Netherlands

Good day, and thank you for joining us. 

On Monday, August 18, we arrived in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. We were very excited about our visit. The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular always seem so mystical. Land of bicycled and windmills. Peace, love, dope. What could possibly go wrong?

So the Netherlands’ official name is “the Kingdom of the Netherlands”, but they prefer to be called “the Netherlands”.

In 2020, the country dropped their nickname “Holland”, which had been used throughout history. Apparently, Holland is two “provinces”.  North Holland is in Amsterdam, the country’s capital, and South Holland is in the Hague, the country’s where their government offices are. They dropped the nickname to encourage tourism to the other parts of the country. 

The name Netherlands translates to “low lands” and is a reference to much of the  country being below sea level. We probably all remember the story from our childhood. Hans Brinker in Mary Mapes Dodge’s novel The Silver Skates was the tale of a little boy saving the town when he stuck his finger in the hole in the dike when it sprung a leak. (My apologies to all. I incorrectly referenced this book in a previous post. It turns out I don’t know my Dutch from Denmark stories…)

While the Netherlands is said to have 18 million citizens, it is rumored that they have significantly more bicycles than people. So many in fact that Amsterdam has several (bicycle only) parking garages with 8,000 parking spaces each. But wait! That’s not all. Their city of Utrecht has the world’s largest, boasting 12,000 spaces. These are on multiple levels too, with bike escalators and other cool features. 

There are so many bicycles, many major streets have more bicycle lanes than car lanes. Some intersections even feature special traffic lights specifically designed to prioritize bicycle traffic over automobiles. 

Of course the down side is, like other recently visited European countries, bicyclists are known to be super aggressive and somewhat rude. (Presumably, unicyclists are only half as aggressive…)
😉

So if you have ever forgot where you parked your car before, think how easy you found it compared to having to peruse 12,000 bicycles. I can visualize it now.  “No problem sir. We can help you locate it. What kind of bicycle do you drive?”  “Uhhh. A blue one, I think.”
🙂

So the city of the Hague sounds pretty cool. It is where the king lives, and is home to their Parliament and the United National’s International Criminal Court. Although it has limited jurisdiction, it prosecutes crimes related to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Cases are directed to the court through the United Nations. Interesting stuff. 

So our trip was to only take us to Amsterdam. We were especially excited about taking a tour on the canals, taking photographs of the windmills, and visiting the Anne Frank House. 

Also, this is the land of the famed wooden shoes. I recall from my childhood that my grandparents had a pair of bright yellow wooden carved shoes that we would play with as kids. (Presumably, my  grandfather brought these back with him when he returned from WWII.) 

It always sounded so exciting to play with them, but when it was my turn, I realize quickly that there is only one pair. With 6 or 8 other siblings and cousins, it was not so much being the only one wearing wooden shoes, and you couldn’t keep up so good with the other kids running about. Luckily, I was the oldest, and first to outgrow them… 

So, we were super disappointed when the captain announced a few days ago that we were skipping our day in Bergen, Norway in order to head to Amsterdam a day early. This rescheduling was due to some “civil unrest” taking place in Amsterdam, which was a major port stop, with hundreds of guests getting off (and catching flights home) and hundreds more coming aboard. So from the RCCL perspective, skipping Amsterdam was not an option, and they expressed concerns in delays in docking at the port. The trade off was that we would have an overnight stopover. 

So on a side note, lots of folks asking about our secret travel tools that allow us to travel like a pro, and can perform double duty in a compact form factor. 

Lots of travel tools I could tell you about, but this one is one of our most used. It fits all sizes, US and metric, and aids in my daily workout. (I tend to vary my conditioning between 12 and 24 ounce curls, alternating to metric sizes when the opportunities arise.  

And this whole time, you thought vacation was all fun and games…

Amsterdam receives over 4,000 tourist ships per year. We were certain they were going to be very excited to welcome our humble little posey of 1,500 or so travelers. 

Sorry, can’t tap dance around it any longer. In keeping with my upbeat blogging demeanor, I am going to be brief, and only say that the Amsterdam’s politics and protesters made visiting their city brief and highly undesirable.

We had pre-paid for a ship excursion to tour the canals. My visit was limited to this three hour tour.  Ms. Karen opted to not get off the ship at all. 

Only steps from the cruise terminal was the canal and their special tour boats designed specifically for the very shallow canals. 

Named after the Amstel river that runs through the city, the city damed the river, creating the canals in the 1300s.  Second only to Cape Coral, Florida, the city of Amsterdam has the second most canals in the world. 

While their canals are picturesque, they have not maintained the walls for the last 100 years. This is causing lots of problems. 

While only 10 feet deep, their  160 canals traverse  through 60 miles, and under some 1,000 bridges. Some of the bridges even have traffic lights. 

Many canals have neighborhoods lined with houseboats. Ironically, renting the houseboats is relatively inexpensive when compared to nearby apartments and hotels, but the licenses that allow the boats to park along the canals are so expensive that they rarely become available for purchase. 

Speaking of neighborhoods, at least along the canals, virtually all houses like apartments. Most are colorful, narrow 3 or 4 story buildings, touching the neighboring buildings on either side. While the front side is generally a sidewalk butted up against a narrow road overlooking the shallow canals, the tour guide indicated that nearly all of them have fabulous back yards with lush gardens and such. 

We passed by the famed Anne Frank house. Ironically, though the tours were sold out a well over a month in advance, the house and the adjoining museum appeared to be virtually empty. (I guess other tourist aren’t feeling the love either.)

So I have always had strong feelings regarding the story of Anne Frank. I was very disappointed to have missed the opportunity to visit the site, but it was just not to be. I was great full to at least be able to see the outside of the house and the surrounding neighborhood, and to hear a brief history from the guide as we passed. 

There was one part of town that was very exclusive. While they looked a bit bigger than the other houses along the way, these fancy dwellings were said to have up to 40 rooms, and to have stables and huge gardens in their backyards. The guide indicated that, while these had been the homes of the elite, they were now primarily the headquarters of multinational corporations and the likes.

One notable feature of the nicer neighborhoods was the name plaques on the homes. Until Neapoliann invaded in the early 1800s, houses, all houses had plaques with the owner’s family name. This served as the address for the house. 

The story of Napoleon invading Amsterdam is interesting. One positive thing he did was to introduced house numbers to Amsterdam. While it stuck, and spread world wide (viva la France!) the wealthy were allowed to also leave their plaques on the house. They were very beautiful, and are still there. 

The plaques contain the occupant’s family name, and that was also considered the houses address. Ironically, most of the city’s residents were not wealthy, and in fact did not event have a family name. Napoleon issued a mandate that everyone was to select a last name. He gave them just over two years to do so. The rest of the story is a little vague, but I assume some folks must have struggled with this dilemma. Perhaps that is where John Jacob got his last name. “John James. If you haven’t selected a surname by January 1, 1814, France will assign you the name Jingleheimer Schmidt! N’est-ce pas?”

The canal cruise was very nice.  Sadly, I returned to the ship without visiting the windmills or the Anne Frank house. Luckily, I was able to spend the remainder of the day with my favorite person in the world. To distract us from our distractions, Karen and I treated ourselves to the onboard sushi restaurant for dinner that evening. 

While it too some 18 hours to sail through the locks to enter the city, it was only a half-hour ordeal to get through them on our way out. It is noteworthy to mention the several hour (20 mile) waterway between the locks and the town of Amsterdam. As you leave the city, the area alongside the canal becomes increasingly more industrial the further you get out of town. They are definitely into efficiency and producing energy. 

In addition to recycling and industrial shipping yards, there were many piles of coal, sand, gravel, and asphalt along the way, with permanent, specially designed cranes overhead for loading and unloading barges. Even more prominent were the never-ending industrial windmills and coal burning electric generation plants. Not to mention that every industrial building had solar panels on the roof. 

In some places, these scenes played out as far as you could see to the horizon, on both resides of the canal. Several times I noted that from my vantage point from our balcony, I could make out hundreds is gleaming solar panels many, many dozens of windmills, and 2 or 3 coal burning plants, each with 2 or 3 smoke stacks. I could not quite put my finger on it, but it reminded me of some long ago read work of dystopian fiction. 

Leaving Amsterdam, we were able to sail very close to Scotland. Very beautiful cliffs. Although this journey did not have a stoppage in Scotland, we were very grateful to view it as we sailed by. 

Next stop, several days in Iceland. While that is another story, I promise it will be a much more upbeat story than today’s. 

Thank you visiting amigos. 
– Mike
“Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us.” – Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl