Holland & Belgium Viking River Cruise
Day 11: Monday, November 04, 2024 - Hoorn, Netherlands
The day's statistics:
- Weather: upper 50s
- Steps: 11,301 Linda; 13,735 Steve
- Miles traveled (approximately): 184
Hoorn is pronounce like the horn in French horn or car horn, but the 'o' is held / pronounced a little longer.
Before heading to breakfast, I happened to look out the window and saw this unusually high number of chemtrails
contrails.
Today's 9:00 excursion was "Hoorn Walking Tour and Local Performance". Our guide was Pauline.
Approximate Google® map of our walking route:
- Purple line to the local performance
- Green line to the farthest spot we walked in town
- Orange line the route we took to return to the ship
We started off departing the ship and going straight into an apartment building, museum, and hotel courtyard.
There were benches built around trees.
We were in the courtyard only briefly. The we returned to the road along the waterway and started walking toward town.
We crossed over a canal, and continued on, passing the harbor and The Hoofdtoren (a defense tower), crossed over another canal,
and passed some other buildings. Our trek brought us to the large church - called the Great Church - in the center of town.
The symbol representing the town of Hoorn is the unicorn because it has hooves. I mean, a horn.
In the plaza at the church - which is now no longer a church, it is a restaurant called "Saint" and a
hotel called "Heaven". The story is you have to take a stairway to get to the hotel. So...
a "Stairway to Heaven".
Anyway, across from the church was a small set of buildings. They are built in an unusual fashion on purpose.
First, they are built at an angle to the street in order to try to maximize the interior space as length was limited
due to a waterway behind it. Second, the front is decidedly tilted - but that is because the side of the building
is sinking. And the upper floors were build straight, much like that tower in Pisa, Italy.
We were only touring for about a half hour when we headed to Het Huis Verloren for a local performance of some
shantymen singers. During the performance, we also enjoyed mimosas.
After the performance, we gathered outside near the outdoor eating area, and then headed back out into the town.
In front of the church was a fountain. There is a stone (not pictured) near the front of the fountain that if it is
stepped on causes the water in the fountain to briefly spray higher.
In the corner near the church entrance was a statue with flowers.
Then we walked along the opposite side of the church and into a corner where we came across an original city gate.
Near the gate was an entrance into an old monestary garden.
We walked through the garden to the street on the other side, and eventually walked a loop in the town,
viewing various architectural highlights, and eventually wound up back at the plaza in front of the church
next to the restaurant where we saw the performance.
We continued on to another plaza that had a statue, and the facade of Westfries Museum and Staten College.
We proceeded down an avenue and came across an old Nazi headquarters.
The bronze plaque was placed there as the woman that owned the property was vacated and moved to a residence
about sixty meters (180 feet) behind the headquarters. There, the woman actually hid Jews from the Nazis.
We continued on, and eventually partially overlapped our initial route into town.
Back near the water, we walked behind the restaurant and onto a pier where we saw the
Scheepsjongens van bontekoe, or The Shipboys of Bontekoe.
Our two and a half hour tour with a concert was over, and we embarked.
After stopping by the cabin to drop off our various items, we headed to the lounge briefly for a cup of coffee, and spied
the cookie selection. No, we didn't have one as it was almost lunch time.
Then we headed to the dining room for lunch. We sat with Pete and Dori.
Linda had the orange & carrot soup, Cuban sandwich, and seasonal fruit cup.
I had a small pasta appetizer from the market fare, the mixed salad greens, speghetti alla carbonara, and chocolate chip sundae.
While eating, we noticed a city off in the distance.
Also while eating, this boat passed by.
After lunch, I went up to the sundeck to get a better picture of the city with the telephoto lens.
It turns out that it ISN'T a city, but rather just a grove of trees. And a wind turnbine (barely visible on the left).
After lunch, we decided to go back into town again because we could.
We actually wanted to see if we could get into one of the churches. The main church in the middle of town was no
longer a church (see above) so we tried to find another. As we were approaching one, on the street perpendicular
to the Great Church, we saw someone leaving and we think they were the caretaker / secretary / priest / nun and
were locking up to go to lunch based on the local current time - 2:00.
We walked around a little, but since we were recently here, there wasn't too much that was new for us to see.
This boat had what looked and sounded (after carefully lightly knocking on it) like a solid wood apple.
We spent a bit more than an hour wandering around on our own.
We even ran into a quartet of fellow travelers near the church too. They were heading back in the direction of the
ship as were we. So we chatted with them a little. There was a joke about one of the women needing a lollipop because
she is in charge of anything so often that, like a guide, should have a lollipop. While we were chatting, one of the
two guys stepped into the store we happen to be standing next to - and bought her a lollipop. A candy lollipop.
After arriving back on the ship again, it wasn't long before it was time for our disembarkment talk. It is asked that
one person from each cabin attend, and I was once again the designee.
Hulgar reviews with all the travelers what the procedure and timing is for departing the ship the in less than two
days (not the next morning, but the one after). This covers what time luggage had to be out, what groups were doing what,
and who was going where.
Hulgar finished with a few minutes to go before the port talk - so I headed to the cabin to drop off the papers and
pick up Linda.
The port talk was the usual routine, and we sat with Claire and Liz, sisters from the UK.
Then we headed to the dining room.
We had dinner with Noreen and Andy from NJ, and Suzanne and Rick also from NJ.
Linda had Caesar salad; risotto con zucchine, burrata, e tartufo; and moelleux au chocolat.
I had minestrone alla genovese, roast chateaubriand béarnaise, and moelleux au chocolat.
Not long after dinner ended, the ship cast off and headed toward Amsterdam.
We started to get a jump on our packing for the following night.