April 2-14, 2022 trip to Belgium and The Netherlands

We arrived in Brussels mid-afternoon on April 2nd.  We took a late-afternoon orientation tour of the area around our hotel, where we encountered some very dark clouds and a bit of spitting snow.

The next day we did a combination bus/walking tour that included the old part of Brussels and the statue of Mannequin Pis.  (Yes, he’s doing what you think he is.)

 Our weather in Brussels was cold and rainy, so we didn’t end up seeing as much as we’d hoped, but on April 5th we were transferred to Amsterdam where we boarded our riverboat.

The following day we toured a tulip farm, where their main focus is on the bulbs rather than the flowers.  The tulips in the top picture are on a conveyer belt where they will have the bulbs removed and the remaining stems bunched into bouquets which they will be sent to market.

Below are the bulbs that have been harvested and placed by robots into flats for sale.

On Tuesday, April 7th, we were in Arnhem, The Netherlands, where the focus was on World WarII.  Arnhem was the site of a bridge that British and American paratroopers were trying to free from German control.  They were unsuccessful and there was a movie made in 1977 called “A Bridge Too Far”.

    This is the rebuilt Bridge today. This was a display in a visitor’s center located in a former church.  It depicts the arrival of the paratroopers.

We visited the Freedom Museum which focuses on WWII.  During the war, many items were unavailable so people made do.  The wedding gown below was made from a parachute!

Next, we visited Antwerp, where I indulged in a Belgian waffle with ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and, of course, hot chocolate.  Hey, when in Belgium, you’ve gotta try the local specialties!

The following gatehouse is the only one left of the fortification that protected Antwerp in the 12th century.  The Steen was refurbished in the early 16th century, hence the difference in the colors of the façade.

Antwerp is one of the diamond capitols of the world – no we didn’t buy any, but an interesting fact about the name Antwerp is that it meant “hand toss”, and diamond thieves were said to have their hands cut off and tossed into the river! Yee-ew!

Bruges was next on our list of tours, where we got to take a canal cruise…

and walk to one of the most unique McDonald’s in the world!  If you can enlarge the picture below you’ll see the McDonald’s sign in the shadow at the bottom right side of the building.

On Sunday, April 10th, we toured Delta Works, which is an amazing engineering feat to protect the lowlands from the ravages of the North Sea.  In 1953, The Netherlands was hit by a storm of unprecedented proportions that flooded huge tracts of land and killed many people.  The top red line shows how high the storm surge was in that awful flood.  I believe the lower red line is the mark at which they know they need to close the gates in the event of another major storm.

The engineers constructed a series of 62 gates along about a 5 ½ mile length of the Eastern Scheldt River. Those gates are left open to allow the tides to ebb and flow.  However, in an emergency all those gates can be closed in an hour and 10 minutes to prevent that part of The Netherlands from flooding.

 This is part of one of the 62 gates along with the housing for the mechanism that controls the gate.  (The black, shadowed part is the actual gate which was raised at the time we were there.)

Approximately one-third of The Netherlands is below sea level, the lowest point being 22’ below sea-level which is why they’ve employed dikes and windmills to control the water flow over the centuries.

Kinderdijk (pronounced kinder-dike) is a UNESCO World Heritage site which has 19 windmills built around the same time.  The windmills shown below are some of the “newer” windmills, built around 1740!  All are still operational, although their function has been taken over by a pumping station.  They are occupied and maintained by windmillers who have to take a course in how to run them, then may have to wait up to 15 or 20 years to have one become available for them to live in!

The picture in the lower left shows the living quarters inside a windmill.  It’s one of about 3 rooms inside.

And now we get to the highlight of the trip – Keukenhof Gardens!  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves!

                                                                      Keukenhof tribute to Ukraine

Dick and me at Keukenhof                                Two women we meet on the trip, Sandy & Pat

Our trip WAS wonderful!  We saw a lot, did a lot, walked a lot, met some really nice people, enjoyed local cuisine and learned a lot.  A couple of things I left out were our walking tour of Rotterdam and our cooking experience at a cooking school in Amsterdam, but none of those pictures were noteworthy…AND I’ve gone on long enough!  Thanks for enjoying our trip vicariously!