Jeri Clausing
As we prepared to set sail from Amsterdam two weeks ago, our river cruise director jokingly referred to our new itinerary as the "mystery cruise," or "Plan B.
Although AmaWaterways has vessels with some of the lowest drafts on the European rivers, it had just become the final line to have to abandon sailings between Basel and Amsterdam due to low water for an alternate sailing through small picturesque towns and ports of the Netherlands and Belgium that the lines usually only sail during tulip season.
While all on board were pleased with the advance notice they had received of the change, as well the choice of a refund or credit on future sailings, I was excited that my hosted trip, covering AmaWaterways' new wellness program, had also just turned into a bonus ancestry cruise.
Before we left, I sent the itinerary to my mother, who dabbles on Ancestry.com, and found out that at least four of our stops would be in or near small towns where different sets of my great-grandparents had emigrated from.
Although I didn't run into any distant cousins (that I know of), I loved wandering the towns and seeing so many of the Dutch treats I enjoyed with my grandparents as a child when we lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has a large and still tight-knit Dutch community.
The town Kinderdijk, which has the greatest concentration of windmills from the 1500s in all of Holland. Photo Credit: TW photo by Jeri Clausing
I was also amused at how tidy the streets and homes are, knowing that in addition to being frugal, the Dutch are well known for being fastidious housekeepers.
One of my favorite stops was the town of Kinderdijk, which has the greatest concentration of windmills from the 1500s in all of Holland. Although the windmills were built to pump water from the land that lies below sea level, many today have been converted into beautiful homes.
And while the captain had jokingly referred called our itinerary the tulip cruise without the tulips, there was no shortage of beautiful flowers everywhere.
In addition to the Dutch towns my ancestors came from, including the northern port tourist town of Enkhuizen whose docks are lined with gorgeous tall ships, and Utrecht, home of the gothic De Haar Castle, we hit the Belgian highlights.
My favorite was Bruges, with its gothic homes, chapels and grand town square, not to mention the brilliant underground pipeline that carries beer from the city brewery to an out-of-town bottling plant.
Although this was a "Plan B" cruise, judging the from festive mood and positive reactions to all the excursions the river cruise lines might be wise to consider adding such a route during more than tulip season.
Craig and Lorna Allen, a retired couple from Toronto who have been on 43 AmaWaterways cruises and some 100 ocean cruises for what amounts to five years of sailing, said they especially enjoyed the diversion because they were able to see places they have never been. And obviously, they've been a lot of places.