Hoorn's inner harbor

The more I saw of Hoorn, the more I fell in love with Holland. What a great city! The Golden Age when Holland ruled the world trade markets is still very evident here. The buildings ooze history and the harbor is so intact from the 1600's that you can almost see the crates of exotic spices and casks of German beer being unloaded onto the quays...you can almost hear the hustle of the traders in one of the worlds busiest ports. What an amazing place to get lost in time in!

Tall Ships of Hoorn

More like classic "schooners", these ships are still very impressive. Most of these boats offer trips out on the Markemeer (1 day to 1 week). The accomodations can go from primative to plush. We saw a group of college kids sprawled amongst their backbacks on the decks of one of these ships. They were laughing, loving, and living it up as we all did back in those carefree days. Ahh to be young again - wandering around Europe with friends, letting each day unfold as it will. I wish that I still had such an opportunity in front of me. ;-)

Flowers!

Incredible! We've never seen anything like it before in our lives. The bulb fields are absolutely beautiful. This was the view from a windmill in the Keukenhof gardens. You can get a sense of scale with the two people walking through the fields. The colors were so brilliant...the camera doesn't do them justice. The next several pictures were from the gardens.

Bulb fields 

Bulb fields and canal 

Water Garden 

Gardens 

Canal Kayaking

On Sunday we took advantage of the sunny, warm weather with a lazy afternoon kayaking the canals of Haarlem. We put in just near the central train station and were able to paddle a 7 km loop through the old canals that criss-cross the heart of the city. The perspective from the water is very different and a bit disorienting. Even though we know the surface streets very well now, we found ourselves questioning where we were at in the boats.

We've spoken with many people who want to take us boating this summer. They tell us about all the great paddling here in The Netherlands - from the famous canals of Amsterdam to the wildlife sanctuaries of the northern polders. Little did we know that we'd have such a nice afternoon route right here in our new home town of Haarlem!