Travel Notes: Three Things About Three Things

On Traveling and Returning Home

I am just back from a cruise to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris, and I have a three-part report to make. But first let me acknowledge how fortunate I feel – and how grateful I am – to have been able to take this vacation.

I’m going to start with the three best things I saw, and in case it makes you feel like taking a trip, I’ll give the three best travel tips learned this time around. And finally, I will share the three best takeaways from this experience which include a candy store I visited in Brugge called Home Sweet Home.

The three best sites come first:

• If you have hoped to see this part of the world, be sure to go during the eight weeks that comprise tulip season. And be 100% sure to visit Keukenhof Gardens. The park covers almost 80 acres, and 7 million flower bulbs are planted in the gardens annually, including 800 tulip varieties. The flowerbeds are planted in layers like a lasagna to ensure continuous bloom. Three bulbs are planted in each location. The shallowest bulb blooms first for three weeks, followed by the other layers.
• This sounded boring to me, but turned out to be amazing. We went to the Delta Works which is a series of dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees, and storm surge barriers built between 1954 and 1997. In spite of the fact that it has been declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, I’d still be yawning over the visit except for the Disney-like 4D animation called the Delta Experience that let me experience the night of January 31, 1953 when the waves of the North Sea wiped out parts of the Netherlands. “Living through” this natural disaster helped me understand what it means for a country to be almost 30% below sea level, the importance of those “crazy Dutch engineers”, and what it means when they say, “God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.”
• And of course, I went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. This is the place where Anne Frank, her family, and four others hid from the Nazis for two years before being discovered and sent to Auschwitz. Only her father survived the camps and he is the one responsible for publishing her journal, The Diary of a Young Girl, one of the most widely read firsthand accounts of Nazi persecution. Here is a ticket tip – the tickets released today are for six weeks into the future and they go on sale at 10 AM Amsterdam time. This is 4 AM in Philly, the time my friend Roberta woke up to go online and scoop up tickets for us before they QUICKLY sold out.

And now for three travel tips:

• On a previous European trip to Italy, my iPhone battery drained quickly if I so much as turned on the phone to take a photo. While my phone was fine in Amsterdam, Roberta had that battery drain problem. I plan to be prepared on my next trip by buying a portable power bank, so I can recharge on the go. This is especially important now that I use the phone for GPS walking directions.
• The key word for packing is “layers.” I know this well and even pack camisoles – which take up almost no space in a suitcase. But what about the most tip-top layer, my head? A hat – and gloves – also take up no room in a suitcase, so why not bring them along? And finally, especially on European trips, scarfs are everywhere and they add an incredible layer of warmth. Pack one.
• I am a prolific list maker and when I am about to travel, I start to make lists. One contains things I need to remember to do at the house – like stop the mail and turn down the heat. The other is things I need to remember to bring – like my passport, electrical converter, an umbrella, baggies of all sizes, etc. I have made these lists repeatedly through the years, but no more. Now I have two master lists. When I am going to travel, I Xerox them and do my crossing off on the copy, leaving the original ready to Xerox again and use again the next time.

And finally, here are the top three takeaways from this trip (including two famous lines from movies):

• When in Amsterdam, one is always warned to look out for the bicyclists. My daughter knows this danger well as she was hit by a bicycle on her visit there years ago. Her take on the experience was a great lesson in perspective. The accident took place on the street outside the Anne Frank House. Lisa said she could hardly complain of her injury when juxtaposing it to what the Frank family endured.
• There were so many fabulous sights and tastes on this trip (think frites and waffles and chocolate) but – here’s some perspective again – the fondest memories of the trip will be the people I traveled with: Roberta, Nancy, Carl, Jean, Steve, Janet, and Larry. When we weren’t touring, we were playing a card game named Swoop in the boat’s lounge. And if those seven folks didn’t add enough to my personal Memory Lane, my Ohio friends, Liz and Paul, were starting a European trip while I was ending mine. Our travels overlapped in Paris and we met there for dinner. As the famous line from Casablanca goes, “We’ll always have Paris.”
• And finally, that chocolate shop mentioned in the second paragraph. Yes, the chocolate was sublime. Truly. But the name of the shop was even better – Home Sweet Home. Borrowing from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “Oh Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.”

In closing, let me acknowledge how fortunate I feel – and how grateful I am – that my favorite place on earth is home.

*****

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