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. :-))
Goodness me, it would appear that I’ve not yet shown you any views of the lovely “Markiezenhof” or “Marquis’s Home,” the museum / formerly – sometime – royal – related historical museum and structure which spurred my bike and train adventure down to Bergen Op Zoom, Vlissingen, Middelburg, and so on. Between this and my visit at long last to the Muidersloot, I’ve concluded that most palace – castle type items in NL (at least those that are now open to the general public as museums) must have a superlative in their self-description. This one says it’s the oldest (maybe also best maintained?) city palace in … all of Europe was the claim, if I recall well. During the Napoleonic wars, this area was a very important prize for the French, so the museum has lots of maps and stories from that time, when it would appear at least Napoleon’s brother and maybe the man himself visited this very building.
Technically this probably isn’t urban, but it’s such a busy waterway near Europe’s largest port that it feels urban. This is the view looking downstream (towards Rotterdam and the North Sea), from the bridge I biked over as noted in the prior post.
There are two islands in this photo of the canal / moat that surrounds the lovely Noord Brabant town of Heusden, where I spent a week at the start of July. More to come from those evening after-workday-from-home walks.
The heavily-flooded Maas (Meuse), which here functions as the border between the Dutch provinces of Gelderland (to left, north in this photo) and Noord Brabant. Took this, plus the shots of two different castles in two different villages below, during a 26 December walk with my friend Kiki while visiting her for a lovely Christmas-holiday afternoon.
Cheating slightly here, since one shot was really taken in a village and the other in a city, but I think one must not continue the whole holiday-lights thing too far into the new year…
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. :-))
(so much world, so little time....) 