Ah, Royalty.37
Above you’ll see the one of the most impressive and oldest original items in this semi-royal residence museum which I’ve only shown you once before even though the visit was in late May. I’m posting just about every remaining photo from my visit to the Markiezenhof now, since I have plenty of other photos for this series and currently reside and work in a nation where royal palaces are much easier to find than mountains. Strike that: in which anything one could reasonably describe as a mountain does not in fact exist, but people considered royal and thus their residences and such are generally rather plentiful. In the gallery below you’ll see some explanations of the displays including the altar above, if you’re interested. And at the bottom is the entrance to the whole compound: apparently my trip happened on day when some commercial company had rented the entry for an event or party of some sort or other, thus the folks with drinks in hand crowding the entrance.
Village Views.83
This entry is perhaps my most robust plug thus far for any of my friends, relatives or other readers who might be considering a visit to the Netherlands and / or me to remember a very important and oft-overlooked fact: though small as nation-states go, the Netherlands is much, much more than just Amsterdam. At the risk of incurring his wrath should he recognize himself, I’ll cite the example of one dear young relative whose original plan for his first-ever NL (and Paul) visit had been to use a connecting flight situation to spend a few days here, plus a few days in Stockholm. As plans evolved, said same fabulous relative decided to stick with NL only, had what I believe to have been a lovely visit exploring many cities and towns in this lovely, bike-friendly and well-organized nation…and has now planned another NL-only return visit with significant ambitions again to explore further afield than the (indeed lovely) “capital” city of Amsterdam. (Capital because that’s what everyone says it is – not, as previously noted in these pages, because it’s the seat of either the State or the government.) The connection to this current post: these are all from the lovely village of Heusden, on the Maas (Meuse) river in Noord Brabant an hour’s bike ride from Den Bosch (‘s Hertogenbosch, formally). As noted last month, I had the pleasure of spending a work-week living here at a friend’s house due to some tourist-visitor-related house swapping arrangements. I first visited Heusden on Christmas day in 2021, and shared my first Heusden posts in January 2022. You’ve seen it off and on since then, but today and in a couple future posts, we’ll be sharing more of its lovely charm. And any future visitors please note: NL is chock-full of such lovely, explorable towns and villages surrounded by moats and boasting picturesque streets, windmills and shop signs…and magnificently bike-friendly infrastructure. Just sayin. (Insider tip: you can use this blog best to plan potential visits by being sure you’re in the “full view” mode, and then looking for the small-print “categories” and “tags” that do very definitely appear at the bottom of every single post here, and then simply tap / clicking – for example on this post – “Heusden” to pull up all past posts that I’ve tagged as from Heusden. :-))
Ah, Royalty.32
(so much world, so little time....) 