An end to the Manresa Tour and our Safe Return Home

Awoke at 04:00 after a short nap of a few hours and caught the first train to Schiphol at 04:45. Checked our baggage with Lufthansa (Michele's carrier via Frankfurt) and Air France (mine via Paris) and then cleared security and proceeded to Michele's gate to await her fight which departed at 07:00 as scheduled. My flight was scheduled to depart at 11:05 which gave me a few hours to read. Thanks to the very kind generosity of Francine who stoically spent the better part of her day awaiting my arrival, Michele and I were most fortunate to have the luxury of a lift home in comfort and safety. Now, the next chapter of our new life begins. Michele will return part-time to work at her former clinic, and I will pursue some other activities of which I have long dreamed and which, God willing, I will be able to accomplish...more on that later. In the meantime, we are looking forward to a couple of short trips to Ontario and New Brunswick where we'll be able to visit some friends and family. When asked what has been the highlight of my tour, I can easily say that it was my 30 days of silence at Manresa House on the island of Gozo. Dar Manresa was an oasis for me...a still point in a turning world where peace, tranquility and the comfort of the reflective routine of community life reign in satisfying harmony. Coming in second, was the mounatin hiking at Zell Am See where Nature is manifested in such magnificent glory. It is fair to say, however, that we would return to any of the places we visited along the long way home from Malta (with the excpetion of Nice, perhaps!)...the entire trip was great and everyday Michele and I both marvelled at just how very lucky we are to have been able to do this together while we are still in relatively good health. For our long suffering readers who have followed this blog to the end, we hope that you have enjoyed it and we will, in good time update the Picasa links with captions and location tags from time to time and, if possible, I will try to create links to the other Picasa folders which were automatically created by the webmaster when I exceeded (twice) the 500 photos per album limit. As the Picasa albums currently exist, it appears that readers are only able to view the first 500 photos in the public domain...I will attempt to rectify this and will post directions here as to how you may access the other folders should they be of any interest to you.
Peace to all and Happy Trails to our fellow travellers.
Dan + Michele
p.s.
A traditional Irish blessing comes to mind:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Heineken Experience

Well, here we are with one day to go before we board our flights and come home. Unfortunately, we will not be on the same flights, but at least we are leaving from the same airport and returning to Montreal within 3 hours of each other. It's a little hard to believe that this tour s coming to an end...it has been a great trip but it also feels good to be heading home after 3.5 months away. Yesterday we visited the Heineken brewery for their "Heineken Experience" which is probably the very best brewery tour I have ever seen. Well organized and self-guided with pit-stops here and there where you get to talk to Heineken Crew and learn a little bit more about the production.

Zaanse Schans, Volendam, Marken, Delft, Den Haag, and Madurodam

As we approach the final days of our tour, I guess we're getting a little lazy. Before Amsterdam, we hadn't participated in any organized tours, and so far we have participated in three. A canal tour, and candlelight wine and cheese, and finally, yesterday a 9.5 hour bus tour of the North and South of Holland. It was surprisingly a very pleasant day despite the slow pace of the large group. We first visited Zaanse Schans, a 17th century village with several working windmills which were used in their day to pump water, to grind seeds for flour and oil, and for sawing lumber. We also visited a cheeze maker shop and sampled several types of cheese. Then it was off to visit a wooden shoemaker on the island of Marken to which we gained access via a pedestrian ferry boat from the pretty town of Volendam which was completely swamped with tourists. Marken was originally a salt sea fishing village, but since the construction of a 20km dyke cutting the South Sea from the North Sea (see below), the south sea became a large lake and fishing activity virtuallyu died with the exception of smoking fish which is still done in Marken...in fact, the shoemaker told us that the fish smoking plants use the chips of poplar which fall to the floor of the shomaker's shop. Then we were off to Delft to visit the famous Delf Blue ceramic shop where they produce very expensive pottery (they warned against fake Delft Blue and told us how to distinguish the real thing).
Our final destination for the day was Madurodam which is a miniature city of Holland's most famous buildings in a scale of 1:25. It was a donation by Mr. Maduro in memory of his son who he lost during the second world war. t is truly a remarkable achievement for detail. If you look through the upper window of the Rijkmuseum model you actually see a replica of Rembrandt's largest canvas which we had seen in the real Rijkmuseum only a few days ago. Once again, I took some notes of our guide's anecdotes and gleaned the following:
- the name Nederlands (lower lands) describes the land which is lower than the sea
- 88 beautiful canals...try saying that in Dutch (it's a real tongue twister)
- Holland had over 10000 windmills in the 1600's used to pump water out of the lakes to make new land (Polder)...the windmills were, of course, also used for producing flour, oil and sawn lumber.
- after the catastrophic flood of 1916, a 20km dyke was built to close the connection between the South Sea and the North Sea. The South Sea is now a large fresh water lake which us fed from Switzerland via the Rhine.
- schiphol (the airport) got its name from the boats (schiph) which were discovered at the bottom of the lake which was pumped out in 1864.
- Den Haag: 750 years old...mid-13th century. Capital of Nederlands. Working offices of Queen Beatrice and the international court house.