I am home again after a lovely trip through the Netherlands and Belgium. We started with 3 days in Amsterdam then took a barge through the inland seas and canals to different towns and cities. It was a little early for the tulips but we did see some. Most of the fields we saw were daffodils and hyacinths. One of the most fascinating things we did was to go to the Aalsmeer flower auction. This is a huge warehouse where they auction off flowers that are then sent to florist shops all over the world. Instead of bidding up the price there is a clock that starts at a high price and then goes down. The first person to press the button and stop the clock wins the bid at that price. The flowers are then loaded onto a different pallet and sent to the loading docks to be shipped. They can be on the other side of the world and in your flower shop by the next day. It was an amazing thing to watch with people scurrying all over the floor of the warehouse with carts of flowers of every description. It also smelled wonderful with all those flowers.

Our last three days we spent in Bruges, Belgium. From there I was able to take a train and go visit some friends in Ieper for the day. It was a lovely trip!

I had hoped to be able to use the exercise bike on the ship to keep up my training while I was gone but that did not work out very well. The exercise room did not open until 8 at which time I needed to be getting ready to leave for whatever excursion was planned for the day. The bike they had was not very good either. On one of the few times I did manage to get on the bike the seat collapsed on me about a half hour into my session. I never was able to adjust the seat nor was I able to adjust the wheel tension. The exercise room was also small and hot even when the hot tub wasn't filled. However I did get in a lot of walking, at least enough to offset the calories I was taking in from all the good food they served us. I walked all over Amsterdam, Bruges, Delft, Ghent, Antwerp and a number of smaller towns.

Now I am back home and trying to get back into my routine. At least the weather is much nicer now for bike riding than when I left.