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the fairytale Netherlands
Tuesday, November 11 2025
location: Cabin 102, MS Grace, Rhine River, Gorinchem, the Netherlands
Today was the last full day of the cruise, and we'd reached the last and lowest country, the Netherlands. I don't think we'd yet dropped below sea level, but we'd entered a region of bifurcation, where the Rhine breaks apart into distributaries that fan out across a massive delta. The city of Gorinchem is closer to Rotterdam than our ultimate destination of Amsterdam, and the initial view this morning was very Dutch. There was even a quaint old windmill near where we'd docked. After breakfast, Gretchen and I got off the boat and strolled around the city, marveling at all the canals (one of which was full of coots) and the old-style Dutch buildings, many of which were tilting this way or that as they slowly settled unevenly in the water-logged soil. We ducked into a church, one that looked significantly more minimalist than the gothic structures we'd seen in the big cities along the Rhine. It seemed to be a functional church, with, strangely, pews oriented in a big c-shape around a pulpit halfway down one of the sides of the nave. While we were there, some guys were setting things up and someone politely shooed us out and locked the door behind us. We strolled up and down the fairy-tale streets for awhile, occasionally trying to avoid the older Dutch couple from the boat, whom we kept seeing on bicycles and whom Gretchen didn't want to get stuck in a conversation with. (They're perfectly nice, and we've seen them on lots of cruises, but at this point Gretchen doesn't feel like she has any more to say to them.) We avoided getting close to one old windmill because of the older Dutch couple, but eventually we found our way to another one. I noted that the top of the windmill seemed to be able to rotate to point the windmill into the wind, and the system for securing that part in place amounted to nothing but a couple long boards wedged into place. The windmill had a nice balcony ringing it high above the ground, and that would've been a great place to hang out were it not for the fact that the blades of the windmill intrude into the space just above it in a way that would threaten the life of any person holding a Heineken just trying to chillax up there. I wondered if all these old windmills also had caretakers, jobs that (like so many) have been automated out of existence.
There were other things to see along the way, including a cat (he or she was wearing a collar) who kept darting out from beneath parked cars to stalk seagulls in a canal. Then there was the wall that was covered with bird houses.
After we returned to the boat, Gretchen went out on her own, this time on a bicycle, to explore the city more widely. I of course retreated to the cabin to continue work on my ESP8266 Remote Control code.
This afternoon our boat docked in Dordrecht, which is about ten miles southeast of Rotterdam. Gretchen and I borrowed bikes and again explored the city. This one was more urban, though nearly as postcard-worthy. Perhaps the entire Netherlands is this way. We went along canals, up brick-paved streets. It was all lovely, of course, but I had had enough of it shortly into our ride. Still, we eventually found an old cathedral with a strange clocktower instead of a spire and then noted the presence of recent additions build up along its side, obscuring the gothy goodness of the building itself. We wanted to go into it to see what was going on here, but it was closed. So ultimately, I had to settle for reading the Wikipedia entry. It was, it turns out, the Grote Kerk, and a spire had been planned for it, but it was never built because the whole structure (like many we'd seen) had begun to lean. We crossed a canal to get a look at the Grote Kerk from a greater distance, and the only spot to see it from had a guy in it smoking a fattie that filled the air with the strong smell of burning cannabis. Meanwhile a couple white-faced coots were paddling around below us, seeming to think we might toss them something to eat.
This evening on the boat, there was the usual final goodbye toast (featuring pink sparkling wine) in which the staff of the boat were paraded out to remind us how great of a job they'd done while Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" played from the sound system. Our cruise director, a woman who might be replacing the company founder Dirk, got a little emotional at the end as she brought her mother out (she'd joined us somewhere near Cologne).
The big final dinner came next, and this time we ate with the Swissies as well as Kelly and Brian. Most of the conversation was about Celia's struggles over the years with English, beginning with a trip to England she'd taken as a Harry-Potter-obsessed kid. She was traumatized when an employee at a café couldn't understand what she was saying when she tried to pronounce the words "strawberry tart." Later Celia told us about the crazy series of swindles and abductions carried out by her various psychopathic male ancestors over the generations, beginning in Austria, going to Australia, then returning to Austria, then a brief time in New York, and finally in Switzerland. The pattern was for the father to abduct the daughter for periods of time measured in years, though I had a little trouble following what all actually happened because of Celia's pronunciation issues.
Brian had opted to have a beer, breaking our pattern of me or him alternating between being the one who bought the night's bottle of red wine. So I opted to have some of the Swissies' wine, with the idea being that I would buy them drinks later in the lounge. As for the food, tonight for the first time it was unexpectedly horrible, full of weird combinations and bad flavor notes (particularly that of soy milk, which I hadn't noted on this cruise previously but which had been a big problem with the food on the cruise to Berlin a little over a year ago). The dessert was baked Alaska, which was pretty good. Normally I don't care about dessert because by that point I am full. But this evening if I hadn't eaten it, I wouldn't've eaten much.
After dinner, our six-person group moved up to the lounge, where an 80s & 90s music night was promised. I feel like 80s night is every night, and I have about as much patience for 80s music as I have for sweet potatoe fries, but if we didn't do that, we'd be holed up in our cabin on the last night to be socializing with friends. I drank a Jameson after not getting a chance to buy the Swissies a round, but then I got my opportunity, causing Gretchen to have to settle up our drink bill for a third time. As for the music, it was mostly unfamiliar Eurotrash club music, which, to me at least, was an improvement over familiar 80s hits. The singles who had been dancing together last night were out there dancing again, and it was cute to see the young Uber-driving guy from Indonesia and the awkward young man from Texas dancing with a woman who looked to be in her 80s.
Sunrise with flying goose viewed from the port in Gorinchem. Click to enlarge.
A cat stalking seagulls in Gorinchem. Click to enlarge.
Bird houses on a wall in Gorinchem. Click to enlarge.
An old windmill in Gorinchem with Gretchen on the lower right. Click to enlarge.
Weird additions to the Grote Kerk in Dordrecht. Click to enlarge.
The Grote Kerk in Dordrecht. Click to enlarge.
A street in Dordrecht. Click to enlarge.
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