the netherlands

Leiden is another mid-size city we chose to stay after a train ride north from Bruges to the mid-coastal section of the Netherlands. 

It was delightful and canal-ful like Bruges, with forlorn alleys, neighborhood beer houses, and a bustling Sunday morning market.

But unlike Bruges, what made Leiden famous was not late medieval commercial success but certain institutes and people and events in the academic, artistic, and historical fronts:

Leiden University (founded in 1575) is the oldest university in the Netherlands and has been an intellectual powerhouse attracting thinkers like Albert Einstein and René Descartes. Its botanic garden was where the first tulip bulbs that came from Turkey via Austria were planted that later led to the explosion of the tulip market (or "tulip mania") and its subsequent crash in 1637.

Famous Dutch painter Rembrandt was born in the city of Leiden. We visited an old carpentry house next to Rembrandt's father's windmill factory, nearby a statue of young Rembrandt watching his self portrait next to the brick building where he was born.

A few hundred English pilgrims lived in Leiden before their voyage to America in the early 17th century. We visited the American Pilgrim Museum where a Mayflower ship model and reconstruction of these pilgrims' living conditions were on display and a local craft beer sporting the name Mayflower was available in the adjunct cafe. 

Keukenhof Park, also known as the "Garden of Europe," was in a nearby city we took a half-hour ride to visit. Seven million flower bulbs planted and eight hundred different varieties of tulips are shown in this seventy-nine acre garden annually. It was an endless sea of beautiful flowers that looked unreal in photos.

Off we went to Amsterdam, a metro city we'd been before but did not fully explore. Besides the usual canal (no we didn't take the canal boat ride) and street scenes (no we didn't visit the Red Light District) and a round of exotic food tasting (herrings, stroopwafels, cheese fries, fries with satay sauce), the highlight of our 4-day stay in the city for me was actually the visit to the Rijksmuseum, the national museum that dedicated all its exhibits to the Dutch art and history:

Masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt and others during the Dutch Golden Age

"The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar" depicts the decisive moment of the April 25, 1607, naval battle where the Dutch fleet surprised and destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Bay of Gibraltar during its 80-year war of independence against Spain

"Fishing for Souls", a satirical painting depicting the religious rivalry between Protestants (on the left, open bibles on the boat, green trees, sunlit landscape in the back) and Catholics (on the right, priests and pope overloading the boat, withered trees, dark clouds in the back) 

A "Model of a Javanese Marketplace" that captures a bustling scene from Java, Indonesia, during the Dutch colonial period

A meticulously detailed scale model of the historical fan-shaped artificial island where a Dutch trading post was set up in Nagasaki Bay, Japan

A very realistic looking "doll house" made for a wealthy merchant in Amsterdam in the 17th century

Prominent display of Delftware, the famous blue and white tin-glazed earthenware that originated from the city of Delft, as a Dutch imitation of popular Chinese blue-and-white porcelain imported by the Dutch East India Company 

From Amsterdam, we took a day trip to another major city of the Netherlands: Rotterdam, a city rebirthed from total destruction by German air bombardment during World War II with many ingenious and delightful architectural designs:

The ceiling of a food hall featuring colorful fruits, vegetables, flowers, and insects

The "Pencil Tower"

The "Cube Houses"

The "Depot", an art storage facility made of 1,664 mirrored glass panels

And "Erasmus Monument in Rotterdam," commemorating the giant of Northern Renaissance and Western culture whom the city proudly calls its own