Never too old to travel!
Before we get into this delightful Viking Cruise add-on excursion to the little town of Gouda, Netherlands, let’s get one thing straight: You’ve got to pronounce Gouda correctly! That’s right. You’re probably not saying it right, and the lady holding a tray of sample cheeses will insist that you learn the proper pronunciation before you […]
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We can’t resist a great reflection — whether it be in person or in a picture that we or someone else has taken. With that in mind, Jez (of Photos by Jez) invites us this week to share reflections or doubles we’ve seen, so here are a few that bring back good memories — a […]
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Although windmills dot the landscape in various parts of The Netherlands, the 19 remarkably preserved windmills in Kinderdijk make them a must-see on any tour of the region. “The area is located amid low-lying polders, tracts of land reclaimed from the sea by the power of the windmills and enclosed by embankments, or dikes.” (Viking […]
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None of us would imagine a trip through The Netherlands without seeing tulips or windmills. But, of course, tulips don’t bloom year-round. And with that thought, we figured that if we booked a tour of Holland in May, we wouldn’t expect to see tulips in bloom. But Viking’s cruise — Holland and Belgium — had […]
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If you ask us, every town we visit has treasures of its own. But since we had never heard of Hoorn, we weren’t expecting the historic and nautical treasures awaiting us in this small town about 45 minutes from Amsterdam. When you’re on a Viking tour — well, maybe any river cruise for that matter […]
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As fate would have it, my right shoulder has a tear in its rotator cuff. So I’ll be out for surgery (only a day) and then recovery. But writing may not be possible for a while. So, a trip to the classy little town of Hoorn and many others in The Netherlands and Belgium will […]
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In our previous post, Ribbons of Color: Keukenhof Gardens, we touted the sensory overload of giant swaths of spring tulips at Keukenhof, the gardens near Amsterdam priding itself (and with good reason) on their plantings of over 7,000,000 tulips each year. What a spectacular site that was for us and the thousands of other visitors […]
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It may have been the biggest (and maybe the finest) surprise we’ve had cruising with Viking. While still in port in Amsterdam, our cruise director (Viking’s Holland & Belgium 2022) reported that tickets were available (unexpectedly) from Keukenhof Gardens in nearby Lisse for the last day of Tulip Festival. And then he asked, “Would any […]
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Seeing a city can take on many forms from private driver in a limousine to a jaunty ride on a hop-on, hop-off bus. But in a waterway city, there’s nothing better than a slow-paced tour in a boat, complete with a guide narrating the landmarks in a city he loves! We’ve written about the architecture […]
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We never saw it coming. Even though our driver from the airport in Amsterdam (where we began our trip through The Netherlands and Belgium) told us about the bikes, we never guessed the volume, speed, and daily dose of cycling we’d see first-hand. But as soon as we arrived in Amsterdam, we were especially grateful […]
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