Glacial Change

Last September (this is how far behind I am in writing blog posts) - last September, I was in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. I’ve said it before: I am a child of the West. I feel most at peace among the mountains, the forests, the vast empty spaces that make you feel tiny and expansive at the same time. 

Ready for adventure, we set forth one day to see the Columbia Icefield, a massive expanse of cold that straddles a triple continental divide. When we got there, I was reminded of the fact that I don’t actually like the cold. Plus stark white expanses are not exactly photographable, at least not by amateurs. So this story turns out not to about the icefield, but about what we learned of glaciers along the way. 

(If it sounds like an icefield would be the same thing as a glacier, you’re not far off: an icefield is basically a bigger and more permanent glacier.)

The jewels of Banff are not so much the mountains - remarkable though they are - but the brilliant lakes that stretch between them. (Don’t worry, I’m getting to the glaciers). The lakes are a stunning, surreal aquamarine color:

But such snapshots don't do these lakes justice. They are beautiful. 

Turns out these are all glacier-fed lakes, and it is the minerals and debris deposited by the glaciers that cause the lakes to reflect sunlight in such a way that all we see is this narrow but spectacular sliver of the color spectrum. (In other words, it’s science.)

So why are glaciers depositing minerals and debris into innocent mountain lakes? Because glaciers, contrary to my preconceived notions (I won’t assume anything about yours), are always moving. In fact, the very definition of a glacier requires constant movement. I guess I assumed that the cliche “glacial change” meant, well, that things weren’t really changing. But glaciers can change rapidly. I mean, relatively speaking.

So that got me thinking about what kinds of change could be considered “glacial.” Like slow, constant evolution or progress towards an outcome, the intermediate steps of which aren’t really visible, but then one day you wake up and - holy cow! That lake is BLUE!

Not quite the same, but it made me think of how we woke up one morning in Banff (and mind you, this was in late September), and the season had changed from fall:

to winter:

Just like that. Except not really because the seasons are a continuum, and we build up to the next one even if we aren’t noticing the subtle signs.

New Year's is kind of like that, too: an arbitrary holiday we use to demarcate and distinguish the slow buildup of days from the past to the future, when we will be surprised by how things have changed when we weren't looking. Happy new year, by the way.

So I’m going through my own sort of glacial change right now. I’m about half way through my first pregnancy, and after months of feeling almost nothing and worrying that I’d forget I’m pregnant and start downing stiff drinks like I’m an ad exec in 1962, I can now feel the baby kick (often too much so) at all hours of the day and night. That is, over the course of five months, I’ve grown a frickin' human being in my belly - albeit in severely miniature form - without any daily awareness of what’s going on in there. 

Nine months is a long time. I can imagine myself, come late April, being ripped from my complacent, work-focused daily existence to the sudden realization: O. M. G. It’s a BABY! And just like that, the world will look completely different. 

Embracing the Obvious

Driving east on our way to Boston, we detoured briefly to Yellowstone - that quintessential national park teeming with families and RVs, where campsites are packed in tent-to-tent and the lodges are booked up a year in advance. We entered the park through the popular northern gate, making our first experience in Yellowstone the hordes of families at Mammoth Hot Springs - like Disneyland, but with steam vents.

Like many of our generation and temperament, I disdain the obvious. I do not follow well-trod paths; I like to feel original, to have "real" experiences when I travel (by which I mean, experiences not clogged up with other tourists). In an ideal world, I like my trips to be just un-mainstream enough to provide me with decent anecdotes for yuppie dinner parties. Yellowstone is as mainstream as it gets. 

But here's the rub: places are usually popular for a reason. Sometimes the collective does know best - consider, for example, crowd sourcing and (more often than not) juries. What Yellowstone lacks in obscurity, it makes up for with super-amazingness.

A Tourist's History of Japan

Not all World Heritage sites are created equal (Wieliczka salt mines and D.F. Wouda pumping station, I'm looking at you). 

But Japan does it right: their sites are entertaining and educational. Those in western Honshu, the heartland of Japanese tourism, provide a CliffsNotes of the country's history - what every visitor ought to know about Japan. To illustrate, here's what we learned from the region's many UNESCO sites.

1. Itsukushima Shrine (500s)

Shintoism

The story: Mt. Misen on the island of Itsukushima (colloquially known as Miyajima) has been worshipped since pretty much forever. The island came to be so sacred, no one could be born or die there, and commoners were verboten. 

A Shinto shrine was established at the base of the mountain in the sixth century, though the present buildings date merely from the 1200s. They sit on stilts over the water; it is said that at high tide (if you squint your eyes right and tilt your head just so), the shrine looks as though it were floating. 

Miyajima's famous torii gate and ninja deer

I read someplace that this design allowed commoners to visit the shrine without ever setting foot on the sacred island: they would steer their boats through the giant torii gate set out in the sea and approach the "floating" shrine by water. Whatever the original purpose of the sea-bound torii gate, it is now one of the most photographed landmarks in Japan. Indeed, the entire island of Miyajima is considered one of the three most scenic places in the country. (Yes, there's a list for that.)

What is Shinoism? The "native" religion of Japan, Shintoism is closely tied to nature and is heavy on the ancestor worship. Shinto traditions are still a major component of Japanese life, even though most Japanese describe themselves as non-religious.

The highlights: 

• The central streets of the village of Miyajima are thick with the Japanese domestic tourism industry (toy shops, candy stores, cheesy restaurants), which provide an anthropological adventure for foreigners. 
• The sea around Hiroshima is known for its giant oysters, which in season are sold on the streets of Miyajima, grilled in their shells to order.

Making momiji at the Traditional Crafts Center

• Miyajima is also known for a cake-like cookie (momiji manju) filled with sweet bean paste, which you can watch being made by Rube Goldberg-esque machines at many of the aforementioned candy stores. Better yet, head to the Miyajima Traditional Crafts Center (just to your left as you exit the ferry terminal) to take a short momiji-making class. We took ours with a teenaged school group, which kindly helped tutor us in the fine art of cookie flipping. 
• Like Nara (see below), Miyajima is home to free-ranging deer. Unlike Nara, these deer are aggressive when you try to eat your momiji in front of them. Seriously, one reared up on its hind feet at me. Not charmed. But from afar, they add character to your photos of the shrine.
• Miyajima is a good option for a romantic night in a traditional inn, at least if you don't have kids in tow. This is where we had our fabulous/fascinating experience at the People's Lodge, complete with our multi-course haute cuisine feast (as described in a prior post). 

Good to know: I highly recommend taking a class at the Traditional Crafts Center as a brief and light-hearted introduction to the local culture. Miyajima is easy to reach from Hiroshima; you do not need a car on the island. Note your JR rail pass covers the JR ferry.

Educational Value: Medium
Entertainment Value: High
Kid appropriate? Yes, but keep them away from the deer.

Templed Out?

In Europe, it is easy to get churched out.  I have few distinct memories of cathedrals; there's just a cold, gray haze of feeling vaguely impressed.  Heading to Japan, we were warned of a similar experience, particularly in Kyoto, of becoming templed out.

I have to say, it didn't happen to me.

I am sure it is possible. Temples (Buddhist) and shrines (Shinto) are everywhere - and I do mean everywhere: tucked between old buildings in historic districts, hidden in the midst of rows of shops, at the end of every street. Markets have their own shrines; city corners and country roads have little Jizo buddhas. Torii gates are omnipresent.

It's interesting, when you consider that Japan is not a particularly religious nation. But despite the sheer quantity, my interest never waned. 

For one thing, shrines and temples in Japan are interactive experiences - even for outsiders. Take my favorite temple experience, Todai-ji, which sits in a giant park alongside other shrines and temples in the center of Nara: like an amusement park for the soul.  Tame deer approach looking for treats and pause, like zen masters, to be petted. The deer, messengers of the gods, defy cynicism: they are simply too, well, endearing.

Todai-ji itself is ginormous, built to house a ginormous bronze statue of Buddha. 

Koyasan: The Legendary Stuff of Legend

Before we left for our two-week trip to Japan, a friend gifted us David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a novel about Dutch people in Japan in the late 1700s (so basically, it was perfect for us). Half way through the book, the story takes a gothic turn when a main character is spirited away to a remote Shinto shrine hidden in the mountains, run by an evil abbot who hides his salacious and murderous plots behind a veneer of religious ritual. I was just reaching the dramatic climax the night we slept at a remote Buddhist temple high in the mountains, surrounded by towering cedars, a sprawling graveyard, and the nocturnal sounds of the forest.

Spending the night on Mt. Koya (Koyasan) was my favorite of favorite experiences in Japan precisely because it was the legendary stuff of legend - the stuff you read about in books but don't expect to experience for yourself. And in turn, every part of our 24 hours in Koyasan was my favorite part, which, when you think about it, is an exceedingly impressive return on travel investment.

Favorite Part #1: Getting to Koyasan.  Osaka, the closest major city to Koyasan, is huge, sprawling, and disorientating to newcomers - the Houston of Japan. Somewhere within the metropolis of Osaka, you switch to Koyasan's private rail line: just two diminutive cars on narrow gage track that winds through increasingly remote farmland (trees weighed down by bright orange persimmons) and then up into the mountains (verdant forests of bamboo and cedar green, filtering the sunlight to a gentle dimness).  In between isolated one-room stations losing their battle with the forest moss, there are sudden vistas of the rolling folds of the mountains, green fading to gray with distance.

Playing chicken on the funicular.

When the train can climb no higher, you switch to a funicular.  The mountainside is so steep here that the rows of seats inside the cable car are nearly vertical.  The short ride tests your faith in the reliability of Japanese engineering.

But that's not all.  After you safely disembark, there is still a bus ride into the heart of Koyasan, down a narrow curving road kept in perpetual darkness by the surrounding forest.  The road opens up into the central intersection of Koyasan, and suddenly everything is white walls and sunshine.

A Perfect Day: Krakow, August 2011

It's been nine months, but I really have to post something about Krakow. In reality, our time in Krakow was split up over three or four days, but in my head, we had one perfect day in Krakow. That perfect day went something like this:

From the train station, our short walk to the old town takes us across the planty for the first time. The planty is a park (yes, the plant-y is a park) that encircles the old town where the city's medieval walls once stood. Shade trees line tidy paths; locals watch passersby from the green benches. There is always something to see in the planty. 

Today it is several hundred young scouts from around Poland, looking homogeneous in their militaristic green and beige uniforms and knee-high socks. It's the 50th anniversary of the country's scouting program, and the President is in town for the occasion. Scout leaders try to corral the kids into scraggly lines while the marching band warms up and the flag bearers smugly congregate in front. I can't help but feel like the towheaded youth are about to storm the castle.

From the planty, it's a quick jaunt through the old town to Market Square, the heart of Krakow. We have timed this perfectly. Only during certain summer months, on certain days, between certain hours can you climb the city watch tower next to St. Mary's Basilica. With even greater temporal precision, we emerge at the top of the tower right before 11 a.m. On the hour, the trumpeter on duty (finishing his 24-hour shift) emerges from his little office and circles the wood-beamed room to play the city's famous hejnał four times - once in each direction.

So there we are on a beautiful summer morning, looking out over Krakow's old town and the bustling Market Square, and right next to us is one of Krakow's (and Poland's) greatest symbols, playing the same short melody that has been played here every hour, every day, for centuries. Awesome.

A Polish Week: Hoodwinked

It's all about the marketing.

So the story about Wawel Castle's chakra goes something like this (and I quote from Rick Steves' Eastern Europe):

Adherents to the Hindu concept of chakra believe that a powerful energy field connects all living things. Some believe that, mirroring the seven chakra points on the body (from head to groin) there are seven points on the surface of the earth where the energy is most concentrated: Delhi, Delphi, Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome, Velehrad ... and Wawel Hill -- especially over there in the corner. Look for peaceful people (here or elsewhere on the castle grounds) with their eyes closed. One thing's for sure: They're not thinking of Kazimierz the Great. The smudge marks on the wall are from people pressing up against this corner, trying to absorb some good vibes from this chakra spot. The Wawel administration seems creeped out by all this. They've done what they can to discourage this ritual (such as putting up information boards right where the power is supposedly most focused), but believers still gravitate from far and wide to hug the wall. Give it a try ... and let the Force be with you.

 

Sounds awesome.  Except I'm pretty sure it was dreamed up by some intern in Krakow's office of tourism.

A Polish Week: When History Isn't History

You can't spend time in Poland without running into WWII. 

Being historically minded, and working (at the time) amongst the institutional legacy of the Nuremberg Trials, I knew I knew everything about WWII when we set off for Poland. I was wrong.

If you go to Krakow, you have to go to Auschwitz. Jeff and I were looking forward to this field trip like an overdue visit to the dentist. It's not easy to get to, and the non-discretionary tour exceeds three hours. That's three hours of depressing statistics, more depressing anecdotes, and filing silently through depressing ruins in the hot August sun. Fun.

Three hours have never passed so quickly. (Jeff will attest.) For one thing, I never realized how much of our cultural understanding of the Holocaust is based specifically on Auschwitz: from Arbeit Macht Frei to the use of tattoos to identify prisoners (which our tour guide insisted only happened here).  

But what I really hadn't understood, and the reason I am grateful I went to Auschwitz, was the magnitude of Birkenau, the death camp next door. Birkenau is an atomic wasteland. I swear there are still no birds there, nothing but long grass and weeds covering what little remains of row after row after row of bunk houses. This is where the train tracks to nowhere enter through the red brick prison gates and stretch a mile down the "sorting platform" to the crematoriums. (One of the smartest things the Nazis ever did was to blow up the gas chambers of Birkenau. I couldn't truly picture what had happened there when all I had to look at was a caved-in pile of rubble.)

But more or less, this was all stuff I already knew. What I didn't know was the story of Warsaw. 

Berlin is free

I love it when new experiences come free (see, for example, my notes on London). Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to shell out for awesome museums or tickets to the ballet - but it's like shopping a sale: you love that cashmere sweater all the more when you know you got it for a song.

Berliner Dom

Berlin is like the Filene's Basement of new experiences.

Three Views of Salzburg

I have learned something from all my travels with Jeff: the value of a good city view. Except that while Jeff insists on climbing things (typically church towers), I prefer to take my views with ice cream or a celebratory beverage.

Luckily I was accompanied to Salzburg with a friend similarly inclined to food, drink and leisure.  Thanks to Rick Steves' Germany (yes, Salzburg is in Austria), we spent most of our one day in Salzburg staring out at three remarkable views.

View #1: If you take the train to Salzburg (as we did), you approach the city from the east side of the river. Before crossing over to the heart of the old town, we paused at the rooftop terrace of the Hotel Stein.  Lounging on wicker couches and shaded by giant umbrellas, we worked our way through multiple rounds of champagne and Italian antipasto while gazing out over a postcard of the city.

View #2: Salzburg does not take long to explore (it's not all that big, after all). After some ornate churches, pretty graveyards, and quaint streets in the midday sun, we knew what we really needed: ice cream. Enter Cafe Tomaselli, a classic ice cream parlor fronting one of Salzburg's main pedestrianized plazas. The ice cream itself was nothing to write home about (nor were the prices), but it was served in fabulous old fashioned sundae glasses, and it came with a fabulous balcony view. The ensuing hour was spent in the blessed shade, nursing our sundaes while watching other tourists struggle through the August heat.

View #3: Salzburg is ringed by rugged, forested hills. On other days, I might have insisted on hiking around the Monchsburg ridge to the old fortress. But not this day. This day, we took the municipal elevator up and wandered for about 10 minutes along the ridge until we reached the hostel Die Stadt Alm, where large, roughly hewed picnic tables were arranged right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the city. Heaven is a giant plate of wienerschnitzel, a cold beer, and Salzburg in the golden hour before sunset. Trust me. It's spectacular.

Why the Rhine Valley Rocked

Over the course of August and September, I ended up in Germany for three different trips - to Berlin, to Munich, and to the Rhine Valley (I know, life is hard, but bear with me). Of the three, I most want to go back to Berlin - but I have to admit, contrary to my expectations, that of the three, the Rhine Valley made the best trip.

Specifically, I'm talking about the stretch of the Rhine between Cologne and Mainz, with the addition of Baden Baden at the southern end.  Perhaps it was just the change of pace from our typical city destinations, perhaps it was just the sheer variety of experiences to be had, but this is the trip I'd recommend for other first-time visitors to Germany.  Our own perfect Rhine Valley itinerary went something like this:

Step 1: Lunch at a beer hall in Cologne.  Excellent German food, excellent local Kolsch.  We also revisited Cologne's massive cathedral.

Step 2: Castles.  The hills of the Rhine Valley are covered with them, like the rocky ruins of the massive Rheinfels castle perched above St. Goar. Our favorite, though, was on the nearby Mosel River: Burg Eltz, a fairytale castle nestled in a green valley in excellent (still inhabitable) condition - although unfortunately covered in scaffolding, and therefore temporarily unphotogenic.  

Schloss Rheinfels

Step 3: Vertical diversity. Coming from the flatness of the Netherlands, the rolling ridges of the Rhine Valley are breathtaking (like a green version of the Columbia River Gorge).  Doesn't hurt that every ridge is topped with a castle, and every hollow is home to a miniature village of half-timbered houses.  Which brings us to...

Step 4: Half-timbered houses.  I didn't think places like this existed outside of Epcot Center. We stayed in Bacharach, a tiny town of narrow cobblestone streets, half-timbered houses tilting slightly with age, window boxes full of geraniums, and vineyards stretching up the hillsides.  Perhaps because the weather was not fantastic, the town was surprisingly empty - except for the national petanque tournament down along the riverfront. 

Utrecht Journal: Learning to Travel Solo

This is a story about making myself proud.  

I was convinced, after pathetic days spent alone in London and Amsterdam pre-law school, that I do not travel well by myself.  This has cramped my traveling style in the years since, and also made me feel bad about myself.  But after the partial success of my Morocco challenges, I decided it was time to try again.  My self-imposed challenge: a day-trip to Utrecht, solo.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

8:58 a.m., Utrecht Central Station: Half-hour train ride passed too quickly in whirl of anxiety, both general and specific.  Stumbling onto train platform amidst flow of passengers, uncertain what to do first - go straight to the museum? Find a cafe for second breakfast?  On escalator up to the station hall, notice the lights above create a cool effect in the escalator shaft. Hesitate as escalator comes to an end.  Step back onto down-escalator while digging camera from backpack.  Spend 10 minutes riding escalator back and forth, taking pointless pictures of the light.

Note the yellow train, which I heart.

9:22 a.m., Utrecht Central Station (still): Pointless escalator picture-taking is oddly liberating.  Understand that I should head straight to the city center to find an atmospheric cafe full of university students.  Thinking what I really want is a "misto" at the Starbucks in the unremarkable train station.  Realize the power of choice is entirely in my hands.  

To the North, Part II

Other than seeing the Wadden Sea, the primary mission of my self-directed northern adventure was to visit the rest of the Netherlands' World Heritage sites.  All five (including the Wadden Sea) are variations on the same theme: how the Dutch fought the Sea.  The five sites were, collectively, rather anti-climatic.  (Spoiler alert: the Dutch won.)

But in the right order, they do tell the arch of the defining Dutch story.  It goes something like this:

In the beginning, there was land, and there was Sea.  And then the Sea breached the land, and the land was flooded.  This was understandably frustrating to the people who thought they lived there.  (The Wadden Sea will remain permanently stuck in this stage of the story, now that it is protected as a World Heritage site.  But no one really wants to live that far north anyway.)

At first the people tried to fight the Sea by building their houses and churches on terps (mounds of earth) and constructing sea walls and sand bars.   This was not very successful. Eventually the ingenuous Dutch realized they could use windmills to pump water up and out of low-lying land.

Thus the polders were born: land drained and kept dry by orderly systems of dikes and windmills.  The very first, Beemster Polder, was drained in 1612 (!!!), and was designated a World Heritage site a mere 387 years later.  But it is a particularly difficult site to visit because - other than the pretty lines of trees and tidy grid of roads and canals - there's not really any there there.  It's like the Greenwich, CT of Amsterdam.  (This stage in the battle between the Dutch and the Sea is much better represented by Kinderdijk.)

Although great for postcards and Dutch branding, the windmills alone were not enough. Terrible floods racked the lower Delta region of the country, while the large bay of the Zuiderzee (the "Southern Sea" that in fact lay north of Amsterdam) stubbornly ate away at the interior of the country.  In the mid-1800s, the government forced the evacuation of one large island in the Zuiderzee, Schokland, having grown tired of funding the fight for such a lost cause.

Biking along the Edge of the World

Sometimes you need to go someplace just because it's there - because that black hole sitting on the edge of your mental geography goads you and it's within your power to extend the boundaries of your known universe by some small increments.  At least, that's how I felt as a fat ten-year-old trying to bike up unexplored blocks in the 'hood that were inconveniently pitched at 45-degree inclines.

That's also how I felt about the north of the Netherlands - the upper half of the country above Amsterdam which no one else seems curious about. But it's there.

It's also different.  Friesland, the northwestern province of the country, has its own language that is entirely distinct from Dutch. Indeed, Dutch was not the official language of the Netherlands until 1993.  (They might as well have skipped over Dutch entirely and gone straight to English, but that's a different essay.)  In between Amsterdam and Friesland are vast tracts of land - entire provinces - that were under water 100 years ago.  And to accentuate the far distance you can travel in an hour's drive north of Amsterdam, Frisia is replete with funny looking little ponies, so miniature that they turned a grown man (Jeff) into a cooing eight-year-old girl.

Cooooo.

It's good to remind yourself of the power you wield over your own life as a fully independent adult. I wield this power sometimes when I skip the oatmeal Jeff dutifully makes for me in the morning in lieu of a pain au chocolat at my office canteen.  Or when I start watching the movie that comes on TV at 11 pm even though it's a school night and I'm already up past my bedtime.  Similarly, I decided I really needed to see the north of the Netherlands.  So in August I rented a car and dragged Jeff along on an entirely selfish two-day northern adventure.

It did not blow me away; it was different from the rest of the Netherlands, but only as different as, say, North Carolina is from South Carolina.  But our ultimate destination did move me greatly: it felt like we were biking along the edge of the world.

Postcard: Rietveld Schroeder House (Utrecht)

What makes this house special: It was built in 1924, when it must have shocked its neighbors. It was designed by a furniture maker, Gerrit Thomas Reitveld, with no formal education (which shows in the house's increasing deterioration). Its upper floor transforms like a magic puzzle box, with all sorts of ingenious sliding doors and latching wall panels, from five rooms into one giant loft-like space. Still, I'm not sure why this house is on the World Heritage List when the Sonneveld house in Rotterdam is not. 

Bilbao: Vastly Underrated

When I was planning our trip to northern Spain, allotting one evening to Bilbao seemed more than adequate to accomplish the only thing I was told made Bilbao worthwhile (the Guggenheim).  But that one evening passed too quickly, and when midnight found us at Claudio's in the old town working our way through a plate of local jamon and chistorras, I regretted our rash decision to book tickets on a bus out of town at 9 the next morning.

My new-found love affair with Bilbao took root in the fertile ground of low expectations.  With everyone from the New York Times to our Spanish friends in Pamplona telling us Bilbao is nothing special (save, of course, for Frank Gehry's massive monument to modern art), we were free to discover the city for ourselves. 

Jeff Koons' giant puppy welcomes the city to the museum

Of course, the museum is all that and a bag of chips.  Its shape both inside and out is fluid and mysterious; it spills over into public spaces filled with public art, along the riverfront in one direction and into the city on the other.  The cavernous and curving galleries are best suited for modern art of the giant installation variety, some of which we really liked and some of which was beyond us.  Of our eight precious hours in Bilbao, we spent three on the museum - but the other five were equally memorable. 

Antwerp's Heritage: Searching for the Right Words

On our recent jaunt to Antwerp, we dutifully hit all of its World Heritage sites.  But words fail me: there should be a way to describe the theme that connects these, but the best I can come up with is "self-determination."  I don't think that's quite right (besides being rather soporific), so I welcome any suggestions.

First there's the béguinage.  I love this concept.  Back in the late Middle Ages, single women who lived quietly religious lives but did not want to take vows built these enclosed communities within major Flemish cities.  They are like little towns, separated from the male-dominated world by high walls and approachable through only a single door that is locked at night.  Once inside, there's a small church and modest lodgings around a central courtyard.

I find it very meaningful that women were able to create a third way for themselves 800 years ago.  Faced with the choice of being subjected to a husband or to the Church, I too might have opted out, leading instead a simple life focused on service and prayer, one in which I could earn my own living with the help of female friends.  According to UNESCO, the communities were even democratically run, with an elected leader and often an elected council.  A much better solution to the problem of independent-minded women than burning them as witches, imho.

Touring the Netherlands: The Golden Oldies

We've hit peak tourist season in the Netherlands (late spring is an excellent time to travel here), and Jeff and I are just racking up the Dutch Golden Oldies. Keeping in mind that I live a G-rated life, what do you think of when I say "Holland"? Yup, we've pretty much done it.

Exhibit 1: Tulips

For about three weeks at the end of April, the fields from Leiden to Amsterdam were strips of bright color, so fragrant you could smell them through train windows (especially the hyacinths). Along the roadsides, impotent field owners' signs pleaded unsuccessfully with the hordes of tourists, "PLEASE Do Not Walk in the Flower Beds."

Sixty years ago, the mayor of a small town and the major bulb exporters in the region had the brilliant idea of distilling the beauty of the bulb fields into a major garden exposition: draw tourists, market products, spread a little flower love. Thus the Keukenhof was born.

On the Roman Basilica

I have to admit: I was under-impressed by the Coliseum. After a couple hours, most of the ruins of the Forum and Palantine Hill were indistinguishable to me. An imaginative person, I nevertheless am unable to imagine what a Roman city would have looked like in its heyday.

But the Basilica of Constantine - that stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it's because I had never heard of it, and thus did not know what to expect. And it would be pretty hard to describe it in any way that would make anyone want to go see it (unlike, say, the Coliseum).