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Published: April 22nd 2019
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Sometime in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, I felt the boat move unusually. We seldom felt any movement except when docking or turning sharply and that was more that we could hear the bow and stern thrusters. The ship is remarkably stable. Then again, we are in canals and slow moving rivers, not the North Sea. Anyway, I woke up. There were blinking red lights visible through the shades. I got out of bed and opened the curtains. The blinking red lights were outlining two huge cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. There was quite a chop as we passed it by. I woke Fran to show her and even she was impressed by the immensity of the towers.
We woke up Saturday morning in the quiet, clean, well-maintained town of Middleburg which is the capital of Zealand Province in the Netherlands. The weather, as it has been for the last two days, is spectacular; 70 degrees and no clouds in the pale blue sky. A week ago, it was 38 degrees and overcast. Middleburg is like an idealized small city, the kind you might read about in a children’s book about Holland. All
that was missing was the Dutch dresses, the men’s caps and the wooden shoes. Middleburg used to be an important port city that rivaled Amsterdam but now it’s a charming and quiet little town. The houses that line the waterways are all named. On many, the names and dates of the houses are painted on the front. Most of the more notable houses are from the mid-18
th century. There are also seven houseboats which line one of the canals. Just seven. That's all that's allowed. We walked by a Synagogue, one of the very few we saw all trip. As it was Saturday morning on Passover we assumed it would be open. We rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Walking on, Fran took a Fran picture of the shadows of trees on spotless houses with a not terribly surprising sign out front.
We found an “antique market” in the main square. Fran loves these things. People set up booths to sell all manner of goods, junk, mostly. But Fran always expects to find some sort of gem in the haystack of wares and she is never disappointed. Her definition of a gem may evolve during the search, but
at the end, something special is acquired. On Saturday the acquisitions consisted of a medal commemorating the liberation of Holland from the Nazis in 1945. On one side there is an eagle, crushing a swastika. The other acquisition was a bottle opener, one side of which was the front end of a moose and the back it’s back end. Treasure? I’m not so sure.
We kept moving toward the requisite visit to the cathedral. By the way, if you don’t like cathedrals then tours of cities in Europe are not for you. This cathedral, however, was closed for Easter. Yeah, I have no idea what the story was but it really was closed, locked up. In the square surrounding the cathedral there’s a small museum and it was open so we paid our 18 Euros and ventured up to the third floor where there was an entire room of tapestries depicting a naval battle where Middleburg was conquered by Spain in the 15
th century. It was pretty cool. In the next room were three wall “rugs,” one made from razor clam shells, one from little clam shells and one from mussel shells. Those were really great. The picture doesn’t
do them justice. They looked something like the wall hangings by El Anatsui. Here’s one from El Anatsui which has nothing to do with Middleburg. In all it was a relaxing morning with a couple of little discoveries but Middleburg won’t be on our list to return to.
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