This morning we had a pleasant buffet breakfast in the hotel dining room complete with made to order eggs benedict for Mark. We then headed out to continue our walking tour of Rotterdam, including the area where we will board the ship tomorrow. This area is across the Erasmus Bridge from downtown on a peninsula called Wilhelminapier. In this area we found the old headquarters of the Holland America Line, now converted to the Hotel New York. In this area between 1873 and 1970, thousands of passengers headed off for America, leaving their families and loved ones behind.

We walked in an older district of town near a large park called Het Park along the Maas River. Here there are large and beautiful townhomes and residences built in the late 1800’s. Many of these buildings now serve as offices, restaurants and cafes.

We spent the afternoon at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. This is one of the oldest museums in the Netherlands. In 1849 a prominent lawyer left his art collection to the city. In 1958 Van Beuningen donated his large collection of Dutch and European masterpieces and the name of the museum was lengthened. The museum has a wonderful collection of furniture, fashion, ceramics and paintings by artists like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Dali, Van Bosch and many more.

We continue to notice many Muslim people throughout the Netherlands. The women are more obvious and all seem to be enjoying life here. Another unusual observation is that there is a lot of gum on the sidewalks everywhere. Mark took a picture of gum left near a trash bin. Guess the Dutch are not good shots! Further, many here are smokers. People are smoking outside offices, restaurants and hotels. It appears more still smoke here than in the USA.

Along the way we came across a controversial bronze statue of Santa Claus, known colloquially as the “Buttplug Gnome”. Photo included for you to decide.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant next door to our hotel that has a unique way of doing business. When you enter the restaurant the host gives you a credit card of sorts that you use to order your food at different counters. You can choose from pizzas, pastas, salads, drinks and desserts. When you have finished your meal you take the credit card to the check out and pay for your purchases all at one time. While in the restaurant, we noticed a couple of ladies from our hotel. Kent thought they might be traveling on our cruise to the Far East. He introduced himself and found out that, indeed, they were.

This morning we had breakfast in the hotel before packing our bags and preparing for our train journey to the town of Rotterdam. The train ride to Rotterdam on the express train took only about 45 minutes. The trains are very quiet and provide a smooth ride. Our hotel for two nights is The Manhattan Hotel Rotterdam just across the street from the Central Station in Rotterdam. The hotel is located in a 35-story high-rise office tower.

Rotterdam began as a fishing village in the 13th century. Trade and shipping flourished and Rotterdam grew quickly. Between 1866 and 1872, a channel was excavated giving Rotterdam a better connection to the sea and allowing it to grow into a shipping town. Unfortunately during World War II, in 1940, German bombers destroyed the city center and harbor leaving 80,000 homeless and 900 dead. Today the city has 625,000 inhabitants and contains the largest cargo port in Europe and the 10th largest in the world. The city is very diverse and is home to 176 different nationalities. The city today is very modern with a mix of modern skyscrapers and older classic buildings.

In the afternoon, we took a walking tour around town where we saw all types of architecture. Included were the city hall, built in 1920 in the Beaux Art style with Byzantine, Roman and Art Deco influences, to the modern cube houses tilted up on their corners where people live within the slanted walls. Tall skyscrapers are springing up around the city filled with modern offices and apartments. Here you will also find the first skyscraper built in Europe in 1898 as an office building and rising about 150 feet. More unusual is the fact that this skyscraper was built of thick load-bearing walls of brick rather than steel. The exterior was covered with white-glazed brick decorated with mosaics and Art Nouveau images. The area around the harbor was very active with students and a diverse set of people, including many Muslim women wearing their usual headscarves.

We stopped in a beautiful modern market hall that was completed in 2014 and had a coffee and apple tart. The market hall is built under a horseshoe shaped apartment building where the residents have windows looking into the market. The ceiling within the horseshoe are painted with fruits and vegetables and called the local Sistine Chapel due to the painting on the ceiling.

The weather has not improved much. We headed back to the hotel shortly before dark as it began to rain.

This morning we took a walking tour around the Red Light District (RDL) where some of the girls were working even though the area was not as busy as in the evenings.

We stopped at a local coffee and pastry shop where we tried one of their waffles that is coated with frosting. The waffles taste similar to a donut and are served warm with chocolate, strawberry or caramel glaze and sprinkles or chocolate bits. It was very sweet and we enjoyed it.

They have begun to clean up the city streets after the New Year’s Eve celebrations and the shops are removing the last signs of the Christmas holiday. Sale signs are in shop windows advertising two for the price of one, or up to 70% off. The streets are still busy, but not as crazy as they were over the weekend when the locals were mostly off work for the holidays.

The locals—old and young—ride bicycles to work, to run errands and to do most everything. Along every street you see hundreds of parked bicycles lining the sidewalks. Many of them are old with rust and flat tires, but many are still in use. Most have been locked to trees, bike racks or anything they can find to lock up their bikes.

We needed a nap this afternoon since Kent did not sleep well last night. He had hot tea with his dinner and the caffeine may have contributed to his inability to sleep. Also, we have not yet adjusted to the nine-hour time difference from San Diego. The afternoon was largely spent in the hotel…..still cold and rainy outside.

By late afternoon Marc Fritze, one of the students that we mentored at San Diego State in 2009 met us at our hotel. He had driven two and a half hours from Germany to visit with us. We last saw him in 2010 when we were in Frankfurt for a few days. We had dinner at a nearby Turkish restaurant called Istanbul. Marc has been working in Berlin doing recruiting, but recently quit his job to look for a company that he likes better. He looked great and we wish him luck in finding a new job that he loves.

We had rain in the night and early morning, but it stopped by mid morning. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast in the hotel before heading out to the Rijks Museum. The museum is the National Art Gallery that has existed for more than 200 years. In 2013 they completed a ten-year renovation and the museum is beautiful. The building is housed in a Dutch Neo-Renaissance style brick building designed by architect Petrus J.H. Cuypers.

The museum contains an enormous collection (8,000 objects on display out of a collection of more than 1,000,0000 objects) of fine art including paintings, sculpture, furniture, dollhouses, china, glassware, silver, prints, drawings, photography, an incredible collection of art books and a large Asian art collection. Probably the most famous piece of art is Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” which is an extraordinary and enormous painting measuring 12 by 14 feet. Rembrandt was a Dutch painter who painted this group portrait of a local militia company in 1642. The museum also has a popular painting by Jan Willem Pieneman depicting the Battle of Waterloo painted in 1824. This painting is nearly 19 by 27 feet. We spent about five hours in the museum and still did not see everything there is to see. We did see lots of tall Dutch people, people of brown colors, Asians, nip slips and butt cracks in many paintings…. but no trash or cheese.

On the walk home to our hotel we stopped to have fish and chips at a local restaurant. We arrived back at our hotel about 6:30pm as it was beginning to sprinkle. The weather forecast was showing an 80% chance of showers this evening.

On this day we took the local tram to the Van Gogh Museum to take in the works of Vincent Van Gogh. The museum was extremely crowded and so we had to wait outside in the drizzle and wind for nearly one hour before making our way inside. The young Italian couple behind us had been to the smoke shops the night before so didn’t seem to mind the wait.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 in Zundert, Netherlands, to upper middle class parents, the son of a preacher. He did not begin painting until he was 27 years old and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the early age of 37. During this short ten-year period Vincent produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings, 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. This museum has the largest collection of Van Gogh works of art with 210 paintings and 527 drawings.

Vincent was a troubled man with mental illness and found that painting was helpful in calming his mind. He spent much of his time painting in Paris, northern and southern France. He felt more at home in quiet out of the way places than in the big city. He spent considerable time studying books, drawing extensively, practicing color techniques and fine-tuning his craft.

Vincent painted peasants in the countryside and meticulous landscapes before exploring the style that is more impressionistic. He began to use small brush strokes, often in circular motion or dots to create a painting. Some of his paintings are quite dark with a haunting feeling to them while others are of flowers that are bright and festive. At auctions, Van Gogh’s paintings have fetched some of the highest prices ever paid for art.

We spent about three hours in the museum before winding our way back to the hotel and stopping for a bite to eat at an Italian restaurant called the Ponte Vecchio. Along the way we stopped at an ice skating rink to watch the kids skating and to purchase a deep fried donut-like pastry ball sprinkled with powdered sugar. We returned to our hotel by 7:30pm and were happy to be out of the cold.

Happy New Year to one and all!

We found our way to the train station just outside the airport terminal and caught a train to Amsterdam a short 20-minute ride away. We are staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the city center, a short walk from the train station. Our room appears to have been carved out of the attic with large exposed beams. The finishes are beautiful and, best of all; they had a room for us before 9:00am. (Normal check in time was 3:00am.

The weather is extremely cold by California standards. People are bundled up in coats, hats and gloves. The streets are filled with broken champagne bottles, trash, and the remains of firecrackers from the New Year’s Eve festivities. Most of the major shops were closed today but some smaller shops and restaurants were open. We had lunch at a small Chinese/Indonesian restaurant not far from our hotel. We spent the afternoon walking the streets window-shopping and people watching. The streets are busy with loads of people out walking and shopping. We are able to recognize many different world accents from the passersby.

The daylight hours are short with it only getting light about 9:00am and by 5:00pm it is dark again. The streets are elaborately decorated with holiday lights and we even saw a canal with chandeliers of lights hanging over it. They have a Festival of Lights and Water during this time that we hope to have a chance to explore while we are here.

Amsterdam is the capital of The Kingdom of the Netherlands. People often confuse the Netherlands with Holland, but Holland is only a small central portion of the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy with King Willem-Alexander as the head of state. There are 12 provinces, each with its own capital, self-rule and administration. Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and it is also a member of the European Union (EU) and has adopted the Euro as its currency. The Netherlands is located north of Belgium and west of Germany on the North Sea.

The old city center of Amsterdam is formed by a series of canals in a semi-circle. Along these narrow canals is a large number of mostly 17th century residences built very narrow (less than 30 feet wide) and tall due to the lack of space. Since the interior staircases are very narrow a pulley system allows large items to be hoisted up from below and into large windows on each floor.

The city of Amsterdam has about 820,000 inhabitants, 600,000 bicycles and comprises about 175 nationalities. Prostitution has been legal since 1830 and is strictly regulated and taxed. Marijuana and Hashish are also legal and available in what are referred to as coffee shops. Of course, Kent will be doing some smokin’! not!

The alarm clock sounded at 3:00am this morning. Who’s answering the phone at this hour; Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Our flight departed San Diego at 6:15am bound for Newark, NJ. Our next flight was at 5:15pm bound for Amsterdam, Netherlands. The flights took nearly 15 hours in duration, arriving on New Years Day at 6:45am. The weather is a chilly 43 degrees but we arrived safe and sound.