral displays, gorgeous gardens, and great tulip bulbs that are raised there and sold all over the world. Ordinarily, Keukenhof would be an explosion of color in April with thousands of tulips springing to life all over the grounds, but unfortunately the crazy long and late winter we've had has changed all that. We didn't actually get to see any tulips planted in the ground outside, but we did see some other flowers trying to awaken and eventually we saw plenty of Holland's famous tulips inside the giant greenhouse on the grounds. 

The tulip fields driving into Keukenhof

Come on, tulips! Grow! 

There's a British flag in the middle of the entrance because each year,
Keukenhof has a new country theme, and this year it was Great Britain.

Strolling around the grounds.  

Dad looks a bit like a gnome

My turn!

We were just a little too early to see it all blooming, but with a little
imagination, we could picture it in our minds.

Inside the huge greenhouse were all sorts of gorgeous flowers
and floral displays/arrangements.

It was gale-force winds outside but I had to walk over
to the windmill. In fact, anytime I found a windmill
in Holland, I just had to go see it.

One more pair of giant wooden shoes!

Another building showcased all the special flower arrangements and scenes set up to celebrate
Great Britain. The displays were lovely and creative. We definitely enjoyed checking them all out.

Dad trying to be a secret agent

I'm pretty excited on the drums, but Dad isn't really feeling the guitar.

Lovely mummy 

They had also planted this neat flower bed in the shape of the
Tower Bridge and Big Ben. It was too early to really get a feel for how
it would look, but use your imagination. :)

Another successful day!

Duckies hiding in the baby daffodils 

My mother is a cheese-making genius, so it seemed fitting to take
a quick pic outside the cheese shop.

Aren't they cute? 

How many hundreds of wishes have you made on a dandelion? 

This piece of Dutch apple pie was seriously the true highlight of the afternoon. I'm a sucker for good
apple pie, and the Dutch have put their own twist on my favorite dessert. YUM! 

Our next stop was the Zaanse Schans, a neat, old-fashioned, recreated Dutch village set up for tourists. A first-class tourist trap for some, but a wondrous playground full of windmills and fabulous shopping for me! I loved it! We learned about how the Dutch make cheese, then went inside a real working windmill, and finally ended our tour at a shoe shop where a local boy showed us how wooden shoes are made. Then, of course, it was time to shop, and oh were there treasures to be found! 

Isn't it neat! And such a gorgeous day! 

The cheese demo 

This is the windmill we visited and saw inside.

The windmill owner telling us how it works. 

Grinding up rocks into paint powder.

Fake cheese! :)

Wooden shoe demo

Wood blocks waiting to be turned into fabby shoes

Wooden shoe art

After a busy afternoon, we were all half frozen and totally tired. I managed to stay awake on the bus ride back to the ship though, and I enjoyed seeing the houses and settlements we passed along the way.

And back home to our ship

Our final day in Holland was Saturday April 6. And today were signed up for the World War II tour and trip to Arnhem's airborne museum. It was a heavy, depressing day, but such a powerful learning experience as well. Prior to this day, I didn't know anything about the terrible battle of Arnhem named Operation Market Garden, and now I'm so glad I do. Operation Market Garden was the largest airborne operation in Europe during WWII. It was intended to liberate the Netherlands but ended in tragic losses for the allied forces, particularly for the British. 

We started our tour up on a bluff overlooking the bridge that the allies
we're trying to capture from the Germans. This bluff is where the Germans
were positioned, so tragically, when the allied forces came through the
valley, it was a total slaughter. This high point advantage also meant
the allied men who dropped in from the gliders into the surrounding
countryside and then had to hike in were terribly easy targets. It was
almost like a trap. The original bridge was destroyed in the war, so this
is the reconstructed bridge. But the batter of Arnhem and this bridge
were made famous in the film "A Bridge Too Far."

Our next stop was this church in Arnhem where the allies set up a base
camp and also treated the wounded.

See all the bullet holes?

Here's our guide explaining the way the soldiers moved through the land.

This house is right next to the church, and the people who lived here
were great help. When they could, they provided food and supplies to
allied troops in the church. 

A Bridge Too Far

Then we visited the sobering Battle of Arnhem cemetery. Each
year, the local school children come out to the cemetery and clean all
of the graves. The people of Arnhem still remember the sacrifices that were
made on their behalf, and it is important to them to show respect and
 remembrance for the men who gave their lives trying to liberate this town.
All three of us were deeply moved by this.

All the men were so young...

For every identified grave, there were at least two
unidentified graves. I found this particularly emotional.

The our last stop was the Airborne Museum, which was really well put
together. You start out watching a video that explains the operation's
objectives and purpose, and then how everything went wrong. After that,
you are explore the museum's different artifacts and exhibits. Then you end
your visit in the basement where they've recreated the battle. 

The soldiers were so confident they would be successful. 

When the British and the rest of the allied forces landed, the Dutch people
really thought they were liberated. They celebrated and we so happy.
Unfortunately, things didn't go according to plan.

Pictures of the initial landing of the troops. You can see how happy the
people are, thinking they are finally going to be free again.

This is the beginning of the part of the museum where the recreated the
battle. There's artifacts, recreations, sounds of explosions, lights
and photographs that all make you feel like you're really right there.

Inside a glider

The back of the museum

The bridge

After another long morning, with our hearts feeling a bit too heavy, we headed back to our boat. Our visit in Holland was lovely. It's certainly a place deep with history and culture that we'd only begun to explore. And it's definitely a place I'd love to visit again.