We returned to the ship for lunch and while we ate, the ship moved to Ijsselmeer near Hoorn.

For the afternoon tour we chose the Tulip Farm after all seeing tulips is the whole purpose of this cruise. It was short bus ride from the mooring spot to the farm and we saw some other farms and greenhouses on the way. We were greeted with coffee, tea, and pastries by Sandra, the farmer's wife. She began by showing us a video of all the steps in successfully raising and selling tulip bulbs and flowers. The video featured her four girls amongst the blooms.

Then she took us to where they were processing some pink tulips for sale in the bloom auction. The bloom auction is different than your normal auction. They start with a high value and keep dropping the price until someone hits buy, then that item is over and they start with the next, it goes a lot faster that way.

We saw some tulips maturing in one oh her greenhouses. The bulbs are kept refrigerated until about 3 weeks from when they are to be sold as blooms, then moved into tight containers int he greenhouse. The environment of the greenhouse is computer controlled, adjusting the moisture, the temperature and the sunshine automatically.

The harvested blooms are loaded onto a belt where the length is cut so that the bunches of 10 blooms are all uniform. these bunches were then loaded in crates and moved to cool storage until the auction which was going to be on Monday, since this was Friday.

On the way back to the bus we saw a field of tulips. The blooms had been cut off by a machine and the ones it missed were going to be hand cut. This allows the bulb to become strong for next years greenhouse planting. Excess bulbs are sold on the market. We saw The polypropylene cloth that the bulbs are planted between. This makes harvesting very easy. All in all the talk and walk was great. I highly recommend this excursion if you have the opportunity, the Kwerkerij Siem Munster family farm.

We chose to do the "Special Interest Tour", of the Kröller Müller Museum. Others did a bike ride through Arnhem or a tour of the Dutch East Indies company ship, De Halve Maen.

We passed through the "Hoge Veluwe" one of the Netherlands most famous National Parks. Helene Kroller-Mulller was married to a rich industrialist and used his money to acquire a vast collection of paintings. She had a house built to display them which eventually became the Kröller Müller Museum. It houses the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world.

The local guide we had did a real thorough job of explaining the various phases of Van Gogh's life and how it was reflected in his paintings. He showed how he developed his art from dark period to brighter period. Van Gogh always got into disagreements and eventually killed himself. He never sold a painting and his younger brother supported his painting.

We also saw some Picassos, Rembrandts and Monets. Then outside the house there was a lot of sculptures. I quickly walked then and then got back to Remy so we could make the bus on time. Remy thought she could do as good as the Piet Mondriaan colored squares paintings.

I took a pictures of the cheese display in the Grote Markt (Great Market), then headed to the St. Stevenskerk church. There is also a sixteenth-century weighing hall ('waag') that now serves as a restaurant. There were an awful lot of open air restaurant/bars along the market street.

I then headed over to the Kronenburgerpark. Where some of the remains of an old castle are preserved. Here I got a better view of the railroad bridge that we saw from the ship. I headed back to the AmaPrima by following along the water line. A lot of people were hanging out along the water.

That evening we sailed for Belgium.

We started out on the walking tour of Antwerp with the plans of going to church and finding our way back on our own. The local tour guide said it wasn't that close and suggested we take a taxi there. We did and got there on time for the Palm Sunday mass, but it was said in Dutch. The palms they gave out looked more like olive branches. After the mass I took a few pictures of the paintings. There were several Peter Paul Rubens, and other impressive paintings.

Leaving mass we tried to get into the Grote Market but it was filled with revelers. I guess someone won a championship. I took a photo of the Brabo Fountain then we walked back to the ship.

For the afternoon tour we chose the Floralia tour where there was a special spring flower exhibition at the Groot-Bijgaarden castle. They open the castle for tours in the spring for people to see the flowers. The entrance fees help support the maintenance of the castle. This was a warm sunny Sunday afternoon so most of the residents from Antwerp showed up this day. The parking was tight, but the grounds were large enough to handle the crowd. I may have gotten carried away with the pictures I posted here, but it was the purpose of this cruise.

Today we had choice of several different tour options. We chose the slow walkers tour that included a bus tour of Ghent then on to Bruges. The normal folks had a long hike into the town with sights along the way, while the slow walkers were brought to a couple of blocks from the square. It was still pretty far for Remy and some of the other slow walkers, so she took a shuttle back to the bus area.

The trip description from Sunday mentioned that Belgium is known for its Mussels with fries (Moules Frites) and we were on our own for Lunch in Bruges. Several of the travelers asked the guide for a good place to get this and he pointed us to the De Mosselkelder restaurant as it was already lunchtime. We should have all ordered one meal to split between the two because the servings were huge. Remy and I both had the Mussels in Pasta and they were pretty good.

It took us longer to get served than the guide allowed for meeting him back at the meet spot, but he headed in our direction and continued with the tour.

He pointed out how the buildings marked the trade guilds with symbols that indicated what is their trade. Belgium is also known for beer. One store is noted for the 1000 of beers on display. The guide said that President Bush said this store was proof that God loved us.

Bruges is also known for lace. So we passed several stores that were displaying lace in their windows.

Overnight the ship cruised to Rotterdam. Several interesting suspension bridges were in view from the ship, including the The Erasmus Bridge, that was modelled in the Nemo Science Museum and nick-named the Swan.

Remy chose the morning tour that included a tour of Delft then a bus ride through the Hague. The slow walkers group got a taxi ride head start, but it was still a long trek to the square. We crossed the bridge with a cattle skull since this is the area where they brought cattle to market. Then we proceeded to view the churches and other buildings. Some nice canal views and shots of some blue and white painted pottery, Delftware.

Our tour of Hague was mostly from the bus, but I managed to get some interesting photos. We stopped at the UN International Court of Justice in the Peace Palace. Then headed back to Rotterdam. We got a tour of the various building designs in Rotterdam, including a view of "cube" apartments. We also saw several buildings celebrating the the 100th anniversary of de Stijl (“the style”) that Piet Mondriaan had participating in the creation of and Remy thinks she could do just as well.

We got back to the ship in time for lunch, and they sailed to Kinderdijk for our next tour of the windmills. We only had to cross the levee and walk a couple hundred yards to get to the Kinderdijk-Elshout mill network, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We first sat in on a film about the place that was quite confusing. A slightly different view came up on the four different screens. They argued about how the name Kinderdijk came about. One of the legends has it that Kinderdijk, meaning Children’s Dyke, got its name after the flood of 1421. When the survivors left their houses to survey the damage, they saw a cradle bob up and down on the water, carrying the sound of a crying baby. The floating cradle was kept in balance by a cat, jumping up and down to keep the basket from sinking. The baby was saved: perhaps this is how the name Children’s Dyke was born!! A cradle stands on the property to mark this theory.

Water management became very important to the people here, because the land kept sinking below sea level, so a system of pumps was developed to raise the water above sea level to let it out.

Later the windmills control management was replaced with diesel engines, then electric pumps, but they are still functional. We toured one of the units. It has four floors for living and you could see the functioning gears. Most of the mills did not have the tarps drawn out to make them turn. We got a close up view of the operating parts and the brake that was used to allow the miller to climb out on the blade and mount the cloth.

That evening the ship moved on to Schoonhoven for overnight, then on to Amsterdam.

We arrived in Amsterdam around 7:30 and headed out early for the spectacular displays of flowering tulips and other blooms during a morning excursion to the world famous 70-acre Keukenhof Gardens. We got a wheel chair near the entrance so I could navigate Remy around the grounds. The pictures say it all. I had chosen the option that we stay an extra 2 hours here, but Remy wanted to do the Zaanese Schans tour in the afternoon so we didn't quite cover every acre, but what we did cover was awesome. There were some quite unusual orchid colors.

Some canals blocked you from getting a good view of the extensive fields of flowers that I guess are being grown for bulb sales. We got a good view of them from bus on the return trip.

Uwe had quite a discussion with the slow walkers guide. Apparently all but us two slow walkers stayed for the extended time at Keukenhof and she didn't want to guide for one couple. I guess he couldn't force her so we were off with the normal walkers group. Their guide was a pretty fast walker, but we caught back up with them waiting to get into the cheese making demonstration. After that we were pretty much on our own with occasional words making it over our audio device.

The weather started to turn nasty, so we hurried on our looking at shops and started making our way back to the bus. The last place I stopped at while Remy continued to the bus was a museum for wooden shoes. There were various designs and decorations on display. A video was playing showing the process for making them and there were some pictures on the wall of the process. Some men were there apparently demonstrating how some of the machines worked for making the shoes, but while I was there they were trying to sell wood shoes to some of the tourist.

We had a 10:00 am flight with KLM so we had to take an early transfer, 6:30, to the airport. We made our connections with no hitches. The flight back was a little better than the going, since we got seats on the three across section and the seat supports did not interfere with the legs on that section. Remy had learned that her sister, Lucy, had a heart attact earlier in the week and died. We discussed driving from Houston to Albuquerque, but I had only packed two days of extra drugs and our clothes were all spent, so we decided to go back to Corpus Christi, repack and then head to Albuquerque.