European Odyssey: Bayeux

The National Geographic Explorer left Amsterdam in the early morning, having lingered at its berth overnight due to high winds. September 25th was spent entirely at sea to catch up to our schedule, and this gave the Lindblad staff another opportunity to shine. In an "expedition" ship, without casino, pool, theater, or live shows, it's up to the staff to keep the guests occupied and interested with various presentations throughout the day related to our trip. As usual, Lindblad rose to the occasion, although I did not ... I don't have a list of the talks. They were good. Take my word for it. In addition to the talks, as preparation for our upcoming visit to the 1944 D-Day beaches, the first half of the movie The Longest Day was shown this evening.

The Explorer continued speeding to the French coast of Normandy. At about 9:00am on September 26th we reached the lock at Ouistreham, which connects the sea to the "Canal de Caen à la Mer," a six-mile channel that leads to Caen.

The early morning light gave Ouistreham a cheerful, fresh-scrubbed countenance.

The canal required us to take aboard a local pilot.

We passed by the new Pegasus bridge, a replacement built in 1994 for the bridge seized in 1944 by British paratroopers. We will visit this more closely tomorrow.

We slowly glided up to the dockside in Caen.

Lunch was served aboard ship, and then there was a choice of three afternoon tours; we had all signed up for our choice a few days before so that Lindblad could work out the logistics. We could have gone to Honfleur, a picturesque port on the south bank of the Seine, or to Bayeux to see the Bayeux Tapestry, or to the Chateau de Balleroy, a residence and balloon museum owned by the family of Malcom Forbes. Joan and I chose the Bayeux Tapestry, a nearly 70 meter (230 foot) embroidered cloth depicted the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. It was sewn just a few years after William the Conqueror's victory.

This map will give you an idea of the relationship of Ouistreham, Caen, and Bayeux.


Our group boarded the bus and we drove to Bayeux. Unfortunately but understandably, no photography of the tapestry was allowed. On our walk to the museum, we passed this waterwheel.

We regrouped in the courtyard of the museum while our guide acquired tickets.

I have downloaded -- thank you Google Images -- this image of how the tapestry is displayed. It wraps around in a long arc, so that you exit not far from the entrance.

You carry an audio device that narrates as you walk along the tapestry. Our guide admonished us to not fiddle with the controls of the device, and there may be several reasons for this. One is to avoid turning off the audio or getting it into an odd state, perhaps requiring somebody to help you. Another is that if you don't pause the narration, you must keep moving along the tapestry without tarrying, and moving lots of people through is their goal. If we had been on our own we might have thought to go through a second time, to catch what we hadn't spotted the first time because of our velocity.

Instead, we chose to check out exhibits on other floors about the tapestry, its history, and life in that era. We had already seen a video about the tapestry on board the Explorer before coming to the museum, and that helped. Even if we hadn't spent as much time with the tapestry as we would have preferred, we were glad to have come.

A short stroll from the museum is the Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 on the site of even earlier Roman temples. Arriving from the museum a walker's first perspective is of the cathedral's back.

We continued to and entered from the front.

Here we are standing in the entryway looking down the length of the cathedral. In a quiet interior such as this it was very beneficial to have the guide equipped with a radio/microphone and us with receivers.

The altar area with its stained glass was well lit this day.

The window on the far right, and only that window, had cobwebs illuminated by the stained glass.

I'd never seen colored webs before. Perhaps they are favored by artistic spiders? Or devout ones?

The crypt below the cathedral also dates from the 11th Century, and is vaulted in the original Romanesque style, in contrast to the newer Gothic cathedral. According to our guide, after a while the crypt was forgotten, until workers preparing yet another burial in the floor of the cathedral uncovered the opening. There wasn't a lot of light for my camera ...

After leaving the cathedral the group split up. Joan and I explored some of the town, and were barely able to pass by a patisserie without stepping inside. Here's a view of our walk along the Rue Saint-Malo.

Then it was time to return to the parking area at the tapestry museum, and our bus. Soon after our return to the ship a double rainbow was spotted from the stern deck. The one in the center of the photo is bright, and there is a fainter one to the left ... click to enlarge and look along the horizon line.

Zooming in created this interesting shot.

That evening the second half of The Longest Day was shown, giving us more background on what we would see tomorrow in Normandy.

European Odyssey: Amsterdam

I'm finally ready to resume my description of the European Odyssey trip; it was a busy November and December, about which you will eventually hear.

After leaving the Kiel Canal, the National Geographic Explorer sailed overnight to Amsterdam. The sunny weather had departed for parts unknown, and the morning was overcast with a light rain. I took a couple of pictures through our cabin window as the ship eased towards its berth.

Our pigs, Mocha Puff and Cream Puff, took an intense interest in the landscape and waterscapes.

As we disembarked Joan and I were startled to see a short-eared owl. It flew out from the nautical equivalent of a jetway, used presumably for tall cruise ships, darted past the Explorer, and was gone. I wish I had a photo!

The first item in today's itinerary was a tour boat ride through the harbor and the canals, ending up close to the national museum, the Rijksmuseum. Here, our tour boat makes a close pass by a replica of the Amsterdam, a ship of the Dutch East India Company that was lost in 1749.

After cruising the harbor our tour boat began exploring the canals of Amsterdam.

This picture shows how ingrained bicycles are in the life of Amsterdam. There were also bicycle traffic signals in Copenhagen, but I believe there's an even greater density of bicycles in Amsterdam.

Another of the tour boats (our group was divided amongst several) lost its steering and thumped into a canal wall while attempting a turn. Our tour boat backed up through the canal and became the rescue boat, taking on all the stranded passengers. I took this photo, standing in the back as the refugees boarded.

Because of the accident we started our brief walk to the Rijksmuseum behind schedule for a 45 minute visit. The Rijksmuseum, it turns out, has been undergoing renovation for ten years. Until the work and rearrangements are completed, a milestone scheduled for April 2013, much of the museum is not accessible. There is a section holding what I termed the 'greatest hits' that museum-goers can visit in the meantime.

I will note that the Rijksmuseum allows photography, but flash or other extra illumination is prohibited. Some exhibits were better lit, from my camera's point of view, than others.

The first piece that grabs your attention is this painting, Banquet of the Amsterdam City Guard in Celebration of the Peace of Münster, by Bartholomeus van der Helst. Most pictures of this painting show it in true rectangular form, but standing close to it, as you must in a crowded room, the effect is more like this:

In the same room is a large naval cannon and a historic ship model.

The next attraction was a pair of dollhouses. The larger of the two had short stepladders in front to allow closer viewing.

The light was more favorable and the crowd thinner for the smaller one (click to enlarge).

Then we dashed into the Great Paintings room for about five minutes. First, Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue.

My photo of the Nightwatch didn't turn out so well, but here is an image of Vermeer's The Kitchen Maid.

This was an unfortunate time for avid museum-goers to be visiting Amsterdam. Not only is the Rijksmuseum truncated, but the Van Gogh museum was being renovated and much of the collection had been moved to the Hermitage Museum, where it resided from Sept. 29 2012 to April 13 2013. Thus, nothing of Van Gogh was available when we were in Amsterdam: it was in transit to the Hermitage. Oh well.

We were bussed back to the ship for lunch, and then Joan and I joined the group taking a guided walk that began at the dock. By now the wind was picking up and squalls would occasionally bluster, releasing a heavy downpour that would last at most fifteen minutes. We were only a few blocks from the Amsterdam Centraal, the railway and subway hub, around which there is much construction: a controversial new subway line is being built which passes under the river Ij. The inbound and outbound tunnels are stacked vertically between 20 and 35 meters (65 to 115 feet) below the streets, canals, and river.

We hustled after our Dutch guide, a lady who obviously had strong legs and good lungs. Having entered Centraal from the back, we emerged from the front:

We trotted by or through several historic buildings, of which central Amsterdam has a plethora, many now repurposed, such as this bookstore.

Facing the main square is the Royal Palace, built in the 17th Century as the city hall.

Here is the entrance to the Amsterdam Historical Museum, which we didn't enter but rather walked past down the gallery.

Along the way there is a restaurant and these historic figures of David and Goliath.

The passage takes you into the Begijnhof, a secluded courtyard that dates from the early 1300s.

Our group then reached the Flower Market, where our numbers diminished. Some tarried to explore the market in depth, while others desired to shop before the last shuttle bus back to the Explorer. Joan and I remained with the walking tour. The wind was strengthening even more, and we saw a few parked bicycles that had been toppled.

There was just time to trot over  to the current City Hall and peek inside. One floor beneath ground level is the Normaal Amsterdam Peil (NAP), or Amsterdam Ordnance Datum, a sea level benchmark for much of Western Europe that was originally based, centuries ago, on the highest normal summer sea level outside Amsterdam.

The tube you see marks the levels of several floods, including the monster storm of 1953.

The 1953 level reaches beyond the top of this photograph; the flood crested at 4.55 meters (15 feet) above NAP. In the Netherlands 1,876 people died as a direct consequence, and the Dutch responded with the massive Deltaworks project.

Along the wall there is a city profile showing buildings sitting on piles (many wooden piles from earlier eras still exist), the canals, sedimentary strata, and the various water levels. Looking at the right of this photo, you can see how the altitude of Schipol -- Europe's fourth busiest airport -- at 11 feet below sea level is represented.

We made it back to the shuttle bus with five minutes to spare, and returned to the ship, briefly, and not for dinner. This evening we were bussed to the West-Indisch Huis, or West Indies House, the former headquarters of the Dutch West India Company, dating from 1617. There was concern because the buses would not, because of the narrow streets, be able to drive up to the entrance. We expected a walk of 10 minutes, possibly in the rain. As it turned out, for most of us it was just 5 minutes, and although windy there was not much rain. The dinner itself was wonderful, including complementary wine.

On arriving back at the ship Joan and I started to prepare for bed as Jen Martin, the expedition leader, began a review of the next day's activities over the intercom. (There had not been time in the afternoon for a recap, a Lindblad tradition, nor for a briefing on the schedule.) Midway through she changed course. Because of continuing high winds, the ship would remain dockside in Amsterdam overnight rather than sailing into the North Sea. This delay meant that tomorrow would be spent entirely at sea, without the scheduled stop in Belgium that would have taken us to Bruges (Brugge). Thus September 25th would be one of two days spent entirely at sea on this voyage.

Our day at sea and first day in France will be the subject of the next post.

European Odyssey: Transiting the Kiel Canal

After spending a day in Lübeck, the National Geographic Explorer took us north, and in the night we entered the Kiel Canal, a 98-kilometre (61 mile) canal connecting the Baltic and North Seas, once the busiest canal in the world.

After breakfast I dashed up for sightseeing, and soon saw this vessel passing us headed in the opposite direction, towards the Baltic.

We're catching up to a ship ahead. If the canal looks broad, that's because it was widened between 1907-1914 to accommodate the newest battleships of the Imperial German Navy.

Three of the omnipresent swans catch up to and pass us.

There's plenty of traffic behind us. It will only get busier.

One of the things which might have slowed the traffic is the Fischerhutte ferry. Our captain, Oliver Kruess, passed along the tidbit that, in Germany, if a ferry crosses a natural waterway, it's allowed to charge for the ferry ride. If the ferry crosses an artificial waterway, the ferry must be free. (There is no end to what you can learn by just hanging out on the bridge.)

But the major factor controlling traffic speed on the Kiel Canal is the width of ships. If there is a wide ship coming through, any other wide ships must wait in one of the pull-over zones until the one with right-of-way passes. I believe that's what is happening here.

Also, the heavy container ships tend to lift at the bow and dip at the stern when under way, the degree of tilt depending on the ship speed. The Kiel Canal is 11 meters deep, and the largest ships are allowed a 9½ meter draft, so there is little margin for a tilt.

The oncoming ship passed the wooden bollards, or tie-up points, in the pull-over and kept going.

Private vessels are allowed in the canal, of course, although it takes a bit of nerve.

Note the traffic signals along the canal, just as with railroads.

There seemed to be heavier traffic within the hour.

In the above photo we've just passed under the Grünental High Bridge, one of eleven road/railroad crossings of the canal. An earlier crossing, the Rendsburg High Bridge, has a transporter for pedestrian and auto traffic suspended from a high  railway bridge. Here is a photo from the Wikimedia Commons.

Eventually we approached the locks on the western end of the canal, which empty into the estuary of the Elbe River. We will be entering the lock on the far right, which already has one ship in it, and there will be another beside us.

This area is highly developed, including wind turbines to take advantage of the winds arriving from the North Sea.

Many of our tribe are out to take in the action.

The Explorer eases into the lock.

The difference between the water level in the canal and in the sea is never great; there are locks only at either end of the canal. These locks create a stable water level that isn't subject to the tides. I engaged in a debate with a few fellow gawkers about whether the ship would be lowered or raised to meet the level of the Elbe estuary -- can you guess from the above photo? -- and lowered was the correct answer. (I was right.)

Meanwhile, once the Explorer was secure in the lock, the third ship began to slide in.

When finished, it was a close fit.

The operation of locks, almost anywhere in the world, always attracts a viewing gallery.

A ship in the adjoining lock left first. Then, our lock began to open. The Hanse Courage, in front, must go first.

And then we sailed out for Amsterdam, at which we would arrive tomorrow in a misty morning. This map (courtesy of the Lindblad web site) may help put our route thus far into perspective (click to enlarge).