May 1998 - We're back from Holland with visions of tulips still dancing in our heads! The entire trip was fabulous, but the Keukenhof and tulip fields were definitely the highlight for both of us.  

We arrived Friday morning, April 24 after a smooth 8 1/2 hour flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam. After dropping our bags at our hotel, we proceeded to walk ALL OVER the city! Our hotel, the Jan Luyken, was situated in the museum district, so the first attraction we walked past was the immense Rijksmuseum, which houses a wonderful collection of art and artifacts from around the world. We strolled briefly into the Vondelpark, but decided to make this a short visit, because it was a rainy day. Little did we know that nearly ALL our days in Amsterdam would be either rainy or cloudy or both! Though Bill had made several visits to Amsterdam before, this was Charlanne's first, and she was delighted by the charming architecture of the canal houses, not to mention the interesting houseboats that lined the canals, too. We had to make several stops in those famous Dutch coffee houses in order to help Charlanne fight her jet lag, since she didn't sleep on the flight over! Bill kept her walking, though, in that fresh 50-60 degree air, and she managed to make it through the day with only one brief nap! We even met an acquaintance of Charlanne's from her trip to Russia 3 years ago, and made plans to have dinner with him later in the week. Tonight we dined at the Albatros, a FABULOUS seafood restaurant Bill remembered from a previous trip.

Saturday was cool and drizzly again, so we spent most of the day indoors-- first touring a diamond polishing factory, then the Rijksmuseum. Here we feasted our eyes on paintings by the Dutch masters, most notably Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch." We also found collections of Delftware, Meissen porcelain, and handsome furniture from allover Europe. Tonight we took a tram to Grekas, a Greek deli, where we sampled a smorgasbord of tasty salads.

Sunday morning we headed for the Jordaan, a delightful neighborhood of bookstores and "brown cafes" (so called because the walls and ceilings are brown with the smoke of decades of cigarettes consumed during countless hours of conversation!). We perused a small outdoor art exhibit at the Spui (the square that's the hub of activity in this neighborhood), then had lunch at a brown cafe with a nautical theme. Then we headed toward Central Station to catch a tour we had booked for Delft and The Hague. We enjoyed seeing the countryside outside Amsterdam-- flat fields stretching seemingly to infinity, occasionally dotted by a clump of trees, a farmhouse, even a windmill. Delft was a charming village, complete with canals and of course the Delft pottery factory. We enjoyed the tour of this surprisingly small operation, and couldn't resist purchasing a few pieces of the famous Delftware with its special trademark. Then our bus took us through the delightful town of Haarlem to The Hague, the political capital of The Netherlands. We saw all the government buildings and the famed International Peace Palace, constructed with the support of the United States' own Andrew Carnegie.  The highlight of this day was our visit to Madurodam, a miniature village constructed by the Maduro family as a memorial to their son who died at Dachau. Built on a scale of 1:25, each building here is modeled after an actual building somewhere in Holland, so that this "town" is a composite of the entire country. There are even boats, trains and airplanes that move, soldiers that march, church bells that chime, windmills that turn, and miniature trees, flower gardens, and farms-- AMAZING! The 57,000 bulbs that were blooming here were the tiniest hint of what we were to see later in the week! And wonder of wonders, the sun came out just in time for us to get wonderful pictures of this charming spot!  

Monday we saw Amsterdam from a different perspective-- a canal boat tour!  We learned about the different types of facades on the canal houses, as well as a bit of history of the city. Then we headed back to the Jordaan to see the city from above, climbing up the tower of Westerkerk. We also toured the Anne Frank house, where the Frank family hid from the Nazis during World War II and Anne wrote her famous diary. We continued our step back in time at Rembrandt House, where the artist lived before he fell into poverty, then finished off another damp, chilly day at The Holland Experience, a lighthearted multi-media overview of the Dutch culture. Tonight we dined with friend Ko de Korte and discussed everything from American politics to blues music, Russia to the Dutch culture.  

By Tuesday we had run out of patience waiting for the sun to come out to make our pilgrimage to the tulip fields, so we headed for Lindburg Excursions and booked our tour. By the time our bus left the city, the sun was breaking through the clouds! Our first stop was the Roosen Bulb Company's showroom, and we were delighted with their indoor and outdoor displays: we hadn't missed the season-- everything was in full bloom! By the time we reached the Keukenhof it was a beautiful, sunny day! What we found here was so much more than we could ever have imagined that it is truly difficult to describe. First the facts: the Keukenhof is a 60-acre park where all the bulb growers plant display gardens each spring. There are currently SIX MILLION tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and other unusual bulbs planted amidst towering trees, flowering shrubs, ponds, sculptures and fountains! It is without a doubt the most exquisite display on earth of natural beauty combined with human artistry-- a perfect showcase of God's gifts to us frail and fortunate human beings. We were at once struck by our insignificance amongst the ancient trees, the infinite variety of color that only God could create, and yet the God-given talent of the human beings who created the incredible displays. It was a sensory experience unlike any other-- the visual feast was almost too much for our eyes to take in completely; and then the unimaginably sweet fragrance of hyacinths, lilacs, earth, grass, water! And the BIRDS-- they sang endlessly, and why not, with this unparalleled Eden in which to live!!  There were THOUSANDS of people there, yet there was quiet, because we were all in AWE-- like in the most beautiful cathedral you can imagine.  We were like children set free in a candy shop with a shopping cart to fill. We ran hither and yon with our cameras, trying to capture the essence of every flower, every path, every colorful garden path, every play of sunlight on petal or leaf After 6 1/2 hours we still wondered if we saw it all, and that night we went to bed and dreamt of tulips, tulips, tulips!

Wednesday was our first sunny day in Amsterdam, so we wanted to get pictures of the city, but decided to do it by canal boat and rest our feet! We took the Canal Bus allover the city, and got an entirely new perspective. Tonight we dined at Van Puffelen, an "eetcafe", which seemed to be frequented by a combination of local business folk and American tourists-- great atmosphere AND food! The city was getting cranked up for tomorrow's big Queen's Day celebration, with orange balloons and clothing suddenly appearing everywhere, and loud music pouring out of cafes and passing boats! We decided to make it a full day on the water by taking a moonlight wine-and-cheese canal boat ride! The illuminated bridges and houses were GORGEOUS!

Thursday was Queen's Day, and it was a party unlike anything we've ever experienced! Not only the entire city, but the entire COUNTRY, and it seemed all of EUROPE came out to celebrate in the streets of Amsterdam!  This happens every year on the birthday of Queen Mother Juliana! All the shops and businesses close, and people from allover bring all their "junk" and have a HUGE flea market allover the city! There are bands playing in every square, and restaurants bring their kitchens and tables out to the sidewalks, and everybody eats and drinks and parties all day!  Trams, buses and canal boats shut down, because they can't get through the throngs of people in the streets and waterways. The canals are filled with private boats that are JAMMED with people partying. Music blares from boats, houses, bars and bandstands. (Of course, the smell of marijuana was even more prevalent than normal on the streets that day!)  For those of you in Youngstown NY, it's Saturday night at the Levels multiplied by about 1000, and it lasts 24 hours! Getting into the real spirit of the celebration, we tried to ignore the strange looks we got when we went down to breakfast that morning in our orange shirts! At one point we were caught in the crowd trying to cross a bridge, and we had NO control over which way we went. We would go forward a few inches, then backward a foot, when the river of humanity went that way. We could have picked our feet up off the ground and still been carried along by the crowd. At one point Charlanne couldn't even breathe, she was being crushed so tightly! We could easily see how people get trampled to death in crowds like that! It was a WlLD scene, and fun, but after a few hours we were glad to get back to our quiet hotel!

Friday, our last day in Amsterdam, we took in the two remaining museums that we had wanted to visit, the Stedelijk and the Van Gogh. We loved the Van Gogh, because we found not only a large collection of his work arranged so that we could see his development as an artist, but also works of his contemporaries, showing his influence on other artists of the time. The Stedelijk was less to our liking because its contents are VERY contemporary. There was one Picasso and one Matisse, and a collection of Russian works that interested us. This afternoon we perused some GORGEOUS antique shops near the museums, where Bill was fascinated by an amazing collection of very rare clocks. We then headed for our favorite neighborhood, the Jordaan, for a last respite in a cafe and a visit to the Begijnhof. This VERY old little village within the city was established by some nuns in the 15th century as a haven for women. One 15th-century house remains, but most of the rest date from the 17th. The buildings surround a lovely grassy courtyard with trees filled with twittering birds, a surprising serene sanctuary within the bustling city. For our final night in Amsterdam we dressed up and headed back to the Albatros, where our fabulous week began. We celebrated with a bottle of Champagne, then the owner, who remembered us from our first night here, treated us to delicious dessert wines-- a "thank you" for returning!  

We were both a bit sad to leave this beautiful and charming city, yet happy, as always, to return to our beloved home. We were greeted with lots of sunshine, fully-leafed-out trees, blossoming rhododendron and the sweet smell of honeysuckle!