Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1 – In Search Of Tulips & Windmills: Zeeland (May 4, 2026)

Where We Spend The Day Learning About The Flood Of 1953

And The Netherlands Water Management System

What I really like about this itinerary is how well it’s covered the whole of the Netherlands. Previously, I’ve only been to Amsterdam and Kinderdijk. Today we were in the southern part of the Netherlands.

A good chunk of the Netherlands is below sea level. Over the centuries they’ve figured out an extensive water management system that is mostly made up of dikes. Dikes are constructed using dirt facing the dry side and layers of sand and rocks facing the water side. BTW, the difference between a dam and a dike is: a dam has water on both sides, and a dike has water on side and dry land on the other.

In 1953, there was a literal perfect storm on January 31 into February 1 in the Zeeland, the southern part of the Netherlands. All the water management systems failed, causing a huge flood that destroyed everything in its path, including over 1800 people. This is known as the North Sea Flood. The devastation was so great, to this day people refer to “before flood” and “after flood” times.

Our excursion ticket just mentioned visiting the Flood Museum (the Dutch are not creative when naming things). Turned out we had two more stops.- which made sense, because we couldn’t figure out what would take us 5 hours at a flood museum.

The museum’s building itself is made up of the 5 original caissons used to stop the flooding at this particular spot. For all the other dike breaches, repairing the dike fixed the problem, but the damage was so great in this location that fixing the dikes wasn’t even an option. Caissons – huge, hollow, concrete boxes – were shipped from the UK to the Netherlands and lowered into the dike breaches to stop the flooding. Years later, after new water management engineering was installed, it was decided to turn the caissons into a museum of the 1953 flood. The museum’s interior is a path through all 5 caissons.

This is the entrance to the museum via the first caisson

The destruction was so complete, the outside world wasn’t aware of the situation for 2 days. Someone rigged together a radio out of odds-and-ends to send an SOS.

Most of the museum contained artifacts from people impacted by the flood – both survivors and non-survivors.

The dress below was the wedding dress of a woman who died in the flood with her 2 year-old child. Her husband survived and kept it stored away in an attic. Her husband remarried and had another family. Years after her husband passed away, his children found his first wife’s dress and donated it to the museum.

Woman made this dress herself for her wedding day but died in the flood with her 2 year old daughter. Her husband kept the dress and years later his children from 2nd wife donated it to the museum

There were several memorials throughout the museum. This memorial listed all the names of the victims moving in a continuous loop – the names appear to flow on the waves of the water.

There was a multi-screen film with clips of the flood itself – most of it was hand-held/shaky camera footage, which tends to trigger my motion sickness, so we didn’t watch it.

This monument was just outside the exit of the museum:

Once back on the bus, we headed to the town of Zierikzee. I’ve already forgotten how to pronounce it. This was a little bit of a surprise, because our ticket nor the excursion description mentioned anything about a walking tour.

It’s a very old and cute little town, with a city gate as a remnant of the city wall. The town dates back to the 1400s. It is far enough inland that it did not flood in 1953. There was a cute gift shop, and the weather was beautiful.

Our next “surprise” stop was a photo op by the water. We drove across the Zeeland Bridge, which is 5km long (3.1 miles).

From this vantage point, we had a good view of the Storm Surge Bridge. Each segment of this bridge has a door that can be lowered in 70 minutes to stop the flow of water from the sea to the interior. The Storm Surge Bridge is 8 km long. I remember the tour guide saying that the last time it was used was 1986.

This is a close up of one of the segments. You can see how close the bridge is to the water and how the door would lower if needed.

The doors come down in 75 minutes during a storm surge 1986 built

We were standing directly underneath some wind turbines. It was cool to see them spin up close.

On the way back to the ship, we drove across the Storm Surge Bridge.

We were back at the ship by 1:30, just in time for lunch. The ship set sail a little after 2:00 p.m. to head back to Amsterdam. The adventure is almost over!

Tomorrow: The pièce de résistance: Keukenhof Gardens and the end of the tulip season!

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: Middelburgh & Bruges – May 3, 2026

Where We Spend The Day In Medieval Bruges And Manage To Not Buy Any Souvenirs

Yesterday’s optional (i.e. paid for) tours of Brussels and Antwerp were rated as “Moderate”, and they were – lots of walking and lots of cobblestones. Typically the included excursions (i.e. “free”) have a “leisure” group for the moderate tours. The “leisure” group walks more slowly and avoids steps, which sometimes means that some parts of the excursion aren’t visited. But that’s ok – the goal is to maximize my experience within my physical limitations.

So I’d been a little concerned about the “Medieval Bruges” excursion ever since we booked it months ago. There would be no getting around hours of cobblestones and trying to keep up.

To our surprise, there was a “leisure” group for “Medieval Bruges”! What a relief.

One thing about the leisure groups is discovering there are people on the ship who have worse mobility problems than I do. Suddenly I’m the speedster!

It was a 90 minute drive from Middelburg to Bruges, raining most of the way. At least I remembered to bring a rain jacket. The tour guide who was with us on the bus would not be the guide for the leisure group – he would meet us at Bruges. I asked the bus tour guide if there would be a bathroom break when we arrived in Bruges, considering it’s a 90 minute drive. I felt like he looked at me like I had 2 heads and 4 arms. He said I should ask our Bruges tour guide. Ok? Why was this a big deal?

When we arrived at the bus parking in Bruges, there was a public bathroom right there at the information center, something the bus tour guide surely knew. So he could have said, “Sure, it’s not a problem – there’s a public bathroom at the bus parking.” As we were exiting the bus, he kept mentioning that everybody should let their tour guid know if they need to use the bathroom before the tour started. I felt like I was in kindergarten.

Amazingly enough, there was a long line at the bathroom, because the majority of the people on the three buses were standing in it.

Our little leisure group had a couple of us with mobility aids (me with my chair and a guy with a rollator). Plus we had a few people who just needed to walk slowly. Many hearing aids, including our tour guide, which meant quite a bit of repetition of questions, answers, and instructions – the tour guide to us and from us to the tour guide, because he definitely didn’t hear well, even with the hearing aids. Or maybe he was just ignoring some of the questions, who knows.

The first story he told was the legend of Minna and Stromberg: young lovers who weren’t allowed to marry, because Minna’s father wanted her to marry someone else. When Stromberg went off to war, Minna’s father forced to marry the other guy. So she ran away from home. Her lover Stromberg found her in the woods, dying. He buried her in the woods, and created a dam on the river creating the Minnewater or Lovers Lake.

After we crossed the bridge into medieval Bruges, the tour guide talked about a community of lay women living a religious life called beguins. The beguinage in Brussels was started in 1276 and lasted until 1976. The women were all unmarried and had to work to earn their keep, but were free to go at any time – most of the time they left when they were married.

The conversation about the Beguins was almost circular. The guide explained that the women were lay women who wanted to live a holy life, but didn’t want to be nuns forever, they worked for a living and left if/when they got married. Possibly because there were photos of the women dressed in their Sunday clothes that looked like a nun’s habit, there were people in our group (most of them) who kept referring to beguins as “nuns” and couldn’t figure out how nuns could get married or why they had jobs. The tour guide became a little frustrated after a while, and we just had to move on to the next thing.

Which wasn’t easy because we kept passing by beguinage buildings that, of course, triggered another round of explanations as to what a beguin was. Then someone asked why there weren’t anymore beguins (the community closed with the death of the last beguin in 1976), and the circular conversation started again, only this time it included the apparently confusing fact that women no longer have an interest in being sequestered in a lay holy community.

Pasterie van de Begijnhofparochie – entrance to the beguinage

The next story involves why there are swans in Bruges.

Though most likely swans have always been in the area, these are the key points of the story (per Google):

Maximilian of Austria was imprisoned in Bruges by local townspeople. He witnessed the torture and execution of his advisor, Pieter Lanchals, who was despised by the locals.
In retaliation, Maximilian forced the city to maintain the “long necks” (swans) on the canals for eternity (note: the Lanchals’ family crest was a white swan)
According to the legend, if the swans die or leave the city, it will face ruin; therefore, the city takes good care of the swans.

As we were walking by, a swan keeper drove up in a small truck, came out and picked up a swan and put it in the truck. The consensus was that the swan was sick and the keeper was bringing it in for a physical exam.

As we continued to sloowwwwly walk our way towards the town square, our tour guide talked a lot about chocolate: there are 65 chocolate shops in Bruges, and 5 of them are professional chocolate makers (i.e. they make their chocolate on the premises of the store).

We stopped by a lace store with a lace bobbin display in the window

I would have liked to have gone back to this store, but we didn’t have enough time. And I’m not sure I’d be able to find it again, anyway.

As we continued to stroll, the conversation shifted as to whether or not a canal ride was included (it was not), and how one would go about doing the canal ride (there’s 5 different canal ride companies within a couple of minutes of each other), but why wasn’t it included in the program (because it’s not, but you can do it on your own, keeping in mind there’s a wait for some of them and you have to take that into account to make sure you arrive at the meeting point on time), followed by questions regarding the meeting point (we haven’t gotten there yet), and most confusing of all: because we’re the “leisure” group, Viking will arrange for taxis to take us back to the bus, but we have to pay for the taxis.

Resulting in a new circular conversation about the taxis – who will call the taxi? (the tour guide) Where will we meet it? (he will show us). Who pays for it (we do). Why doesn’t Viking pay for it? (because it’s not included). What if I don’t have any euros? (we’ll figure it out).

It didn’t help that the tour guide kept waffling between one big taxi for all of us (which Andy and I didn’t see how that would work with two mobility devices), or two taxis for two sets of 4 people.

Which somehow lead us back to the canal boat ride conversation. It’s amazing we made it to the town square at all.

Things we saw along the way.

We finally made it to the meeting spot 3 hours after we left the bus parking lot. The regular tour did it in two hours. We now had 2 hours of free time.

For Andy and myself, that was sufficient time to eat lunch and take a canal boat ride. The company right around the corner from the meeting spot had no wait. We walked right on.

Photos from the canal ride, though I don’t remember what these are in particular. It was hard to understand the boat tour guide/captain over the boat’s motor.

As we walked back around the corner to the meeting spot, the sky opened and it started to pour. The tour guide flagged us down and said we could wait under the overhang instead of at the actual meeting point that was out in the open. He flagged down another couple and had them wait for us while he hunted for the other two couples.

Once all 8 of us were together, the tour guide said he would call the taxi. Once again there was confusion as to who was paying (22 euros for all of us in one cab to be split among us). One person was confused as to why she needed a cab – she said she could walk back! I pointed out it’s 1.5 miles back to the bus in the pouring rain, and we have to be back on the bus by 3:30 p.m. and it’s now 3:10.

But the guy with the rollator didn’t want to get in the minivan cab – I think because of his particular physical issue, it would have been difficult – so we ended up with 4 of us in the minivan and the other 4 in a different cab.

When our cab arrived back at the bus parking lot, our bus was nowhere to be seen. Besides the fact that none of us remembered what the bus looked like.

Never mind – by the time I toddled off to the bathroom and back, the bus had appeared. It was an easy drive back to the ship, which had sailed a few miles on the river from Middelburgh and was now docked in Veere.

A great day, though a bit long, and just a little bit silly. We managed to spend a day in Bruges and not buy any souvenirs.

Tomorrow: Zeeland

Amy & Andy’s Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search Of Tulips & Windmills: May 2 (Antwerp and Brussels)

Where We Have A Very Long Day, Experience the Joy Of Cobblestones (or not), And Successfully Buy A Haul Of Our Favorite Chocolate.

We needed to on the bus by 8:00 a.m., so it was a super early morning. Plus, the river Scheldt is a tidal river at it was low tide. We had to climb up to the sundeck (deck 4) by stairs, because the elevator is only between decks 2 and 3. Andy had to schlep my transport chair up that flight of stairs and down the ramp.

The drive from Antwerp to Brussels is about 45 minutes, and we had a lot to see. Fortunately, because it was Saturday the traffic was minimal.

The first part of the day was a panoramic driving tour of the city.

First we saw the surroundings of the Royal Family. Belgium declared its independence in 1830, followed by the establishment of its constitutional/parliamentary monarchy, when Leopold I became the first King of the Belgians.

Here are some photos of the area around the Royal residence.

This is the Cathedral to St Michael and St. Gudula, which is a mere 800 years old.

Cathedral to St Michael and St Gudula. We didn’t have the opportunity to go in

One thing I noted when we started our walking tour – frequently there will be a “leisure” option for people who need ot or like to take things more slowly. However, that doesn’t usually happen on the optional (paid for) excursions. This Brussels excursion was no exception. When we got off the bus, and the tour guide saw my transport chair, she immediately asked if we would be able to keep up. Yes, yes, we will.

We started walking towards the city center and the central square. There were modern sidewalks before we entered Gallery; the cobblestones started soon after on the other side.

We arrived at the Grand Place – Brussels’ central square. The buildings around the town square included the Town Hall and Guild houses.

Central Square – that’s our tour guide, Kristin, with the red lollipop

Before we had our free time, we went to see the most famous tourist site in all of Brussels: Manneken Pis. I’ve heard about this statue for many years. My expectations were very low. And yet, apparently, they were not low enough. This photo makes the little boy look way, way, way too big. He’s maybe 18″ tall. Apparently he’s sometimes dressed up in costumes, but not this day.

But we had a more important task to do: buy chocolate. We’ve known for many years that the best chocolate brand is Leonidas (pronounced lee-OOH-nee-dahs). We found the nearest Leonidas store and bought a LOT of chocolate.

Then, of course, right after that, a bathroom break was next up on the priority list. We were able to back track to the public bathroom we had stopped at on our way to the Grand Place. By now, it was getting close to the time to meet our tour guide. We figured that the group would have to pass by this particular spot on the way back to the bus. We tried texting the tour guide to let her know, but she didn’t respond. A couple of people from our group were there sharing a Belgian waffle, and they said they would let the tour guide know where we were. And then of course we had to have a Belgian waffle, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of it before we pretty much inhaled it.

We saw a few more interesting buildings as we continued our panoramic drive around Brussels before we headed back to the ship.

This trash bin has the image of St Michael fighting a dragon

We drove by NATO; the last time Andy was there was over 35 years ago. Since then, a new building was built.

Before we returned to the ship, we did a short drive through Antwerp. This is the Antwerp Law Courts building. The structures on the roof represent the paper cones that French fries are served in – even though French fries were really invented in Belgium.

When we returned to the ship, the tide has started to rise, so we were able to board the ship on deck 3 and avoid the extra flight of stairs.

Because our tour of Brussels overlapped the included walking tour of Antwerp, a separate walking tour of Antwerp was set up just for us starting at 3:00 p.m. But – the cathedral would be closing for the day at 3:00 p.m. for mass. Emily said that people who wanted to see the inside of the cathedral could walk with her at 2:00 p.m. We arrived back at the ship at 1:30 p.m.

This extra walk would be too much for me, but Andy went. He spent about 15 minutes (tops) in the cathedral, taking as many photos as he could before he had to leave to come back to the ship to get me to start the walking tour. Apparently there are several paintings by Paul Rubens in the cathedral, but it doesn’t look like he took photos of any of them.

The original floor of the cathedral down in the basement

When Andy came back from the cathedral, we joined the tour guide to begin the walking tour of Antwerp. This was not a “leisurely” version – keeping up was quite a challenge.

It had been arranged to meet some people who went to see the cathedral at a building called The Stone. It’s a medeival fortress and the oldest building in Antwerp. It’s now a visitor center.

This guy is the Lange Wapper Statue, depicting a legendary giant and trickster from Flemish folklore.

As the tour continued, we were climbing up and down stairs and encountering cobblestones before we hardly went anywhere at all.

This is the Butcher’s Hall building. The Butcher’s guild was a very powerful one.

We continued along more cobblestone streets on the way to the city center’s main square. Our tour guide told us the story of how Antwerp got its name:

The myth says Silvius Brabo killed the nasty giant, cut off his hand and threw it into the Schedlt River. The name “Antwerp” is derived from the Dutch phrase “Hand werpen,” which means to throw a hand. So now you know. The statue in the photo below doesn’t look like it’s in very good shape.

There was another statue of Silvius Brabo throwing the giant’s hand into the river. This one made Brabo look like Lord Farquarh from Shrek.

The myth about the giant said that the only way to escape the giant was to run to stand under a statue of the Virgin Mary, of which there were many scattered on the sides of buildings all over Antwerp.

Antwerp doesn’t lack for churches. This is the Jesuit church.

I think our last stop was in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady, which we don’t seem to have a photo. Maybe this was one too many churches.

However, in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady was this statue in honor of a famous Belgian story, Nello & Patrasche. It’s a very sad story about a boy and his dog, and the boy dies. I’m not clear why this makes for a great story, but here’s the statue.

Fortunately, the walk back to the ship was quick and without cobblestones, except for the very last yards back to the ship. It was amazing, but we had been able to stick with the tour the whole way.

We were exhausted.

Tomorrow: Middelburgh and Bruges

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1 – In Search Of Tulips & Windmills: May 1, 2026

Where We Succeed At Our Second Goal Of Visiting A Working Windmill in Kinderdijk

Today was a weird and confusing day. We had some scenic sailing down a waterway that Google Maps labeled “Waal” on our way to Kinderdijk, where we arrived at 1:00 p.m. We had booked an optional excursion to take a barge down a canal to visit a working windmill. We had done this exact excursion before on the Rhine river cruise a couple of years ago, so we knew what to expect.

This was the view from our veranda for the short time we were in Kinderdijk

The green mound across the water from the ship is the dike.

We had a short walk from the ship to the Viking-owned barge that would take us to the windmill.

I don’t remember the story behind this weird thing. That’s a cat standing on the front edge (not a real one)

The windmills pump water from the canal with a higher level of water into the canal with a lower water level.

A draw bridge opened for our barge on our way down the canal.

This is the windmill we visited. The blades have steel edges to allow them to spin faster and more efficiently. The miller said the blades can spin as fast as 140 revolutions/hour, but the most efficient speed is about 100 revolutions/hour. Faster than that and the water starts coming back into the waterwheel.

The miller demonstrated stopping the blades, turning the top of the windmill in case the wind changes direction, and changing the covering on the blades – the more the blades are covered, the faster they will spin.

In this photo, the blade is covered.

Andy took these photos inside the windmill:

This visit was just as amazing as the last time a few years ago. Windmills are fascinating.

We had issues with my transport chair on the way back – one of the back wheels keeps falling off. It’s been an issue for a few days now. But I was able to walk all the way back to the ship and Andy carried the transport chair. Emily, our Program Director, met me with a ship’s wheelchair when she saw me heading in the wrong direction! And once back on board and we had set sail for Rotterdam, one of the ship’s engineers fixed the wheel!

We arrived in Rotterdam at 4:30. There was only one excursion available and we hadn’t signed up for it. Andy went for a run, but took no photos – he said Rotterdam is a big city with tall buildings. If there’s an old city center, he didn’t get that far.

We’ll be leaving Rotterdam in about 30 minutes to head to our next port.

Tomorrow: Antwerp (and Brussels, and hopefully CHOCOLATE).

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search of Tulips and Windmills – April 30, 2026

Where We Take A Walking Tour Of Arnhem And Discover Its WWII History

Followed By A Visit To A Great Art Museum

There were two starting times for the walking tour of Arnhem and we lucked out with the later one. I’ve never heard of Arnhem before booking this cruise. It turns out that it was the site of an important battle during WWII.

This is the John Frost Bridge. It was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times during WWII, most recently in 1949 after the war was finally over. The battle of this bridge is depicted in the 1977 movie “A Bridge Too Far” (which I’ve heard of, but never seen – war movies aren’t my thing).

We were in the “leisure” group, which meant we were walking more slowly and would see a lot less of the town; that was fine by us.

We walked towards the city center and came to the remaining gate from the old city walls.

The city center is fairly small. We saw St. Eusebius Church right in front of us after entering through the gate.

Here are some photos from around the outside and inside the church.

Statue of a tartegrade by Arno Coenen to blend science with traditional religious iconography

Near St. Eusebuse Church is St. Walburgis Church. We didn’t go inside this one. This church dates back to the 14th century

Our tour guide, Rob, had mentioned in passing about an old synagogue on the street behind the St. Eusebius church. Surprisingly, there were several Jews in the our group, and we all wanted to see the synagogue. So we did.

Rob didn’t know the current size of the Jewish population in Arnhem, but it seemed that the synagogue is still in use.

We also saw stumbling stones

Time was running short – we didn’t have much time between the end of this walk and the beginning of our next excursion, so the group headed back to the bus.

Shortly after lunch, we boarded a bus to take us to the Kroller-Muller Art Museum and Sculpture Garden. The art collection was donated from the private collection of Helene Kroller Muller. During WWII, the entire collection was hidden in a bunker and managed to survive. There was a fabulous collection of Van Gogh, Monet, and other very famous artists.

Van Gogh is my favorite painter. We saw paintings that I’ve never seen before in person.

There was a room where we could take our photo as if we were sitting in the cafe in Arles as depicted by Van Gogh.

There were a couple of nice pieces showing pointilism:

These are some closeups to show the dots of paint in The Orchard.

We went outside to view some of the sculpture garden. It was rather large and we didn’t have enough time to walk through it all.

Driving through the park on the way out, we saw this hunting lodge:

Everybody on the bus was drifting off – it had been a long day.

Tomorrow: Kinderdijk and more windmills!

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search of Tulips and Windmills – April 29, 2026

Where We Stand In A Tulip Field and Have A Photo Op With A Windmill

Today we are in Enkhuizen. The morning’s excursion was a walking city tour. I decided to opt out of it to let my knee rest a bit. But Andy went.

Here are some of the photos he took. It looks like a nice town.

Andy is eating a herring. He said it tasted good.

After lunch we went on out “Tulips and Windmill” excursion. This week is the very end of tulip season in the Netherlands. You can tell – the tulips are starting to wilt.

We drove about 40 minutes to a commercial tulip farm. Our guide told us that for most of the tulip flowers have been removed from the tulip plants at this point to encourage the bulbs to grow large and healthy. But we did see a couple of tulip fields along the way.

At the farm we first had coffee/tea and cookies (the cookies were very good), followed by a presentation by the tulip farmer’s wife. Today was the last presentation to a Viking cruise for the season. She walked us through the tulip production cycle including producing bulbs for sale and cut flowers. There are machines for most everything, but there are steps in the process that still must be done by hand. They hire seasonal workers – most of them from Poland – and provide them housing on the farm for the season. As of tomorrow, her husband and his crew will drive through the tulip fields with a machine that will harvest all the flowers and leave the rest of the plant to nourish the bulb.

We were able to walk into the tulip fields, which is a rare opportunity. Even though you can tell that the flowers are wilting, they are still spectacularly beautiful.

Here we are posing with the tulips. We are crouching, because the person who took the photo wanted to make sure we in the photo with the flowers. You can tell it was a windy day, because my hair is all over the place.

On the way back from the tulip farm to the ship, we had a photo op with a functional windmill. The mill wasn’t working while we were there, but it can and does grind wheat into flour.

So we have seen tulip fields and our first windmill.

A couple of sunset shots:

Tomorrow: Arnhem

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1 – In Search Of Tulips & Windmills: April 28 (Our Last Day In Amsterdam)

Where We Tie Up Some Loose Ends Before The Ship Leaves Amsterdam

In the morning we had the included canal cruise, which was rated as “easy”. However, it was a 15 minute walk to the canal boat AND entry into the boat included an incredibly steep tiny ladder. Even people with good knees were struggling, and of course, I managed to wrench a kneed when my foot slipped of the last rung. Spoiler alert! Said kneed seems to be cooperating this morning, though yesterday it let me know it was not happy.

One really important factoid we learned on this cruise: the term “Holland” applies to two provinces in the Netherlands. There’s the North Holland province (where Amsterdam is located) and the South Holland province. This has always been confusing – learning as a child about a country called “Holland”, only to find out the real name of the country is the Netherlands. Apparently the Dutch are confused about this as well, so it’s a legit confusion.

Here are some assorted “standard” canal views, as we sailed along at 3 kilometers/hour:

The building in white is extremely narrow, dating from the time when people were taxed by the width of their houses.

Anne Frank’s house (No, we didn’t visit during this trip: Andy went the last time we were here, and I went in 1977, which was more than sufficient).

Claude Monet painted this scene

The port-a-potties in this photo was for King’s Day. These served as bathroom access for people who were out and about in little boats too small to have onboard bathrooms.

If you look closely, these buildings are tilting to the side. This is the result of the wooden piles they were built on rotting away. We were assured the wooden piles have since been replaced by concrete. But the buildings still lean.

Other interesting things we saw along the way:

Amsterdam seems to be more interesting every time we come!

After lunch we decided to finish up our Jewish quarter tour by returning to the Jewish museum. We decided to ask the front desk to call us a taxi that would guaranteed drive down the cobblestone ramp to the dock and pick us up right at the ship. Uber drivers might not do that, and require us to meet them up on the street, which would mean I’d have to hobble up the cobblestones. Not ideal.

The taxi worked perfectly, though twice the cost of an uber. We figured on the way back we could guide the uber driver where to make the turn down the ramp to the dock.

If the Portuguese Synagogue represented the Sfardi Jewish experience in Amsterdam, the Jewish Museum showed also the Ashkenazi (eastern European) Jewish experience. The museum building itself is the old Ashkenazi synagogue.

Navigating the multi-floor building required using the convoluted elevator system that seemed to work when it wanted to. We needed museum staff to get us started via the handicap entrance. The staff member had to badge the elevator several times to get it to go, and then he had to meet us on the next floor. It was confusing as to exactly which floors contained the museum itself, and first we needed to buy tickets: our ticket for the Portuguese synagogue included entrance to the Jewish museum, but we lost those tickets, so we figured we had to buy another ticket. The ticket guy told us we didn’t need to pay again once we told him the story, which was nice.

The entrance ticket included the free audio guide like the Portuguese synagogue, though this time we knew what to do. My device spoke in English from the git go.

The first floor we visited was labeled “Religion” that displayed the religious aspect of Jewish life in Amsterdam before WWII.

These are meggilot Esther – hand written scrolls containing the book of Esther. The illuminations were beautiful.

This is a sefer Torah (Torah scroll) set to the Priestly Blessing – at the bottom of the middle column. Perfectly legible and easy to read.

This is a display case containing assorted religious objects, including a huge Hanukkah menorah and Torah covers with silver crowns. The big silver bowl in the lower left hand corner is a bowl to hold water for the Kohanim (men who inherit the priest role from their fathers) to wash their hands before they bless the congregation with the Priestly Blessing (as seen in the sefer Torah). It’s a little hard to see, but to the right of the bowl is a “laver”, a pitcher the Levi’im used to pour water over the feet of the Kohanim before the Kohanim bless the congregation.

This is the original bima (kind of like a little stage) in front of the Ark that holds the sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) that you can see behind the glass. The menorah on the bima looks like another Hanukkah menorah. A standard menorah would have 7 branches; this one has 9. Up on the wall to the right of the ark is the Ner Tamid – the Eternal Light that would normally be continuously lit in an active synagogue. Before electricity the Ner Tamid would be lit with oil. It represents the continuous presence of G-d.

These are other religious or ritual items.

An interesting shofar – we’ve not seen one like this before. The Shofar is blown on Rosh HaShannah (Jewish New Year)

The next floor described the history of the Jewish community in Amsterdam from its origins in the 1600s as Sfardi Jews arrived to escape the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, as well as Ashkenazi Jews fled the pogroms and dire poverty of Eastern Europe. One remarkable note: Jews were given full Dutch citizenship in 1796 with all the rights and privileges as non-Jews. This is a momentous occasion – most of the time, Jews were second-class citizens in the rest of Europe for much longer than that.

More than 2/3 of the Jewish population in Amsterdam were murdered during the Holocaust. There are now about 60,000 Jews in Amsterdam, but most of them live in the outer areas and not in the central part of the city.

When we were finished with the museum, we took an uber back to the ship. We were able to show the driver where to turn to drive down the ramp all the way to our ship. Success!

Tomorrow: Enkhuizen, where we meet our first windmills and tulip farm

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search of Tulips and Windmills – April 27

Where We Get To Experience The Dutch Version Of Amok Time

But Found Some Tulips

April 27 – King’s Day

April 27 is King’s Day in the Netherlands. For a full explanation of King’s Day, take a look here. Briefly – it’s a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of the Dutch king, Willem Alexander. Everybody has a day off, and the country goes just a smidge meshuganah for a day. Oranage is the color of the royal family, who has connections to the Orange area in France from several hundred years ago.

Festivities had already started the evening of April 26. It was a bit of a challenge for our uber driver to work his way around the already closed streets filled with partiers to get us to our restaurant. This included a food delivery truck that parked at an odd angle one of the super narrow streets. The driver saw us in the uber car, and just continued on his delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables into an apartment building. Our uber driver gave the delivery guy and earful when he finally surfaced.

Getting back to the hotel was equally challenging, because by the time we left the restaurant partiers completely clogged the street and bridge where we needed to turn (which is apparently against one of the 9,324 rules regarding Konnigsdag). Our driver decided to proceed on at 1 mph, gently moving through the crowd as drunken people figured out that they were, in fact, standing in the middle of an active street. We should have gotten some video of that, but we were kinda amazed it was actually happening.

April 27 is the day we transfer from the hotel to the ship, but we had some time in the morning before we go, so we decide to put on our orange shirts and go in search of King’s Day festivities.

We started walking in the general direction of the city center, though we were warned to absolutely stay away from there due to the nuttiness.

We went quite a distance before we found a street with some vendors. One of the Konnigsdag traditions is for people to bring out their own personal possessions that they want to get rid of; the entire country is one giant flea market. As one of our tour guides said, “People sell their junk and then buy somebody else’s junk”. The street we were on had actual stores who moved their items out onto the street. We ended up buying a few things, including some packages of certified-for-import-to-the-US tulip bulbs for people back home. This was a good thing, because the flower market was closed, and I wasn’t sure where else we’d be able to buy bulbs.

This guy was selling unopened/returned Amazon packages. No idea what’s inside any of them.

And then there were the stumbling stones, are reminder of the Dutch Jews lost during the Holocaust.

We arrived back at the hotel just in time for the group photo that hopefully we’ll get from the ship’s program director at some point.

The transfer to the ship was as smooth as always. We were scooted off to lunch immediately upon boarding, while we waited for our stateroom to be ready.

We decided to go on the 3:30 p.m. “Welcome Walk”, even though we’d already been on a walking tour. Our first tour was from our hotel in the southern part of the city. Now we were in the northern part of the city, so we expected it to be different.

Which it was. We walked directly into clumps of partiers, making navigation entertaining.

Other photos from our walk, once we pushed through the parties.

Since our ship was docked next to a bar overflowing with partiers. Our tour guide realized that the bar *could* just move aside one of the temporary fences and let us walk through to the dock avoiding the long walk up the block and then back down a cobblestone ramp. It took some convincing – not sure the bar owner thought we were going to do by climbing through her fence – but eventually she relented. Maybe we all looked pathetic enough, who knows.

Our first dinner was great – we had a fantastic conversation with 4 brits. And this is what traveling is all about.

Tomorrow: Canal cruise and hopefully the Jewish Museum.

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search of Tulips and Windmills In The Netherlands (April 24, 25, and 26)

Which All Could Have Been One Very, Very Long Day, As Far As My Brain Is Concerned

April 24 Getting Ourselves To Amsterdam

It was all going extremely well – we arrived at the airport, checked out bags, with plenty of time to spend in the Unite lounge. Scooted to the gate, picked up the tag for the gate check of my transport chair. We even made it as far as the door to the plane.

And then the crew came out of the plane and told us we needed to go back to the gate.

Yada, yada, yada, apparently the anti-skid brakes were not working and could not be fixed. Good news! United found us another plane. Not so good news! It was on its way back from Paris. Our flight was originally supposed to depart at 5:30 p.m. The new plane wasn’t even going to arrive at Dulles until 7:30 p.m.

Which it did, but then it had to be cleaned/serviced/checked out.

At one point we were taxiing around the tarmac so long, I thought we were going to drive all the way to Amsterdam. Yada, yada, yada, we finally took off somewhere around 11:00 p.m.

Fortunately, the flight itself was easy, and I managed to get a little sleep. We landed at about noon.

We were hoping to get a glimpse of tulip fields as we came in for landing, but no such luck.

April 25

We found the Viking rep, who found our driver to take us to the hotel.

Months ago I bought tickets to the Rijksmuseum with an entry time of 1:00 p.m. for the special exhibit. By the time we were ready to leave the hotel, it was 1:45 p.m. We arrived at the museum right after 2:00 p.m. So no special exhibit for us (it was free anyway), but we had 3 hours before the museum closed to wander around. I had also purchased the audio tour, which had a “highlights” version. Sounds like a plan.

The last time we were in the Rijksmuseum some eternity ago, everything had been under tarps and scaffolding for renovations. This time, everything was open and tarp-free. In the 3 hours before the staff started shooing us out of the building, we managed to see just about everything on the tour.

The photos below are not in any kind of order, other than whatever my macbook wanted to do.

Though possibly my favorite is this one. This guy saw me hold up my phone to take the photo and stepped right in front of me.

We had dinner in the museum’s coffee shop, for expediency more than anything else.

When we got back to the hotel, we knew we had to stay awake just a little longer, so we went downstairs to one of this hotel’s many restaurants and had some ice cream.

April 26

We got up Sunday morning feeling a lot better. We were scheduled for a walking tour with the Viking group. For long walks like this, Andy drives me around in a transport chair. The only time we have issues is when the streets and sidewalks are all cobblestones. We had already talked to the Viking rep about this, and she seemed to think we would not be able to go at all.

By 9:30 there were 4 groups set up. The first 3 tour guides said absolutely not, we could not come because of the transport chair. The fourth tour guide said, “Well, if it reaches the point where you can’t continue, you can always stop and take an uber back”. This sounded like a reasonable plan.

Spoiler alert! We made it all the way for the entire walking tour, because there were almost no cobblestones. I’m beginning to think that the tour guide and the Viking rep think “cobblestones” means something different from what we’re thinking. The sidewalks were no problem at all.

We walked along the streets of Amsterdam, noticing assorted interesting things along the way.

The tour ended at Museum Square behind the Rijks museum. Before heading back, there was the pre-requisite bathroom break in a public bathroom, which of course was down two flights of stairs.

Anybody who follows my blog knows there’s always a few stories about bathrooms in our travels. I didn’t think to take photos, but when I finally toddled down the last step and paid my way into the women’s bathroom, I noticed that the doors on all the stalls were crystal clear glass.

Though slightly alarmed, there wasn’t a choice anymore.

Good news! When I clicked the lock closed, the glass frosted over.

When we got back to the hotel, we asked the Viking rep about places for lunch near the Portuguese synagogue. She didn’t have much, so we decided to uber to the area and find something. Which turned out to be a little harder than we expected, but eventually we did find a cafe.

We bought tickets to enter the Portuguese Synagogue. The ticket lady was asking all the men to wear a kippah. Andy had his own with him – she then warned him not to wear it in public (not that he normally does) because of the rampant anti-semitism in the city. Kinda sad.

The Portuguese synagogue was built in the 17th century and is one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. There is no electricity or heating, yet it is still used on a regular basis. It is a Sfardi synagogue, which means the configuration of the sanctuary has the Torah reading table in the middle of the congregation, as opposed to up front like in Ashkenazi synagogues.

Downstairs were the Treasures that were hidden and saved from the Nazis during WWII

We were given free audio guides, but Andy’s wasn’t working and mine was talking to me in French, so both of us missed the descriptions of the treasures, and google wasn’t helpful.

These photos are of the sanctuary. Since there is no electricity, the room is lit with thousands of candles in huge candleabras.

There were more rooms to investigate around the perimeter of the main building.

This is the funeral room, where bodies were brought for the tahara (washing and dressing of the deceased). The sign says “No entry for Kohanim” – men who are a kohen (an inherited priest role) can’t come in contact with the dead, because there is currently no way for them to spiritually purify themselves without a Holy Temple

We sorta ran out of time, again – the synagogue was closing soon. For sure we didn’t have time to visit the Jewish Museum today.

For dinner we went to an Indonesian restaurant recommended by a friend of ours. Getting there and back was a challenge, because the King’s Day celebrations have begun.

Tomorrow: King’s Day and we board the ship.

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2025 Part 2: To The (Almost!) Bottom Of The World: All Good Things Must Come To An End

January 7, 2026: Where We Have A Few Hours Before Our Flight Home, And We Manage To Get Lost, As Is Tradition

After breakfast, we go back to the room and cram everything into our suitcases. After we check out and store our bags for the day, we venture out to spend just a little more time exploring Buenos Aires.

At the front desk’s recommendation, we take an Uber to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. It is a delightful little museum – all of 2 and a half floors, with a wide range of exhibits: from antiquities, to Impressionist and Modern art.

This guy reminded me of George Burns (z”l)

I liked the iridescent quality of this painting

Hermenegildo Anglada Carnarasa “Los opalos” 1904

These are hair combs – they are HUGE.

Spotted this Dega from across the room.

I felt bad for Jesus in this carving – he’s missing his nose and a few fingers.

Anonymous (Spain 13th Century) “Virgin with the Child”

Here’s the Modern Art

Antonio Berni “Pesadilla de los injustos” 1961

Luis Felipe Noé “Introducción a la esperanza” 1963

And another one that was easy to spot.

Amedeo Modigliani “Bust of a Woman” 1920

I’m not familiar with this artist.

The best thing about this museum was how ramps were built into the design of the entire building. There was no need for any steps at all – ramps were everywhere! Unfortunately, the elevator door had some kind of psychological problems – it always started to close as soon as it was fully open, even if you were standing in the doorway.

When we were done with this museum, we decided to find another small museum. Andy had a reference to a “design” museum that was open 24 hours. We suspected it was an open-air museum. Trying to follow Google’s walking directions, we randomly came across interesting things.

A better view of the monument to Evita Perón

After a while it became clear we had no idea where we were nor any idea where this “museum” was. A kind passer-by stopped to ask us if we needed help. Andy showed her his phone and what we were looking for. She studied it for a couple of minutes and then announced: “This is not a real place.”

So whatever that was, it didn’t seem to exist. We gave up.

We found a place to have lunch. At that point it was time to head back to the hotel, but we had *just* enough time to squeeze in one more stop at Freddo’s for ice cream!

This is the last photo I took in the cab on the way to the airport.

Hasta la vista, Argentina! It’s been a blast!

Coming in April, 2026: Tulips and Windmills river cruise in the Netherlands