Cowbright: A Christmas River Cruise

December 22 - Today was a totally fun day! We woke to find Stroopwafels in the stocking outside our door. Again the MS Grace was unable to sail last night because of unfavorable weather conditions. We had our choice of excursions to visit either the city of Gouda (pronounced "how-dah" in Dutch) or Hague. We chose Gouda, so once again we were taken by bus - this time to Gouda which is between Rotterdam and Utrecht in the province of South Holland. Gouda is where - you guessed it - Gouda cheese is made. Hague was a longer drive and it sounded like a lot more walking. Did I mention the awful weather? Anyway, we opted for this one and it turned out to be really nice day despite the weather.

While the majority of passengers were out on tour, the captain sailed the boat to Rotterdam. We could have sailed with the captain if we had wanted to opt out of both options but we were glad we didn't.

Sometimes the huge tour buses are too big to drive on the narrow city streets, so our local guide met us at the bus drop off point. Our day consisted of visits to a cheese store, shopping around the town square, lunch in a local restaurant, a visit to the original Stroopwafel store to learn the history of Stroopwafels and how they are made and walking along the cobbled streets listening to our guide as she gave us some history of the town and its buildings.

There was a gigantic Christmas tree outside the large city hall (formally a church). It's very sad that there are so few "religious" anymore that many church buildings in Europe are being re-purposed in order to prevent them falling into decay. The tree is a gift from Norway to the city of Gouda each year. It is clearly the largest Christmas tree I've ever seen. The ornaments on it were at least the size of volleyballs, maybe even basketballs! The wind was fierce and it was amazing how the tree could remain standing. Around the city hall was a man-made ice rink where first school children and later adults were ice skating.

We walked up the hill to Sint-Jan's (St. John the Baptist) cathedral where a Christmas service was being held. A choir was singing "Gloria in Excelsis Deo." It was so beautiful and the acoustics were amazing! Since there was a service going on, we skirted around the main worship area as our guide pointed out different stories being told by some of the 72 huge stained glass windows. The windows were used to tell the stories of the Bible, since most people still could not read at that time.

Once finished with our walking tour, we were free to walk around and eat lunch on our own. We were surprised to learn that if we're away from the boat during a mealtime, our hosts will hand out 25 Euros to each of us for our lunch. So since the weather was awful, we enjoyed a nice warm meal in a local restaurant and took our time eating before braving the wind and misting rain again.