River cruise experience with friends

A spring river cruise in the Netherlands is a terrific cruise experience to see tulips and other bulb flowers. We set sail on Viking River Cruises' Viking Europe roundtrip from Amsterdam, enjoying the spectacular flowers, quaint villages, windmills and other wonderful sites of the Netherlands and Holland

Author's Note: Walking River Cruises is now using some of its new Viking Longships for its Dutch Tulip Cruise launch. Although the river basins are different, the river cruise experience still seems to be as enjoyable as when I took this cruise a few years ago.

Join me on this travel log of our Dutch Tulip Cruise.

I've been to Amsterdam several times, but never explored the rest of the country. The Netherlands is more than just its big city! Here are a few interesting facts.

First, Holland forms only 2 of the 12 Dutch provinces of the Netherlands. Much of the country is "artificial", being reclaimed from the sea over the past few centuries. About a quarter of the country's 40,000 square kilometers are below sea level, and much of the Netherlands is at or near sea level - no worries about altitude sickness here! There are 2400 km of seawater decks, some of which are over 25 meters high.

Dutch history goes back 250,000 years as evidenced by archaeological evidence from a cave near Masterschach. Another marginal settlement in the area has been found around 2000 years ago.

These ancient people made large land-like mounds that they used during the frequent flooding of their fields. More than 1000 of these terraced flats are scattered around the countryside, mostly near Denthe in Frenzel province. The Romans invaded the Netherlands and occupied the country from 59 BC until the 3rd century, followed by the Germanic Franks and the Wailingians for the next few centuries.

The Netherlands advanced in the late 15th century. Many merchants became wealthy merchants of tapestries, precious clothing, artwork and jewellery. The Low Countries, as they were called, became famous for their shipbuilding, salted herring, and beer.

The 17th century was a golden one for the Netherlands. Amsterdam declined as the financial center of Europe, and the Netherlands remained both economically and culturally important. The Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, was the largest trading company of the 17th century and the world's first multinational corporation. The Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621, and was the center of the slave trade as its ships spread across Africa and the Americas. Explorers from both these companies discovered or conquered countries around the world, from New Zealand to Mauritius to Manhattan Island.

The Netherlands eventually became an independent state, and managed to remain neutral during World War I. Unfortunately, the country could not remain neutral during World War II. Grenades attacked in May 1940 and the Netherlands was not liberated until 5 years later. The stratification of Rotterdam, starvation during the Hunger Winters and the plight of Dutch Jews such as Ang Frank have many gruesome war stories.

During the interwar years the Netherlands returned to commercial industry. These decades after the war saw the return of natural gas discoveries and productive farms in the North Sea to the Dutch coast. For many years the Dutch colonies around the world gained their independence in the post-war years. Today the Netherlands is seen as a very liberal country, with a wide range of social events, personal freedom and a high tolerance for drugs.

Now that you know a bit about the history and geography of the Netherlands, come check out our Viking Europe Dutch Journey cruise.We raced across the Atlantic overnight, I tried to dream of tulip fields and slowly spread the wind.

Tulipmania

It may be hard to believe, but the Tulip did not appear before an economic disaster occurred in Holland in 1637.

Tulips started out simply as wildflowers in Central Asia and first evolved into Turkey. (The word tulip is Turkish for a turban.) Carrolls Clusius, director of Europe's oldest botanical garden located in Leiden, was the first to bring bulbs into the Netherlands. He and other horticulturists quickly saw that bulbs were well-suited to the cool, damp climate and fertile delta soils.

The beautiful flowers were quickly discovered by the prosperous Dutch, and they became wildly popular.In late 1636 and early 1637, a miadda flew through the Netherlands for the bulbs. Real buying and selling has driven up prices where some tulip bulbs cost more than home! A single crocodile collects the equivalent of 10 years for the average Dutch worker. Most of the speculative trading is done in pubs, hence the alcohol-fuelled tulipmania. Many merchants and citizens no doubt lost their fortunes from the market in February 1637. Some satellites were left with missing bulbs or bulbs that were on "layaway". The concept of options emerged from this disaster, and the term talipman