Bicycle, Flowers, Canals, Gables - It Must Be Amsterdam

What could be more cliche than bicycles and flowers in Holland? But isn't this a pretty touch right outside the door of our hotel?

We had a tasty dinner at a restaurant with a distinctly Dutch menu. Loved the white asparagus and frites with mayonnaise. At 7:00 we were earlyish for European eating habits so I was able to capture this photo of the lovely decor.

We ended with a short walk along a nearby canal at dusk before returning to the hotel to sleep off our jet lag. Some pretty scenes from our walk:

I loved these women just chilling out in the window.

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Gouda - Another pleasant surprise

We didn't spend a lot of time in Gouda but enjoyed another pretty town. Narrow streets, canals, flowers, pretty houses. I visited the church with its stained glass windows but didn't enjoy as much as the church in Naarden. The town is very proud of the fact that Eradmus was born there; you can see him on this sign at the museum. The town hall was most impressive, dramatically situated in the middle of a large square.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Storm Surge Barrier at Maeslantkering near Rotterdam To tour the Netherlands is to marvel at Dutch ingenuity in water management. With one quarter of Holland below sea level and one half at one metre or less above sea level, the Dutch have lived with the threat of flooding for their entire history. The country boasts over 17,000 kilometres of dikes, along their rivers, intended to protect residents from flooding. But one night in 1953, the confluence of an especially high spring tide and a wind storm over the North Sea struck just after midnight and caused water levels to rise more than 5 meters above normal, breaching the protective dikes. Radio was off the air and government agencies were not staffed; there was no warning for the residents of low-lying land and islands. By 3 a.m., more than 1,800 people had lost their lives. The Netherlands decided to get serious about a new era of flood control water management. They wanted to have defences that would handle once-in-a-t...

Along the paths and canals of Amsterdam

The Begijnhof One of the conference sponsors hosted an interesting guided walking tour of Amsterdam for 8 of us from Canada, US, India, Taiwan, Ghana, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. My favourite part of the tour was the Begijnhof, shown above. After its long history as a Catholic almost-convent (the women took vows but were free to leave to marry), this beautiful peaceful enclave has 105 residents, all widows. After the bustle of Amsterdam, your heart rate responds to the serenity of the quiet closed-off courtyard. Amsterdam's oldest house is also found here. The homes in Amsterdam are distinctive both for their gables and for how crooked they are. Sometimes this is because their pilings have deteriorated, but partly it's intended: the upper stories usually lean out to ensure the furniture which is to be brought up by that hoist on the gable won't hit the house, as dramatically shown down this little street. Of course we walked through part o...

Netherlands 2017

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