Here are some of our favorite photos from the trip (each photo is a thumbnail linked to a higher quality picture.):
52) Kröller-Müller Museum, Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe, Otterlo, Netherlands, May 18, 2024 - We woke up this morning in Nijemegen in the Netherlands. When we booked this cruise six months ago the schedule was to stop in Arnheim but by Spring the itinerary had been changed to take the Waal through the Netherlands and stop in Nijmegen instead. Jonna and I had already made plans of things to do in the Arnheim area - me bringing my Dad to the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek to learn about the battle during Operation Market-Garden during WWII and Jonna to show my Mom and our friends Tracy and Bill the Krüller-Müller art museum in Deg Hoge Veluwe National Park so the change of docking required some transportation logistics on our part. After breakfast on the boat we headed out to where Jonna had arranged for a round-trip taxi to the art museum. Meanwhile, my Dad and I called for an Uber to bring is to the Airborne Museum. Both of us had delays but ultimately both of our trips were successful. The group going to Krüller-Müller were impressed with the incredible collection as well as the expansive outdoor sculpture garden.
53) Kröller-Müller Museum, Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe, Otterlo, Netherlands, May 18, 2024 - Despite it being mid-morning on a weekend there weren't many people at the museum so Jonna got to wander around the sculpture gardens basically alone while the others went through the indoor collection.
54) Kröller-Müller Museum, Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe, Otterlo, Netherlands, May 18, 2024 - The art on display outside is just as lavish and impressive at the fabulous paintings inside. Once they were finished at the museum they had a smooth trip back and were on time so a very successful morning despite us going off the cruise company’s script.
55) Airbornemuseum Hartenstein (Airborne Museum at Hartenstein), Oosterbeek, Netherlands, May 18, 2024 - The Airborne Museum had a small collection of artifacts but had two main things going for it. The first is that the museum is housed in the Hartenstein Hotel which was the building the British 1st Airborne used as their headquarters during the battle. Second, the basement of the building (which had been the medical center in 1944) has been turned into a set of three life-sized room dioramas: 1) a landing zone with parachuters and gliders and light equipment. 2) a representation of downtown Arnheim at the northern end of the bridge over the Rhine. 3) the battlefield just outside the Hartenstein Hotel on the final day of the battle. The dioramas were enhanced with video screens, lighting effects and surround sound. Very impactful! We had pre-arranged our return trip so that went smoothly and got us back to the boat with 10 minutes to spare.
56) Uniworld "River Queen", Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 18, 2024 - While we were galavanting around Joyce and Debbie did the tour of Het Loo Palace offered by the cruise itinerary. This lavish palace was once among the richest in Europe and is over-flowing with decorations and gardens. It is definitely on my "to do" list if we ever make it back to the area. Once back we had lunch and while we were eating the ship cast off and resumed our trip down stream. We all took a rest break for the mid-afternoon and then met back up in the evening to enjoy the lovely scenery in the Netherlands and to do our own vinegar tasting with a sampler pack Debbie had bought when they visited a vinegar brewery back in Speyer. We had dinner in the evening just as we cruised by a sunset lit Amsterdam skyline. During the night we sailed across the IJsselmeer and Wadden Seas to the coastal city of Harlingen.
57) Sloten, Netherlands, May 19, 2024 - Our penultimate day of the cruise was spent out on the edge of the Wadden Sea visiting some of the small towns in the province of Friesland. Our boat docked in the port city of Harlingen and after breakfast we all unloaded to get in buses for a trip to visit to small towns. We had a scenic bus ride during which the excellent guide told us all about how most of the Friesland province is on reclaimed land made over centuries as the Dutch built small dikes that captured mud from tidal action sloshing over the dikes. As the area behind the dikes silted up a larger dike was built to enclose the new land and windmills were built to pump out the water. The process was then repeated continually to project further and further out. Now about 50% of the country is below sea-level but protected by hundreds of kilometers of dikes. We also learned about the Frisian horses, local customs and sporting activities, Dutch history, and more. After a 30 minute drive as stopped at the city of Sloten were we disembarked for a walking tour. This town was cute, cute, cute! Perhaps the most picturesque place we have visited. We made a loop through the narrow lanes and along the main canal with stops to point out various buildings and unique architectural features.
58) Hindeloopen, Netherlands, May 19, 2024 - After a very nice tour we got back on the bus for another 30 minute drive, this time out to the coastal city of Hindeloopen. This was a slightly larger town (population around 900) but being on the shore of the IJsselmeer Lake it is a weekend destination for Dutch cyclists so it was filled with bikes and Dutch locals enjoying the bright sunshine and the sea-side breeze. We again did a walking tour through the town and continued to be impressed with the guide.
59) Hindeloopen, Netherlands, May 19, 2024 - The tour ended on the dike overlooking the IJsselmeer Lake so we got to enjoy the scenic view, soak in a little sunshine and breath some lake air.
60) Harlingen, Netherlands, May 19, 2024 - After about 45 minutes we again boarded the bus and made our way back to Harlingen and the boat for lunch. After lunch we had a couple of hours of free time so Debbie, Bill, Jonna and I walked into Harlingen to check it out. We hit up a grocery store for some snacks (which we’ll need once the cruise is over and we are no longer being continually fed like geese being fattened up for foie gras) and then walked a loop through the city exploring the main tourist street and main canal. Not as charming a town as the two we visited in the morning but still busy with Dutch folks out basking in the sunshine. Shortly after we re-boarded the ship heaved ho and headed for Amsterdam. Everyone settled in for a rest and then some socializing for the evening. We had a celebratory presentation of the crew and then a fancy farewell dinner (despite the fact that we have one more night after we arrive in Amsterdam.) We opted to call it an early evening after dinner and thus skipped a trivia night being held in the main lounge. During the night held station in the IJsselmeer Lake for hours but apparently docked in the Amsterdam tourist port before morning.
61) Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 20, 2024 - This was the last day of our Rhine River cruise and I was now officially sick of it. Or should I say sick from it? No surprise, putting 150 people (100 guests and 50 crew) in a metal box for 10 days will result in a virus running amuck and as the cruise progressed there was more and more coughing and sneezing at each breakfast, lunch, dinner and activity. A few others in our group have had mild symptoms but I appear to be the sacrificial member of our party to get the full blown cold (or at the time we thought perhaps COVID. We eventually found a self-test which removed that concern.) I spent most of the day resting in the room while others were more active. However, I did muster the energy to take a canal cruise where I sat next to an open window in an attempt to not poison the other passengers.
62) Huis Rembrandt, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 20, 2024 - In the afternoon I did a walk through the western part of the old town with Jonna and Bill to visit the Rembrandt House museum. Tracy meet us there so the four of us went into the museum together. The combination of crowded, enclosed space and lots of energy sapping stairs resulting in me calling that short so I could walk back to the ship by myself where I laid down and didn’t get up for the rest of the day. While I was zonked out the rest of our group had a final dinner together.
63) Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 21, 2024 - With the cruise officially over the morning was spent checking out of the boat. We did make a couple of short trips off the boat in order to locate a COVID self-test - they turned out to be surprisingly difficult to find! Debbie and Joyce headed straight for the airport to fly back to the US while the rest of us got a taxi ride across town to the hotel where we would be staying for a couple of days so we could enjoy Amsterdam. After getting settled in at the hotel we walked across the street to Museumplein to grab lunch at one of the food booths there. After lunch I did a short walk with my Mom to orient her and then we all headed back to Hotel Aalders for some more rest. For the afternoon Brenda, Harvey, Tracy and Bill went to the Van Gogh museum. They all commented on how crowded it was but I think they all enjoyed getting to see so many of his paintings in person. Jonna and I had been before so we skipped it and relaxed at the hotel instead. In the evening we went to dinner at a nearby Spanish wine bar called Bramble. A delicious meal and appropriately sized after ten days of massive food portions on the boat. I grabbed my parents at the end of dinner and rushed them onto a tram for the ride across Amsterdam to the Anne Frank House museum. We timed it perfectly because the sky absolutely unloaded with rain the moment the tram arrived so we stepped aboard in the nick of time to avoid being drenched. Unfortunately, our gloating over that was short lived because it was still belting down when we came to our stop which meant two blocks walking in pouring rain. We showed up at the door to the museum drenched like sad puppies. Thankfully, the ushers took pity on my parents and let them in 15 minutes before their scheduled ticket time rather than kicking them to the flooded curb. With my parents settled for an hour I put on my rain gear and headed out to walk the neighborhood. A block away I found a pizza restaurant that was 1) dry 2) warm 3) had an ice cream menu. It was like seeing the clouds part and having the divine light shine down! A cup of hot tea and a triple scoop ice cream sundae was a fine way to pass an hour!
64) Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 22, 2024 - Fortunately, the rain stopped while my parents were in the Anne Frank House so I got to walk around a little and see the canals before it was time to head back to find my Mom and Dad. At 8pm I picked my parents up from the Anne Frank museum and found them both appropriately somber. They were both quite moved. The cool night air combined with wet clothes swayed us to take the tram back to the hotel rather than walking back.
65) Jonge Schaap, Zaanse Schans, Netherlands, May 22, 2024 - When Jonna and I visited Amsterdam last year we visited the Zaanse Schans open air museum and saw (among other things) a re-constructed windmill that was set up as a lumber mill. My father was in the lumber business and ran a family lumber mill for his entire career so I was excited to tell him about the windmill. Needless to say, when we discovered that the Rhine River cruise we were doing would end in Amsterdam getting my Dad out to Zaanse Schans to see the windmill himself was a high priority. So in the morning, after breakfast, he and I jumped in an Uber and got driven out to Zaanse Schans. We weaved our way through all the other buildings in the open air museum and beelined straight to "The Little Sheep" windmill. A big tour was there but moved on quickly leaving us basically alone with the mill and its staff. They gave us a complete demonstration of the mill and talked about how the mill was built using the original plans from a 19th century mill. Fascinating and an engineering geek’s dream - seeing how rotational energy is directed 90 degrees and then converted into reciprocating linear movement. Add in the ship building skills used to physically build and operate the windmill and then the insight into the Dutch lumber industry and we spent nearly an hour there. It was the highlight of this entire trip for my Dad and that made me a very happy son! We then spent about another hour seeing some of the other industries represented in the park - a paint pigment windmill, a cacao shop and a wooden shoe shop. By noon we decided to head back into Amsterdam and to see something different we chose to take the regional bus. The bus went through the housing developments in the town of Zaandam and then into the northern part of Amsterdam. At the Noorderpark station we transferred from the bus to the city metro. We then took that to the Vijzelgracht stop and then started walking the short distance from there to our hotel. Along the way we walked past The Burger Room which is a Wizard of Oz themed fancy burger place. Since it was lunch time we popped in and were immediately seated... just two tables away from where Bill and Tracy were sitting waiting for their lunch. We all had tasty lunches and then returned to the hotel to rest for a bit. While Dad and I were off on our adventure, Mom and Jonna were walking around Amsterdam visiting the Hortus Botanicus botanical garden and The Willet-Holthuysen House canal house museum. They got back in time find us while we were eating lunch. Bill and Tracy were resting and walking around the hotel’s neighborhood for the morning and also ended up returning at the same time. Synchronicity!
66) Moco Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 22, 2024 - After relaxing for a while Mom met up with Jonna and I to do a walk around the Museum Park and neighboring canals just randomly picking a direction and exploring whatever we came upon. The highlight was going through the MoCo Contemporary Art Museum with my Mom and watching her opinion of modern/contemporary art shift as she found some of the artists compelling. We returned to the hotel in time to get ready for dinner. Then all six of us met up in the hotel lobby and walked a couple of blocks to the Sama Sebo Indonesia restaurant. We had tried to eat at this highly rated restaurant when we visited last year but couldn’t get reservations so for this return visit to Amsterdam Jonna got online a few months ago and got us reservations. This restaurant is known for for their Rijsttafel - a fixed price, multi-plate elaborate dinner with more food than the table can actually hold. We managed to negotiate for a Rijsttafel for four people even though there were six of us and it was still way too much food. All the food was delicious and the flavors ran the gamut from sweet to salty to spicy to sour. Veggies in a dozen different forms, bowls of meat in varied sauces, both streamed and fried rice, plus a half dozen bowls of topping like roasted peanuts, coconut, fried shredded sweet potatoes and quickly pickled veggies. Yummy! We strolled back to our hotel via a super-ritzy street and then turned in early. Jonna and I watched some TV I’d downloaded to my tablet and then headed to bed.
67) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 23, 2024 - For our last full day as a group we focused on the amazing Rijksmuseum. After our breakfast at the hotel we all met up in the lobby and walked the three blocks to the museum. We all went in around 10 and had about 1 1/2 hour to look around before a 1 hour guided tour that we had scheduled for 11:30am. We split into pairs to focus on different things during our free time. Bill and Tracy focused on the 1st and 2nd floor. Jonna and Brenda went for a speed walking tour that hit highlights all over the museum. Meanwhile, Harvey and I headed up to the 20th century floor, then circled back to see the master works in the Gallery of Honour and finally went into the 17th century Maritime Gallery.
68) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 23, 2024 - We met up in the lobby at 11:30 where we met up with our guide. The tour was fantastic with the guide giving us fascinating information about the works we saw. Our first stop was at the painting "The Singel Bridge at the Paleisstraat in Amsterdam" by George Hendrik Breitner. Next was a quartet of Vincent Van Gogh paintings. From there we went up to the Great Hall for some background in the architecture and decorative arts in the building. Finally, we entered the Gallery of Honour where we did a survey of the Dutch masters Jan Steen ("The Merry Family", Rembrandt Van Rijn ("The Night Watch", and "The Standard-Bearer") and finally Johannes Vermeer ("The Milkmaid", "Woman Reading A Letter", "The Love Letter" and "The Little Street"). We learned about the techniques, the lives and the impact of these masters. The one hour tour flew past and I was sorry when the guide said the tour was over. We all now had sore feet so we headed to the museum cafe where we got a table and had a light lunch. Even though our tickets were still valid after lunch we decided we were in museum overload so we all headed back to the hotel for a rest break. While the others relaxed I grabbed all the dirty laundry Jonna and I had accumulated. Some web searching turned up a laundromat about 15 minutes away that would do bulk laundry. I walked over and dropped off our bag and for 15€ they will wash, dry and fold our laundry and have it finished in two hours. We knew we wouldn’t be able to pick it up in the evening but did do so the next morning. I got back to the hotel just as everyone started moving again so I was right back out the door as soon as I walked in. Bill and Tracy headed to the MoCo modern art museum while the rest of us re-traced our steps through the Museum Park. This time it was my Dad and I walking with Jonna and my Mom to the canal in front of the Rijksmuseum. We put them on a canal cruise (this time on an open topped boat, unlike the boat we’d taken as our final activity of the Rhine River Cruise.)
69) Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam (Museum of WWII Resistance), Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 23, 2024 - With Mom and Jonna busy for the next hour my Dad and I hopped a tram to the eastern side of Amsterdam where we visited the Verzetsmuseum (Museum of WWII Resistance). This museum is really well organized and focuses mainly on individual stories and has items on display that are tied specifically to these individual stories. The only downside is that the time needed to read and/or hear all of these stories. We were in the museum for two hours and were basically pushed out when it closed at 5pm while we still had about four rooms left to visit. I had visited this museum last year but having more time to deep dive meant I still found the visit meaningful. I think my Dad was impressed as well and was moved by many of the stories. What had been tired legs after the morning in the art museum we were definitely dragging after going to, going through and returning from the Verzetsmuseum.
70) Bramble Mediterranean Brasserie, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 23, 2024 - Unfortunately, we walked into the hotel with only five minutes to spare before re-gathering our group to walk to dinner. We made a 20 minute stroll through the upscale residential neighborhood to the southwest of the Museum Park to the Lillie wine bar. We settled in for a relaxed meal with lots of shared tapas, delicious light meals and an interesting selection of drinks. Lots of stories were exchanged, much good food was eaten and a good time was generally had by all. Bill, Jonna and I walked back while the others got an Uber. We stopped into a grocery store to buy Stroppwafels for my Mom which we had somehow managed to avoid for the past four days. We got back to the hotel just as my feet started waving the white flag.
71) Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 24, 2024 - This was our last day in Amsterdam and the schedule for the day was built around when each of our three couples was heading to the airport. The first scheduled departure was Bill and Tracy who needed to leave by 7:30am so we all met up for breakfast at 7am to say our farewells. As soon as we waved them off Jonna and I went out to walk a bit before we could pick up our laundry at 9am. We wandered the quiet streets where still water perfectly reflected the bridges over the canals, where street sweepers cleaned the relatively empty roadways and where giant trash trucks somehow squeezed past restaurant awnings, rows of parked bicycles and metal posts designed to keep cars from parking on the sidewalks. After a few lazy loops around the nearby blocks we returned to find the laundry mat’s door open so we could collect our clothes. With that task done we quickly returned to the hotel just in time to pack our bags and get down to the lobby to say our goodbyes to my parents. We all agreed it was a fun trip together and gave each other big goodbye hugs. As soon as they were in their Uber and out of sight we went back into the hotel to check out of our room and to store our bags in the hotel’s luggage room. We had six free hours before we needed to head to the airport and didn’t intend to waste that time! Our first destination was the FOAM Photography Museum. We made that 15 minute walk and arrived just before it opened. There was a big group of middle school students, apparently on a field trip, waiting to enter but fortunately the teacher waved us to the front. As soon as the doors unlocked we beelined for the main exhibition - Janette Beckman’s "Rebels: An Ode To The Subversives, Revolutionaries And Provocateurs". This was an amazing collection of photos focusing on various musical counter cultures including the 1970s and 1980s punk scene in London, then the hip-hop scene in New York City in the mid-1980s, then U.S. urban gang cultures in the 1990s and in the 2000s. The final part were incredible photos from U.S. protests over the past five years including from the "Pussy Hat" marches, BLM protests, Asian Equality marches and all the way up to recent Palestinian Peace protests. So many of the photos from this exhibit were fantastic! In stark contrast to the main exhibit, the second show on display was a set of videos in a highly decorated room by the artists Jakob Ganslmeier and Ana Zibelnik called "GIGA". These videos were collections of Television, YouTube, hand-held camera and historical video clips showing the racist "dog whistles", White Supremacy propaganda and violence influence campaigns being used by worldwide far right movements. Some of the videos also mirrored current videos next to 1930’s Nazi propaganda films which was particularly chilling having just recently visited three different WWII museums. We left FOAM with a heavy heart after seeing such a powerful exhibit. We headed to our next destination, the Huis Marseille Photography Museum, hoping for some lighter images. We were perhaps too successful in that respect. After another 15 minutes walking, now getting busier as the bustle of Friday morning picked up, we got to Huis Marseille. There were two different exhibits Deborah Turbeville "Photocollage" and Lisa Oppenheim "Spolia". Both photographers used old techniques like silver plate and gelatin methods - then manipulating the resulting images during development. Deborah Turbeville’s art was made up of complex collages that further used out-of-focus images, torn and clipped prints, sequences of proofs, and other things added to create the final pieces. A few were interesting but most of it didn’t do much for me. Lisa Oppenheim’s pieces were more conceptual as she got a catalog of art that was stolen from Dutch collectors by Nazis during the German occupation in WWII but that was ultimately lost. She then created art reminiscent of the missing pieces which are then photographed and the resulting negatives are highly modified and even developed with flickering flames to create color negative silver prints. The first few were interesting but it was sort of a one-note act and a situation where the descriptions (talking about the history of the missing originals) ended up being more interesting than the art derived from the concept. Still we always like seeing new things and it was a suitable palate cleanser after the brutal videos from FOAM.
72) Houseboat Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 24, 2024 - One of the reasons we were visiting so many museums was that we'd purchased an IAmsterdam card which was valid for 72 hours. During that window entrance to many of the cities museums, as well as use of the public transportation system, was free. As we left Huis Marseillis we looked at the IAmsterdam map and realized there was another museum just a block away that where we had free entrance. Why not? The museum is the Amsterdam Houseboat Museum which is built on the "Hendrika Maria" a early 20th century cargo ship. Inside the boat has been remodeled to represent typical decorations of a few different eras of houseboat living in Amsterdam. It didn't take long to go through the museum (it is, after all, only as big as a canal boat) but it was interesting and fun.
73) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 23, 2024 - By now it was lunch so we found a grocery store where we bought some picnic food. With our snacks in hand we walked back to the Rijksmuseum and found an empty bench in the outdoor sculpture garden where we ate while enjoying medieval statues and spring flowers. As we ate our last bites it started to sprinkle so we headed for the museum entrance. Last night Jonna had gotten online and purchased afternoon tickets for the Frans Hals special exhibit at the Rijksmuseum. Because we had those tickets we could get into the Rijksmuseum early so we took advantage of that opportunity to see the "Express Yourself" photo collection which included photos by two photographers Gerard Wessel and André Bogaerts. André Bogaerts’ photos were portraits of middle school students in the 1980’s talking about their fashion choices. Gerard Wessel also shot portraits but his were of the underground party scene in The Netherlands during the 1990s. We both enjoyed these though I think our favorite photos of the day were the Rebels in Janette Beckman’s collection back at FOAM. We still had a few minutes before we could enter the special exhibit so we found a museum cafe where we could get something to drink. Finally, it was time for our last art experience for the day. Last year we lucked into the incredible Vemeer special exhibition so we had high expectations. Once again the Rijksmuseum delivered. Nothing can truly match up to Vermeer but Frans Hals art turned out to be more fascinating than I was expecting. His work is a contrast of highly detailed clothing and props contrasted with impressionistic faces done with short visible brush strokes. Surprisingly this results in a portrait that feels more "real" and life-like. I left with an appreciation of Frans Hals work that I didn’t have before. With our clock running out we high-tailed it back to the hotel to collect our luggage and then to a bus stop in order to catch the regional bus to the airport. This was the official end of the Rhine River Cruise trip and the start of our next adventure - two weeks in Portugal.
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