On April Fools Day, I flew to Amsterdam nonstop on KLM (Royal Dutch), which is now joined up with Delta (and Air France and Northwest), which seems appropriate since Holland/Belgium is the delta of the Rhine, the Meuse, the Scheldt...
After a couple of days at the Rijksmuseum, I took a train to the Zuiderzeemuseum (think the poor fisherman's Williamsburg), a train to Naarden (the best preserved Vauban-style fortress in Europe), then flew to Vienna for a day to see the Brueghels—and The Art of Painting.
Then a train to The Hague to join a tour sponsored by Amherst (after all, it's my 50th reunion this year), Harvard, Bryn Mawr, and the Met.
We took a bus to Haarlem and the Keukenhof tulip fields, and then to Delft, where we boarded a 110-meter, barge-like cruise ship to Veere, Ghent, Bruges, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Arnhem, and Amsterdam.
It was intense. I often thought I should have gone by myself and thus been able to linger...but having the logistics taken care of was great. And moving quickly and efficiently from masterpiece to masterpiece was also thrilling.
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