Visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi is a profound experience – revelatory, even. I had not expected to see the great liberator of Vietnam’s actual body, lighted from above. And shortly after, standing outside the Soviet-built mausoleum, I realize as we listen to our guide, Nguyen Hong Phong, that I had no actual understanding of who Ho Chi Minh was. Combing the recesses of my mind, I realize I saw Ho Chi Minh simply as the enemy and likely a brutal dictator (more like China’s Mao Tse-Tung). And even though I had lived through the Vietnam War (known here as the American War), I really hadn’t understood that either.
But here in Hanoi on Discovery Bicycle Tours’ Vietnam tour, I can see how Ho Chi Minh is justifiably venerated as a hero to his people – George Washington, Lincoln and FDR rolled into one. Visiting is like a pilgrimage with rules that accord him maximum respect. We walk up the stairs into the mausoleum, and slowly walk around his actual body, lit from above, as if he is merely sleeping – the still sleeping Liberator.
Ho Chi Minh, Phong tells us, “is the most respected in Vietnam. People changed their name to Ho. He is worshipped like a god in homes. He overcame the French, Japanese, Chinese and Americans for independence and freedom. Now we live in a peaceful country because of Ho Chi Minh.”
Our Discovery Bicycle Tours group at the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum
Coming back to the front of his mausoleum (built by the Soviets), Phong relates that Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 into an educated family – his father was a Mandarin, working for a royal family. In feudal society, only men went to school and women stayed at home. He and his brother went to a French school.
He attended college in Saigon in 1911, studying culinary arts and applied to work as a cook in France. He wound up working on a ship, traveling to America, Britain, France, Russia and in 1928, went to China. Seeing the world in this way is what cultivated his revolutionary ideology and zeal to liberate Vietnam from foreign imperialists. On Feb 3 1930, he gathered party leaders and set up the Communist party.
“What he really learned was the importance of making Vietnam independent. He left Vietnam to learn enough about the French to kick them out,” Phong tells us.
He returned to Vietnam in 1941, having been away for 30 years. In 1944, Ho Chi Minh and General Japp (also a national hero) set up the Viet Minh, to resist foreign occupation by theFrench and Japanese during World War II.
When the Japanese and the French (who had occupied Vietnam since 1868, introducing Roman alphabet to replace Chinese characters the people used for 1000 years) left in 1945 at the end of World War II, on Sept 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. But after only one year, in 1946, the French attacked, forcing Ho Chi Minh into the mountains and retaking control.
“He wanted peace and agreed to divide the country in two for two years. They agreed to divide along the 17th parallel. It was supposed to be temporary. Five million people (mostly Catholic), fled south while one million southerners moved north. Then there was supposed to be national elections.”
But the US blocked the election (claiming concern for a “domino effect” of Chinese-led Communism spreading across IndoChina) and set up a puppet government in the south
When the war ended in 1975, Vietnam was united under the Communist regime.
The South Vietnamese who worked for the Americans were terrified of retribution and left (they were the “boat people”)
But Vietnam was still not at peace. China set up a new government in Cambodia that attacked South Vietnam. Fighting continued from 1979-1988.
Vietnam has only had real peace since 1988.
In 1986, the government implemented a “revision policy”: “We close the past, and look to the future,” Phong tells us. “The state still owned industry but allowed people to own their own businesses, allowed private enterprise and open markets. The rice fields were divided so you worked for yourself.”
From the mausoleum, we visit the complex where he lived – the Presidential Palace taken over from the French (Ho Chi Minh refused to live in it and only used the palace as an office and to receive dignitaries). Instead, from 1944-48 he insisted on living in a modest one-bedroom house, then moved to a house on stilts (reminiscent of where he lived with a Thai family), which again, was absolutely beautiful, but very modest.
In 1967, Ho Chi Minh became sick with lung cancer and was moved into another house, steps away from his house on stilts. This one looks camouflaged like a bunker, and was connected to underground bunker because by then, the US was bombing Hanoi. When he died in 1969, at the age of 79, the location of his body was kept secret and moved multiple times. His body was kept inside a cave until 1973, when the US left, and then asked Russia to build a complex. Until 1977, they moved his body nightly, keeping the coffin hidden underground. Peering through the windows of his homes provides a window into who Ho Chi Minh was in life.
Before we leave the complex, we visit the One Pillar Pagoda, which dates back to 1049. The French destroyed it in 1954, but the Vietnamese rebuilt it in 1955. There is a billboard that lays out the moral “do’s” and ”don’ts” of Buddhist/Confucian/Taoist society.
If I had questioned how Americans would be received in Vietnam, I soon get my answer standing in front of a monument to John McCain at the lake where McCain’s plane was shot down in 1967. McCain began six years as a prisoner in the dreaded Hoa Lo Prison, infamously known as the “Hanoi Hilton” – famously refusing to leave until his comrades were also freed. (We don’t get to visit but today it is a historic museum which has an exhibit devoted to the American prisoners, but is mostly showcasing French colonialism, see “Museum Hopping and Shopping in Hanoi”). The monument dates from 1992, when John McCain became one of the first Americans to come to Vietnam to heal relations; President Bill Clinton established relations in 1993 and helped revive Vietnam’s economy.
In December 1972, American B52s bombed Hanoi, surrounding villages and hospitals. As we look around Hanoi today, there is little evidence of that.
If Vietnamese still resent Americans you do not feel it at all. When I ask our guides about that, I am told “We are a Buddhist country. We do not look to the past; we look to the future.” If anything, though, there is still resentment between North and South Vietnamese, similar to the cultural divisions that remain between north and south since America’s civil war.
“The Vietnamese love Bill Clinton, the first US president to visit after the war, and we love John McCain. The United States is one of seven countries with the best relations,” Phong says – US, France, Australia, and Russia. “We close the past and look to the future.” Interestingly, considering one of the excuses for the US to enter the Vietnam War – the “domino theory” that China would take over IndoChina – is that Vietnam is wary of China, which had dominated Vietnam for 1000 years. “Local people feel cautious about China’s ambition to invade.”
It is our second day on Discovery Bicycle Tours’ 12-day Vietnam tour, and we’ve come to the Mausoleum after stopping first at the bike rental shop owned by Mr. Trung, a 70-year old former national champion and president of the Giant UNCC (he poses with us and shows magazines that feature him), where we are fitted for bikes that we will use in Ninh Binh, Hue and Hoi An.
From here, we drive a couple of hours to the Thung Nham Ecotourism Zone (I enjoy looking out to the scenery, how soon we find ourselves amid rice paddies and farms). It is sunset when we are taken by traditional boat into a bird sanctuary. Flocks of birds – storks, herons, teals, tropical starlings – take their positions in the tree tops over the Thung Nham wetland. There is a stunning resort set within the preserve, all the more gorgeous as lights and lanterns come on as the sun sets.
Today – technically the third day of our four-day Discovery Bicycle Tours Cambodia pre-tour in Siem Reap – is our first real bike ride, planned for 36 miles. We pick up our bikes at the tourist office where we also pick up our passes for the national historic sites, and cycle right into the Angkor Archeological Park. We cycle on the Angkor Bikeway and hidden trails through the ruins and forest of Angkor. (Calista Phillips, our Discovery Bicycle Tours guide, and I have already acquired our passes on the first evening when we went to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng; the three-day pass allows for three, nonconsecutive days of visits. Discovery purchases our tickets and reimburses me the $62 I spent.)
We bike on country lanes with rice paddies and fields on either side, seeing homes with thatch roofs, water buffalo. Our guide, Ta, shows us a cashew nut as it is plucked from the tree, the outer layer opened releasing a noxious acid; and the abandoned skin of a snake.
What feels like 10 of the miles (though probably less), is riding through a thick layer of sand (like skiing on ice). Once I get the hang of it (the trick is getting into a lower gear), it is still stressful, requiring concentration, but not as scary, with immense and lasting satisfaction when we come to the end of this country road, where we come to a literal archway. Here we find a USAID hat in the middle of that sandy road – crumpled, ripped, dirty, trampled – a metaphor it seemed for what Trump/Musk had just done by shutting down USAID.
We ride a bit further on regular streets and have our first snack stop – with local foods (best cashews ever), dragon fruit, bananas, and coconuts cut so we can drink the juice with a straw, and then come upon a wedding, where the uncle of the groom comes rushing out to greet one of our riders, Pam, who he had helped rescue just two days before when their taxi had car trouble on the way from the airport. Small world!
We come to our first temple, Banteay Srei, a 10th century temple dedicated to the Hindu gods Shiva and Parvati, which is considered a “jewel of Khmer art” because of its intricate carvings.
The full ride is 36 miles but we have to cut it short by 6 miles for time, so are transported to the last two temples by bus (others could cut short the ride even earlier because the bus and bike truck pretty much follow us).
Our next stop is Ta Som with its dramatic ficus (fig) tree enveloping one of the towers. It was constructed at the end of 12th century, beginning of 13th century during the reign of King Jayavarman VII and features monumental gateways and a central shrine decorated with intricate carvings that I find dazzling. It was destroyed centuries ago and lay in ruins until international partners provided assistance to restore it. The temple earned a place on the World Heritage list in 1992 and was the first project to be managed by the World Monuments Fund’s Cambodian staff.
We next come to the stunning and significant Preah Khan which I find most intriguing and spell-binding – perhaps because one of the guides offers to give a private tour for $5 and points out views and details we never would have seen or appreciated, like the only carved image of Shiva holding a mirror among these temples, and an alcove where he tells us to beat our chest to hear the resonance. (This winds up being a common practice and I recommend it highly.)
Preah Khan (it means “Royal Sword”) was built in the 12th century for King Jayavarman VII to honor his father on the site of his victory over the invading Chams in 1191.
The guard explains that the King built this temple with an aim of bringing Hindus and Buddhists together – a Buddhist sanctuary is offset by satellite Hindu temples. Half of the temple has Hindu carvings; the other half is Buddhist. (I wonder if this is why the temple was intentionally destroyed.)
What is so fascinating about these vast temple complexes is that they were not just for worship but would have been like palaces, castles or fortresses, housing hundreds, if not thousands of people. The Preah Khan complex combined the roles of city, temple and Buddhist university and would have had 97,840 attendants and servants, including 1000 dancers and 1000 teachers.
The stone – which mostly appears grey-black- becomes a blazing orange in the setting sun as we leave.
We cross a bridge lined with impressive military figures – several with the heads cut off, very possibly to sell on the black market.
As we cross, the sun, glowing a fiery red, offers a spectacular scene and our guide, Hang, stops the bus for us. We have just two minutes to capture the setting sun before it falls behind trees.
Between 800 and 1200 A.D., hundreds if not thousands of temples were built through the region. The oldest ones have all but disappeared due to weather, war, religious conflict and greed (stealing the art for sale). The ones we see today have had to be excavated from overgrowth and restored and represent the Golden Age of monument building. They have a certain common style – largely because of they were built in the same era, and many of the ones we see were built by King Jayavarman VII, which makes you wonder about how he had the resources and manpower. But the temples are remarkably individual for their art, theme and most especially how you experience of discovering them, so I come away with my favorites.
The most famous – for good reason – is Angkor Wat, a religious complex spanning more than 400 acres (five times the size of the Vatican) and widely recognized (confirmed by the Guinness World Records) as the largest religious structure or monument in the world. It was originally built by the Khmer Empire, commissioned by King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as a Hindu temple before being converted into a Buddhist site by the end of the century.
What strikes me, though, after seeing several of these, particularly those built by King Jayavarman VII and King Suryavarman II, is how similar to Peru and the temples built in the mid-1400s, most famously Machu Picchu, by the Incan emperor Pachacuti, known as the “Alexander the Great” of the Inca. It makes you think about the commonality of the human history.
Back at the Aviary Hotel, I get in a 20-minute swim in the rooftop pool before meeting our group for a 10-minute walk to Chamrey Tree, an elegant restaurant filled with gorgeous art, where we have a fantastic dinner.
After dinner, Calista and Jake go off to explore the night market, where Jake is game to try any unusual food. The next morning, he reports back of his experience eating insects (not sure if he also snacked on snake or just observed).
Day 4 is our departure day from Cambodia, but our last morning in Siem Reap starts at 4:30 am (we are given a bagged breakfast to take with us) so we can be at Angkor Wat for the sunrise (with thousands of others). The famous view would have the iconic temple back-lit and reflected in two large pools in front – alas the sunrise is not all that impressive and even coming so early, it is hard to get a good enough position for “the money shot,” but the experience is exciting enough.
The real thrill comes after, when we go to explore the temple. Most of the sunrise-goers leave, so we are able to visit with comparatively few people if we hustle – our guide urges us to get on line fast so we aren’t trapped in an hour-long wait to climb the steep staircase.
It took hundreds of thousands of workers just 37 years to build – (the 37 year deadline coincides with the belief in 37 heavens and 32 hells and there are 37 steps to enter. Like Machu Picchu, these temples were built by devotees as well as slaves. The stones came from a quarry 35 miles away (during COVID, they had time to study and discovered a canal, which they now believe was used to float the stones).
The temple would have been overgrown after centuries of abandonment; it was rediscovered in 1941 and the French helped restore the temple after a collapse in 1947. The World Monuments Fund has been working to preserve and restore these temples since 1991 and Angkor Wat was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.
In the eyes of Khmer people, the most significant bas-relief in the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery portrays devas and asuras in a dramatic tug of war representing the eternal struggle of good and evil that churns amrit, the elixir of everlasting life, from the primordial ocean.
Heaven and Hell is depicted in an astonishing 68-meter-long wall carving: heaven above consists of two tiers while hell has 32 tiers. The inscriptions tell what kind of sin a person may have committed in life judging by the tier the sinner ended up on after death.
In the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas (Preah Poan) a few stand out dramatically from the grey statues for their gold robes. Sometime in the late/post-Angkor eras after the temple converted to Buddhism and eventually Theravada Buddhism, monks began collecting Buddha statues here.
From Angkor Wat, we bike to the Bayon Temple, with its enormous, fantastical enigmatic faces looking in every direction from every stone tower – 216 in all. It is not known who the face represents – we heard they represented Buddha before achieving Nirvana, or possibly the ruler who built the temple, Jayavarman VII.
Dating from the late 12th century (after Angkor Wat) and the last to be built in the Angkor, the Bayon is a Mahayana Buddhist temple built to pay homage to the king responsible for its construction, Jayavarman VII, and dedicated to his mother. We are told that 12,640 people would have lived within it, including 650 dancing girls.
We note the sign: “Beware of Monkey Attack” – sure enough, one of our group reports being “accosted” by a monkey.
With time growing short before some of our group has to get to the airport, our 12-mile bike ride is cut short (though some have biked along the top of the defensive walls of Angkor Thom). and we travel by bus to the last temple we get to visit Ta Prohm, famous for scenes from Angelina Jolie’s “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” film.
You really feel the age of the Ta Prohm temple with massive trees growing out of the stone and massive stone blocks in heaps.
Of the statues consecrated here in 1186 by Jayavarman VII here, most important was Prajnaparamita, the personification of the Perfection of Wisdom, a figure whom the king identified with his mother.
It’s fairly amazing how much we do on Day 4, our departure day when we fly to Hanoi to start the 12-day Vietnam Discovery Bicycle tour: three temples, a fabulous bike ride, lovely lunch, and since they have arranged a late check out (the flight several of us are on is at 7 pm), I even have time for a swim at the Aviary Hotel. But then I remind myself: we got up at 4:30 am!
Discovery Bicycle Tours organizes everything to make our biking as satisfying and our brief time here as productive and pleasant as possible – which means we are accompanied by a third guide/bike mechanic; the bike truck typically is nearby; and the bus that takes us to the start/finish, and various stops accompanies like a SAG vehicle, so we don’t have to bike with our big cameras but have access when we get to a site. The snack (and rest) stops are also really marvelous – typically with local foods – well planned and well timed.
In addition to the Discovery Bicycle Tours guide, we have two local guides here in Cambodia – one who likes to be called “Hang,” and the other who likes to be called “Ta” – both take care of us like mother hens, though I would have liked more background information about the different sites we visit. (An excellent source is “Angkor Temples in Cambodia” www.angkor-temples-in-cambodia.com.)
Discovery does a great job of providing advance materials, the day-by-day itinerary, packing lists; excellent bikes (e-bikes are available but not really necessary) and helmets, and even though we do ride together with guides at the front and back (and not a great idea to go off on our own), we have Ride GPS so we can follow the route.
Get the required visa and arrival document at Cambodia’s website (evisa.gov.kh), where the fee is $30 (if you use a visa service it costs something like $197), but give yourself enough time to get the confirmation.
Also, always double-check the U.S. State Department’s travel advisory and make sure no vaccinations are required or recommended.
It is also recommended to purchase travel insurance – especially for the medical and evacuation coverage. You can check a site like travelinsurance.com to get recommendations.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
On Day 8 of our Boat Bike Tours’ Islandhopping Netherlands tour, we wake up in Enkhuizen, back where we started. We have breakfast and have to disembark by 9:30 am but we are able to leave our luggage on board for a couple of hours, giving me time to explore a bit before I need to take the train back to Amsterdam and the Schiphol Airport. I really appreciate this bit of time since I hadn’t a chance to explore Enkhuizen when we first arrived (I recommend coming a day before the ship sails so you have more time), and though I had some time to explore in the evening, i really enjoy myself wandering around this morning.
I find myself at the Zuiden Kerk (church) – magnificent yet simple and unpretentious, awesome yet approachable; ancient yet modern, the painted wooden ceiling shaped like the upside down bottom of a boat. It is Sunday morning and people are gathering for service as the organmeister plays Pacobel.
I find my way to the Zuiderzee Museum, an open-air living history museum village that re-creates daily life around the Zuiderzee before the sea was turned into a lake (the Ijsselmeer where we have just sailed) – when the dam was built in 1932. You stroll the cobble streets and explore 140 historic buildings collected from the former Zuiderzee region.
The outdoor museum was opened by Queen Beatrix in 1983 as an extension of the indoor Zuiderzeemuseum, which opened in 1950 (the indoor museum doesn’t open until noon so I have to miss it). Most of the buildings are authentic while others are reconstructed replicas of actual buildings. A complete village, you can wander around and visit a windmill, lime kilns, fish-smoking house, steam laundry, drugstore, pharmacy, basketmaker, blacksmith, cheese warehouse, school (where wooden shoes are lined up outside the classroom), even a hairdresser, and visit the working post office. The harbor is a replica of its layout on Marken. From April to November you can see life in the village of Urk as it was in 1905, meet residents and watch traditional activities, like games and building clog boats, and demonstrations of crafts such as rope-making, cooperage, basket making and herring being smoked.
The Indoor Museum, “a treasure house of the Zuiderzee,” consists of a string of 17th century buildings (original and replicated), some of which were used by the Dutch East India Company. Here, various collections are presented with a modern approach: you can dive into a ‘Sea of Stories’ and experience life on the former Zuiderzee in this interactive exhibition. A popular attraction is the ‘Schepenhal’ (ship’s hall), which allows visitors a close-up view of historic ships. The indoor museum also displays artifacts from the Zuiderzee cultural past, including paintings, furniture and traditional local costumes (‘klederdracht’). (Unfortunately, it opens at noon and I do not have the time to visit.)
Both indoor and outdoor museums have several restaurants located in National Heritage sites, like the Hindeloopen Pub, the Amsterdam House and the Pepper House on the Wierdijk.
Admission is 22E (56E for a family); plan to spend at least 3 hours at the outdoor museum. [Note: if you are extending the boat bike tour with a stay in Amsterdam, you may want to get the Iamsterdam city card (www.iamsterdam.com), which includes admission to the Zuiderzee Museum, https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/whats-on/calendar/museums-and-galleries/museums/zuiderzee-museum]
Zuiderzee Museum, Wierdijk 12-22, 1601 LA Enkhuizen, https://www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl/.
I am relieved to see how amazingly easy it is to get to/from the embarkation point in Enkhuizen from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (especially since I arrived by plane on the same day as the boat departed): just walk down to the train (every 15 minutes) to the Central Station, a quick switch to the train to Enkhuizen (every half hour) for the hour-long, comfortable and scenic ride. The trick is to “check in” with a credit/debit card using the app, or purchase a ticket (14-16E) before you go through to the train by tapping on a pole (a conductor will double check on the train), then when you depart the train, tap it on the pole again, and the correct amount is debited. (If you don’t pre-purchase, the conductor can charge you an extra 50E; I did forget but the conductor was extremely kind in helping me buy the ticket online.) Then it’s just a five minute walk from the train station to the ship. You can purchase tickets in the vending machines at the stations or online on https://www.ns.nl/en/journeyplanner#/. The website can also be used to check the timetable.
Getting back to the airport is equally easy – we are asked to leave the ship by 9:30 am (but I am able to store my luggage there, so I could visit the city until 11).I time my touring to get back to the ship, pick up my stuff to get the 11:39 am train to Central Station in Amsterdam, then a quick switch to the train to Schiphol with more than the three-hours before my flight at 7:05 pm.
This was my second trip with Boat Bike Tours (I had the best time on their Bruges-Amsterdam boat-bike-tour – utter perfection with the biking, the boat, the sights along the way; be sure to plan to spend at least a day in Bruges before the bike tour to appreciate its enchantment).
Boat Bike Tours, which is based in Amsterdam, got its start when Channel Cruises Holland, a barge tour operator founded in 1977, added biking to its itineraries in response to guests asking for traditional Dutch activities. The new cruise-and-cycle concept was so successful that it was spun off as its own brand in the mid-1990s. Between 2000 and 2020, the company added more itineraries and ships. Last year, Boat Bike Tours merged with Islandhopping, a Croatia-based operator which also specializes in cruise-and-cycle travel (I loved the boat-bike trip in Greece that I took with Islandhopping some years ago). Together, the merged company, while operating under their own names, offers more than 70 itineraries in 15 countries, and has opened a North American sales office in Fairfield, Connecticut.
“With half of our guests coming from North America now, it makes sense to have an office here,” said Jana Tvedt, Director of Sales, North America for Boat Bike Tours. “We’re available when needed and familiar with what Americans and Canadians are looking for in destinations, experiences and ships. And we’re always happy to work with travel advisors, groups and charters.”
Each season, the company contracts some 50 ships including barges, motor yachts and sailing ships, ranging in category from comfortable to superior. Biking styles include guided for casual riders and independent (self-guided) for seasoned cyclists, with touring bikes, e-bikes and mountain bikes available depending on the destination.
Itineraries range from five to 15 days, with most being eight days, and cater to a variety of budgets and interests, from historic cities and landmarks to picturesque natural landscapes and the world’s best wines. The Boat Bike Tours concept is to enable guests to connect with local people, culture and nature, while traveling by smaller boat and by bike also takes guests beyond tourist hotspots and minimizes environmental impacts. (Our sailing ship, Leafde fan Fryslân, uses biodiesel.)
The big news is that Boat Bike Tours will be offering a newly built ship for 2026, Magnifique X, an all-suite ship accommodating 32 passengers, giving the company a new deluxe, superior category. In addition to the bigger cabin, the itinerary is also enhanced with upgraded amenities, support van, included lunches, and more sightseeing inclusions. The itinerary goes from Amsterdam to Paris with one night hotel stay in Amsterdam, then biking to Bruges, then a motorcoach transfer to Paris where there is a hotel stay. (Bookings are open.)
Among its most popular itineraries for North American travelers:
Amsterdam to Bruges: Cruise and ride through the Dutch countryside of Zeeland and western Flanders in Belgium. Tour world-famous cities such as Amsterdam, Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, as well as picturesque villages, a Dutch cheese farm, the windmills of Kinderdijk and the magnificent natural landscape along the Schelde River.
Split to Dubrovnik: Hop from island to island in the South Dalmatia region of Croatia by boat and e-bike. See the town centers of Split and Dubrovnik, and experience the culture and nature of more sparsely populated islands like Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Lastovo, Mljet and Šipan. E-bikes help with hilly and mountainous terrain.
Cochem to Metz: Follow the Moselle River through Germany, France and Luxembourg, passing endless vineyards and stopping to taste local wines. See enchanting old cities like Cochem and Bernkastel, the once-imperial Roman Trier, the stunning waterfalls of Saarburg, the Gothic cathedral of Metz and welcoming villages in between.
The merger of the Boat Bike Tours and Islandhopping means that clients of either one can take advantage of a 3% loyalty discount when booking. Notably, bike tours prove superb for the burgeoning number of solo travelers, and each departure offers at least one cabin with a reduced single supplement.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
Day 6 on Boat Bike Tours’ eight-day Islandhopping tour of northern Netherlands is a case when the hype doesn’t even begin to match the reality of the experience. Today’s ride will take us either 29 or 36 miles (depending on our choice of short or long routes) from Harlingen to Franeker, through the Frisian countryside and rural villages to Bolsward and into Makkum on the eastern bank of lake Ijsselmeer. Boat Bike Tours doesn’t just curate the cycling routes, they also curate experiences. In this case, our bike tour turns into an exploration of the solar system through an 18th century lens.
We set out biking first to the historic center of Franeker to visit the Koninklijk Eise Eisinga Planetarium (Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium) – the oldest continuously operating planetarium in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. I had never heard of Eise Eisinga or his planetarium, but am instantly amazed.
Eise Eisinga was a wool-comber and largely self-taught scientist and astronomer who spent seven years, from 1774 to 1781, building a remarkable planetarium in his house! – in his living room/bedroom/dining room to be precise. We see the cupboard where he would have slept with his wife under the mechanism, the pull-out trundle bed where his children would have slept, the dining table. Above, on the ceiling, we see where he constructed a solar system where the six known planets in exact scale follow their rotation around the sun with remarkable precision even by today’s standards, using today’s instruments. The fact that the mechanism is still in working order is evidence of the ingenuity and foresight of its maker, who left detailed instructions for its maintenance.
While waiting for the English-language presentation, we visit the fascinating exhibits that take up the rest of his home, starting with a delightful video interview between “Eise Eisinga” and an actual Dutch astronaut and another superb video about Eisinga’s life.
When I learn about Eise Eisinga’s biography, I am awed by his genius, bringing to my mind Leonardo DaVinci.
Eise Eisinga was born in 1744 in Dronrijp where he attended primary school. Like many children in those days who worked at home, he worked in his father’s wool combing establishment. In addition to his father’s profession, he inherited his father’s interest in astronomy and mathematics. Eise was so determined to learn that he would travel every week to Franeker, a major center of learning, to study Euclidean math with Willem Wijtses, a wool dyer. When he was 24, Eisinga married Pietje Jacobs and settled in Franeker in 1768, working as a wool comber.
On May 8, 1774,a local newspaper published a prediction from a preacher that the confluence of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter and the moon would result in the mutual forces of these celestial bodies knocking the earth off its path and cause it to be burned up by the sun (“the end of time!”). That set off a panic and seems to have been an impetus for Eisinga to begin building his model of the solar system to show the extreme unlikelihood of planets colliding.
It took Eisinga seven years to construct his planetarium – a real triumph of craftsmanship to carve the wood (his father, a woodcarver, helped), create 6,000 precision nails for the cogs, and the exquisite painting. Eise would have finished sooner, but in a critical development, he had to adjust the placement of the pendulum that kept everything in motion, because his wife drew the line on allowing him to cut a hole in the floor (it was their bedroom, after all), so he had to recalculate everything and replace all 6,000 nails.
The power (and motion) for the entire mechanism comes from a clock, “like the beating heart of the machine,” our guide explains. The mechanism is powered by a system of nine weights – one for clock and 8 for different axels of system
All is built to scale to fit into the space – an astonishing 1 to 1 trillion – and everything is turning so slowly, you can’t detect motion visually. Every planet has its own calculated speed, so Mercury takes 88 days to make one full rotation; Venus takes 224 days; Earth takes 365 days plus 76 hours while the moon takes 29 ½ days to go around the earth (it shows the phases of the moon); Mars takes 687 days; Jupiter, with four moons (the number known at the time), takes 11 years, 315 ⅓ days for its rotation; and Saturn, the furthest known planet at the time, actually has rings and 5 moons and takes 29 years plus 164 days for its rotation.
How do they know the planetarium is still working when everything moves so slowly?
“Everything is connected, so we check what moves daily: the date, zodiac sign, day of week.” On December 31, a special nail pushes the gears into motion to flip to the new year.
Eise Eisinga was such a visionary, two years after finishing his remarkable machine, he wrote a 90-page manual explaining how to maintain it.
“Every 22 years, we follow 5 steps – take board down, sand down, paint the years, let the paint dry, then replace it in the attic,” our guide says. The wheels are so big and move so slowly, they clean the gears once or twice a year.
Eisinga’s son took over when he died, and the planetarium remained in the family for 140 years until 1922 when his great granddaughter was the last in the family to maintain the planetarium. Then the City of Franeker took over its management.
Most of the mechanism is original (Mercury had to be replaced after being damaged in World War II) but they have had to change the ropes for the gears and pulleys.
After the presentation, we are able to climb the stairs to the attic to peer into where the wheels and gears are laid out.
Eisinga came to Franeker with his wife because it had the second largest university in the country and was a center for learning that drew famous scientists. But you can appreciate how trade with the world not only gave Netherlands the wealth to pursue science and innovation, but the access to and transfer of knowledge, not to mention a culture of Enlightenment that was open to new ideas and discovery. And Eise Eisinga was wealthy enough that he could afford to make natural science a hobby.
It is a humbling experience to imagine such expertise and craft hundreds of years ago, before the tools and instruments we have today.
The museum offers several permanent exhibits: Eisinga’s former wool combing establishment, an extensive collection of historical astronomical instruments, Eisinga’s mathematical and astronomical manuscripts which you can digitally peruse, all marvelous juxtapositions to an interactive permanent exhibition, De Ruimte (Space) that opened in 2016, as well as that delightful video conversation between “Eise” and a modern-day Dutch astronaut (English subtitles).
I peek into a room to see the finishing touches on a new temporary exhibit: a spectacular astronomical cabinet from 1771 by Jean Paulus and Prof. Ghiesbregt. “After long wanderings, this Belgian instrument came into possession of Bert Degenaar, a famous Dutch antique collector. On his behalf, the instruments were completely restored and made functional again by horologist Pieter de Ruiter. The 3 meter wide and over 2.5 meter high cabinet is equipped with various globes, planetariums (including an unprecedented representation of the 5th-century worldview of Martianus Capella) and the 16th-century heliocentric worldview of Copernicus. A number of dials provide information about various time indications, calendars, the position of the planets, the phases of the moon, and the orbit of Jupiter’s four largest moons.” The exposition also includes a large collection of original drawings of the various instruments.
All of this goes to serve as a literal display of what The Enlightenment was all about, which largely due to mass printing and trade, made its way to the New World, as well, and was foundational to the Founders of the United States.
Admission to Eise Eisinga’s planetarium is 6E (a HUGE bargain).
We continue on our 36-mile bike route which follows much of the a famous 11-city, 200-km bike tour, and in the course of two days, we will visit six of the 11 and have the opportunity to collect stamps (like passport stamps) on postcards our guides have provided.
By the time we ride into Bolsward, one of the Eleven Frisian Cities, the rain has stopped. Here we see one of the art installations we have been told about – this one looks like Toothless from “How to Train Your Dragon.”.
Bolsward is really beautiful, and I am entranced by the magnificence of The Court of Justice building, now a museum, where I get to climb into the tower built on top of the Court in 1617 (a really improbable and unsafe construction).
But this is the first day when I see why people would get an e-bike in the Netherlands – I’m guessing I am pushing through or against 15 mph winds.
In the evening, our guide, Edith, leads a walking tour of Makkum– it’s just me and a couple from Alberta, Canada. Edith points to homes that have a Coat of Arms or some indication of who lived there, when the fellow shows us his ring with a Coat of Arms. He turns out to be a descendent of the Trip family, one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in Netherlands.
He relates more of his family’s fascinating story as we sit in a historic pub with centuries old Delpht tiles of great 17th century trading ships, noting more than once than the family fortune had been long gone and his branch of the family emigrated to Canada. It’s like having someone from that time tell their story.
Trip’s family’s coat of arms, he relates, has three zoltbommel (wooden shoes) – a nod to the fact that the family started by manufacturing wooden shoes.
Then, brothers Jacob and Elias Trip went into river barges, got rich, then expanded into sea trade. They had a connection with an iron factory which they parlayed into weapons manufacture, arming the Dutch rebels against the Spanish in its 80-year war for independence, 1568-1648 (apparently selling arms to both sides).
Trip was among the original investors of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, VOC), in 1602, the first public company to issue stock and the first truly multinational corporation, transforming global commerce and trade (at its peak, the company would have been worth $7 trillion in today’s dollars, the most valuable company in history). The VOC was granted a monopoly on Dutch trade with Asia and also possessed the power to wage war, make treaties, govern territories, and even mint its own currency, as if a nation-state. So much of what we experience on our trip goes back to the Dutch East India Company.
Meanwhile, the Trips became one of the richest and most important families in Netherlands. Portraits painted by Rembrandt of his relatives Jacob Trip (1576-1661) and his wife, Margaretha de Geer, are in the National Gallery and Ryksmuseum. Their sons, Louis and Hendrick Trip, became fabulously wealthy arms merchants, and built the Trippenhuis in 1662 once the widest residence in Amsterdam and on the list of top 100 Dutch heritage sites.
Edith adds that the Netherlands was one of the first republics in the world and makes the claim that its declaration of independence in 1581, provided a model for Thomas Jefferson in 1776, and was printed on paper from a Dutch paper mill.
“We are now a kingdom, but we started as a republic. Our constitution limits the power of king, our monarchy is more about public relations, like the United Kingdom.”
The first king of the Netherlands, Napoleon’s brother Louis who reigned from 1806-1810, started an art collection, which he brought to TrippenHuis – in essence the first Ryksmuseum. Trippenhuis was where Rembrandt’s “Night Watch: hung until 1851 and since 1887, has housed the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Day 7’s ride takes us from Makkum to Stavoren, from where our ship, Leafde fan Fryslân, will sail across lake IJsselmeer to Enkhuizen, the endpoint of our trip. There is a prediction of rain today and strong wind, so the guides suggest I do the shorter ride (19 miles) and promise I won’t miss out on anything I will regret (the longer route, 30 miles, goes along several Frisian Lakes).
Among the highlights of the ride are coming across a house deliberately built in an upside-down version of a traditional Frisian home (a bit surreal and you have to wonder), and a historic windmill, De Nylannermole, which the sign says dates from 1784, though its history goes back to 1624 (I’m trying to figure out the Dutch). At one point, I see the windmill with a wind turbine in the distance behind it, and later, we see windsurfers and sailboats – all reflections of how the Dutch have embraced wind.
We stop for lunch in a tiny little village as rain comes (we sit under umbrellas outside), and then continue on to Hindeloopen (where we should have cycled for lunch), an old trading town famous for a traditional decorative painting style. Hindeloopen seems to be the epicenter for cycling.
I finish the ride 1:15 pm, hoping I made the right choice in biking the shorter route, and have some time to explore Stavoren before we sail.
There is yet another one of the art installations (this one a giant fish), but I am particularly intrigued by the sculpture of “The Lady of Stavoren” here, and the moral to the story it offers.
“The Lady of Stavoren” legend dates from when the city was the largest and richest in Friesland. Many of the merchant ships were owned the Lady of Stavoren who ordered one of her captains to “Bring me the finest treasure in the world.” He brought back a grain that transformed into pure gold in the midday sun. She forced him to throw it into the sea. A fisherman foretold that she would be punished and at some point beg for grain. Later, two of her ships were lost at sea and she became a beggar woman, while the place where the grain was tossed turned into a sandbank, where a plant that grew ears of corn grew up but yielded no grain.
We have an enjoyable sail back to Enkhuizen, a gala farewell dinner, and then I go off to explore the historic town, which is really worth more time than I will have before I have to return to Schiphol Airport early the next day. (Suggestion: arrive the day before the ship sails to give yourself some time to enjoy Enkhuizen.)
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
Day 4 of our eight-day Boat Bike Tours’ Islandhopping tour of the Netherlands is spent sailing to the island of Terschelling. It takes about six hours to sail across the Wadden Sea, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
“Big boat, small water,” our captain, Age, says, guaranteeing that the ship is “unsinkable” because the water is so shallow, we would run aground first. (“Wadden” means “mudflats” and the Wadden Sea is a large intertidal area in the North Sea along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.)
We have a northwest wind so we can raise the sails on our ship, Leafde fan Fryslân, the only four-masted ship sailing in Dutch waters, instead of just motoring to Terschelling.
Lukacz, who I call the first mate, gives us the safety talk and invites us to help raise the sails (we don’t do it very well). He says it is more important to be safe “You are on vacation, a nice time. You can’t have a nice time with a broken hand. Bad pain is bad time.” But looking around at several of us with boating jackets, says, “I can see this isn’t your first rodeo.”
‘It’s about being happy,” Lukas says, finishing with “What do you think about my speech?”
The wind is so strong (“Respect the power,” he says), but once the sails are raised, we feel the quiet tranquility of sailing. But having come from Texel, and seeing the scores of shipwrecks of those ocean-going trading ships, I can only imagine what this would feel like in a storm, or how those sailors felt for months, even years crossing vast seas to Asia, Africa, and North America.
We have lunch on board as we sail (tonight, we will be on our own for dinner in Terschelling, armed with a list of recommended restaurants).
The scene is stunning, with several tall sailing ships along the horizon, the swirling green/blue water, the white cottony clouds.
It is just 4 pm when we sail into Terschelling, flabberghasted by the finesse Captain Age shows to park our enormous ship, Leafde fan Fryslân, 210 ft. long, 24 ft. wide.
We walk off the ship from the crowded harbor crammed with sailing ships tied up two and three abreast and explore the popular village. Huge ferry boats deposit thousands of visitors each day (remarkable considering a mere 9,700 people live on Terschelling).
Terschelling, one of 15 islands in the North Sea and the furthest north we will travel on our Islandhopping tour, is just 30 km long and 4.5 km wide with vast sand beaches, strong winds and wild water – and we will cycle around most of it.
The town is dominated by the 420 year-old Brandaris lighthouse, standing 388 ft high that can be seen from far off in the distance. I learn this is the oldest lighthouse in the Netherlands. The first tower was built in 1323 to guide ships on their way to Amsterdam through the Zuiderzee, the narrow opening between Vlieland and Terschelling. A flood destroyed the tower in 1570. Construction on a new tower began in 1592 but the tower collapsed before it was finished because of poor building materials. The tower we see today, remarkably, was built in 1594. It became the first lighthouse in the Netherlands equipped with a rotating Freshnel lens in 1837 and was electrified in 1907.
I meet up with a German couple from our ship and follow them up a path over the dunes to the hilltop for a stunning view of the island and the port as the sun streams through clouds.
Back in the charming village, I come upon a gaggle of girls who, it turns out, are Ukrainians taking refuge here from the war in their homeland. This brings a jolt of the world and current events to this small, isolated, peaceful place, shocking me back to the present out of my reverie for ages past. But as the historic markers and notes remind, the vast majority of human history has been one invasion, one war, one revolution, one disaster after another, and the nostalgia that sweeps over us looking back has a way of tempering the horror of that time. I think that one reason history is more palatable, less stressful, than present-day events is that we know how that chapter of the story ended.
While the previous day was all about sailing, Day 5 is all about cycling. Terschelling offers 70 km of cycling tracks and four charming villages to discover. We will cycle 26 miles roundtrip, then, in the afternoon, sail across the Wadden Sea to Harlingen, the most important harbor city of the province of Friesland.
This is the first day of cycling where I appreciate why people get e-bikes in the Netherlands: the paths may be flat but the wind is strong (all the charming historic windmills and now modern wind turbines should have been a clue). I power through and at one point, one of our group becomes very conscientious about riding right in front of me to break the wind a bit (like the Tour de France!).
We set out along the dyke, then turn off into villages, farms and fields. Our route takes us to the Stryper Wyke (wife) statue, a short distance from a cemetery. The monument heralds back to the 1666 wars with the English over trade with India. The British declared the North Sea as theirs and invaded this area, burning, raping, killing. The British, the story goes, confronted the Stryper Wyke demanding to know how many defenders there were, to which she replied, “100 standing, 1000 laying down” – referring to the cemetery. The legend goes that the invaders took her literally and retreated, and she is credited with saving the town.
In fact, everywhere we go, there are just such statues, monuments, plaques, placards and historic photos that cherish local history, heritage and culture and show the pride the Dutch have.
We ride passed an intriguing Toesaks Museum (pirates!) which is described as “an exciting and pleasantly eccentric museum for kids and adults” offering a collection recovered from shipwrecks. The museum is housed in a farmhouse and has a real pirate ship, a tree house and a castle. Owner and wreck diver Hille van Dieren, I learn later, has been collecting recovered inventory pieces from the many shipwrecks around Terschelling since 1975. The museum is full of curiosities from 1650 to the present (https://wrakkenmuseum.nl/).
No one else wants to stop to visit, so I take a quick peek inside so I don’t hold up the group. But if it were important to me, I could have left the group and followed the route myself using the RideGPS app that Boat Bike Tours provides. But, the ship is sailing this afternoon and I wouldn’t have known if I could complete the route in time.
We ride through open fields (battling the wind), through forest and then over a stretch of sand (not fun) and come to Koor Hoorn, hiking over enormous dunes which open up to this vast expanse of sand beach almost completely vacant of people or structures. I walk what seems a quarter mile before I finally reach the actual water, where the sea is swirling with whitecaps and the beach is strewn with a thick white foam that looks like pieces of clouds have fallen from the sky.
We get to a charming Cranberry inn (spectacular desserts, all made with cranberry), and walk out to the cranberry field (not a bog).There is a small exhibit and video on a second floor. Just as we are gathering to leave, it starts to rain. Edith checks the weather app and predicts it will only last a few minutes – so I go back inside to get cozy in the upstairs screening room to watch the video about the island and raising cranberry. Sure enough, the rain stops within 15 minutes, and we are on our way. (One of the good things about the strong wind, is that rain rarely lasts long.)
We are in awe – along with everyone else on the dock – collectively holding our breath as Captain Age maneuvers out of the tight harbor. We sail across the Wadden Sea to Harlingen, considered the most important harbor city of the province of Friesland.
The first thing we see is a restoration of the De Witte Swaen (the White Swan). This was the famous vessel sailed by16th-century Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz when he discovered the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen (now known as Svalbard) and Bear Island. He then sailed onward to the Russian archipelago of Nova Zembla, where, in 1596, the ship got stuck in the ice and they were forced to stay the winter. Barentsz did not survive, but 12 of the 17 crew were saved. Here, in the port of Harlingen, marine archaeologist Gerald de Weerdt is directing volunteers in building a genuine replica of the ship using 16th century techniques and materials. After years of work, his team is planning to finish the ship by year’s end. It will be sailed to Amsterdam and then returned here. Eventually, de Weerdt and his team want to retrace Barentsz’s voyage by sailing the vessel to Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla (hopefully with a better outcome).
Anya explains the complicated system of dykes and the dam built in 1932 which turned part of the Wadden Sea into a lake and from salt to fresh water, changing the ecology, and what was done to protect the fish migration from the changed ecosystem.
She points out the architecture – the Celtic tradition of putting a symbol to protect the house from evil – and how 600 buildings in the town are protected for their historic significance.
Magnificent buildings like the elaborate City Hall show the wealth of this town.
As we have seen before, the biggest building, typically a church, was built on the highest point, to provide safety when the town flooded. Holland broke with the Catholic Church of Spain and declared religious freedom when it won its independence after an 80-year war.
She notes that under Napoleon, who conquered the Netherlands in 1800 and installed his brother, Louis, as its first king (who ruled 1806-1810), every home had to replace the ornaments that showed a coat of arms or profession with a house number and street, and a registry was kept of names, religion and where they lived.
“In World War II, the Nazis could see where Jews lived” (one of the reasons why today, the Dutch are still concerned to protect private information on the internet).
Today, we see some of the ”stumbling stones” – square copper plates in the sidewalk -documenting the name of the Jews who lived in the home, “the last place they lived in freedom,” before being taken by Nazis to concentration camps. There are some 70,000 of these “stumbling stones” in Europe, about 7,000 in the Netherlands, Anya says.
I am reminded that after declaring its independence from Catholic Spain in 1581, Holland instituted religious freedom and Jews, who suffered Spain’s Inquisition, were able to practice relatively openly. Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter, a short distance from where the Grand Synagogue was built. When Jews went to New Amsterdam in 1654,then a trading post of the Dutch West India Company. Governor Peter Stuyvesant wanted to evict the Jews, but the company required him to let the Jews stay. (This is all brought back when I visit two exhibits currently on view in New York City: “New York at Its Core: Port City (1609-1898)” at the Museum of the City of New York and “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” at the Jewish Museum.)
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
Day 3 of Boat Bike Tours’ eight-day Islandhopping tour proves to be my favorite, most perfect day – the biking, the attractions, the scenery, the gestalt of the island of Texel, even the weather, all combining for a thrilling experience. We will be biking roundtrip from and back to Oudeschild with a choice of a 26 mile or 30 mile route. We soon discover the treasures harbored on The Texel Roads.
We start off biking together to Ecomare, a seal sanctuary and ecology center with superb displays, exhibits and notes (with English) that teach about ecology, climate change, animal and environmental conservation, focused on the local area, making clear what these existential planetary changes mean for the people living here.
I start in the room with skeletons of actual whales – enormous, suspended so that they look like they are swimming – then move to an aquarium where you can see rescued seals swimming under water. You go outside to the various habitats where there are excellent explanations of why the seals were rescued (and the steps they take to avoid “rescuing” a seal that is merely resting on the beach), what their prognosis is to be re-released into the wild or whether some condition, like blindness, will require them to stay.
We see areas where baby animals are nurtured, where medical procedures are conducted, where seal pups are raised until they can be released (I wonder how they learn how to hunt for themselves), and where animals are quarantined (the sign says it’s a good thing if this area is empty!).
Our stay is timed so we get to see a feeding, before heading out again.
I stick with my group doing the longer ride (41 km), until we reach a delightful town of Dun Berg, where there is a huge event going on with a military band and seniors in wheelchairs who have been gathered for the concert that turns out to be the May 20 celebration of Texel’s Independence (different from the Netherlands, because it marks the day they finally expelled the German occupiers).
I spend about a half-hour wandering the lovely town center before breaking off on my own in order to arrive back in Oudeschild in time to visit the Museum Kaap Skil. I feel very brave but use the RideGPS to give me the route, even though I find myself double-checking that I have selected the right route to follow. Because it stays light so late (till nearly 9 pm), I figure even if I get lost, I can still get back during daylight.
I find myself so delighted to be doing these 12 miles on my own – it is idyllic pastoral scenery that compels me to stop to take photos – then I ride through a couple of villages, then onto the path along the dyke with the ocean on one side and the high berm with sheep (who keep the grass shorn) on the other, that takes me right to the harbor and the ship.
I make it back in under two hours, by 3:15 pm, with just enough time to really enjoy this astonishing Museum Kaap Skil (do not miss it!), in which the historic windmill, so prominent in the landscape, is the centerpiece.
I quickly drop my things in my cabin, then climb the stairs up and over the dyke, down below sea level to the village and the museum.
The museum has a small village of outdoor attractions including the historic windmill and a ship, Texelse Blazer, dated 1894, that is being restored, and authentically furnished cottages, beachcomber’s shed and smithy, gives you a realistic view of island life during the Netherlands’ Golden Age of Sail.
On Tuesdays and Thursday when volunteers dress in period clothes, you can watch wool being spun, fishnets being mended, ropemaking, and taste a smoked fish (tastiest smoked fish I’ve ever had), visit the grocery store and walk into homes furnished as they would have been.
I save the indoor exhibits in the modern museum for last (the outdoor village closes at 4 pm, the museum at 5 pm). These extraordinary exhibits of artifacts rescued from shipwrecks in the Wadden Sea that were so plentiful off this port – an indication of how important a port Texel was during the Golden Age of Sail – are a fitting climax to the visit.
I start on the upper floor, in “World Voyage,” where you can follow specific ships to their destination and see artifacts obtained from them.. A centrally located compass shows the way and Texel folk from the past tell their stories, assisted by shipwreck finds. People such as Albert Gronders, who sailed the Baltic Sea yearly to buy grain in the 17th century, narrates the north shipping. about Baltic Sea shipping. If you go east, then Jacob Schagen, who, as a 15-year-old Texel man, sailed for the Far East aboard the VOC ship De Jonge Lieve in 1762, narrates about the eastern shipping routes. Texel folk from the past also tell their stories about journeys west and southbound.
Alongside the adventurous and positive aspects of seventeenth century trade for Texel, World Voyage also explores its “shadow sides:” “Adventure, wealth, trade and romance, but also exploitation, danger, slavery and poverty. Global trade in the 16th and 17th century knew many faces,” reads a self-aware note.
A section themed “A Complex History,” acknowledges the violence, greed and role in the slave trade that enabled Holland’s seafaring empire. Among the artifacts displayed are tools destined for slaves to use on a sugar plantation in Suriname alongside luxury objects meant to guarantee the plantation owners a comfortable life, salvaged from a ship that sunk near Texel, never having reached the destination.
The displays are sensational, with many having interactive elements (the notes in English are much appreciated: I also enjoy reading about “The Women Who Stayed Behind”.
The stellar attraction in Museum Kaap Skil is a 17th century silk dress “of royal allure,” salvaged from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Wadden Sea. Given the name ‘Palmhoutwrak‘ (Palmwood wreck), this was a merchant ship carrying luxurious goods, that must have been wrecked on the Texel Roads around 1650. The precious garment is still in amazingly good condition despite having lain on the seabed for almost four centuries. “It is a unique find worldwide; hardly any clothing from the seventeenth century has been preserved. Scientists expect to need years to answer all the questions that the dress has raised.” It is now on display with other textiles and artifacts in a new exhibition at the Museum Kaap Skil, kept in a protectiveairtight display cases, filled with nitrogen, especially designed for the fragile textiles in this exhibition.
“Every find from the Palmwood Wreck is important, but the dress has been dubbed “the ‘Nightwatch’ of the textile world.”
The findings were so extensive that researchers had been working for years to make an inventory and only recently discovered that a second dress from the Palmwood Wreck was most probably a wedding dress, adorned with silver. This dress was less well-preserved but you can see it as well as what it would look like “restored” to its glory in an animation
The Palmwood finds are divided into four themes in the exhibition: wealth, worldly, intimate and stylish. Together they show how valuable, tasteful and exclusive the cargo was: a calf leather bookbinding and a gilded silver cup bearing the English royal family Stuart’s coat of arms in gold print; objects gathered from all corners of the globe: like an oriental rug and a caftan; intimate objects like a toiletry set, knitted silk stockings and a red silk bodice.
Merchant vessels, warships, whalers: they all anchored on what was known as “the Texel Roads.” In the 16th and 17th century this was the place to load, unload and wait for favorable winds, the notes explain. But many ships were lost in storms, which is why there are dozens of shipwrecks lying in the seabed near Texel and how it comes to be that so many of these artifacts can now be viewed at Museum Kaap Skil with such interesting detail. You have more of a personalized connection to each object.
In the exposition ‘Ship in Sight – the Roads of Texel and the World’, the Roads of Texel come alive. A dimension has been added to what is claimed to be “the world’s largest maritime scale model.” The hidden stories about the 160 ships have become visible, thanks to new technique. They show that the Roads of Texel was the logistic hub of the 17th century.
So I find myself in this enormous room – I’m guessing over 100-feet long – that has a model of the city with all the various ships in the harbor (you can use a telescope to zero in on anything, then look up the back story of 160 ships and what happened to that particular ship). Then, extending the full length of the room, an animated film so realistically created of the ships sailing into port, finishes with a massive storm hitting, and you watch how fast one of the ships sinks.
On large touchscreens, you see the ship models very close up, down to the smallest details. There is the Seven Provinces, the ship with which Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter won many navel battles, and the Petronella, a fluyt ship we learn was headed to Riga to buy grain. You can learn about the ship’s features, the routes sailed, personal stories, special facts and important events.
The exhibits make the point just how important the Roads of Texel was as the logistic hub of the 17th century.
You know what – it is spectacular to see first hand, but if you cannot visit, check out the website, https://kaapskil.nl/en/ (You can actually watch the thrilling and fascinating hour-long video on the museum website, https://kaapskil.nl/en/discover/expositions/ship-in-sight-the-roads-of-texel-and-the-world/.)
In the evening, after dinner, our Boat Bike Tours guide Edith leads a walking tour of Oudeschild. After, I wander around the harbor and walk along the dyke, the colors absolutely stunning in the setting sun.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
Get out of the heat this summer and feel your blood boil – come to The New York Historical’s new exhibit, “Blacklisted: An American Story” and be horrified when you recognize that the assault on free speech, free association, free press, democracy, due process and Rule of Law happening today has happened before in the United States, and not all that long ago.
The intersection of politics, art, and culture that shaped America’s Red Scare is showcased in Blacklisted: An American Story, a traveling exhibit created by the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, on view at the New York Historical through October 19. Expanded by The Historical, the exhibition builds on the story of the Red Scare and the blacklisting of screenwriters and directors known as the Hollywood Ten, along with countless others who were impacted. Blacklisted shows how global politics and concerns over the Cold War were used to justify antisemitic, racist and anti-worker crackdowns domestically, and how the government crushed artistic expression in the 1940s and 1950s to reverse social justice movements simply by branding everything and anyone “Communist.”
“Our aim with Blacklisted is to prompt visitors to think deeply about democracy and their role in it,” stated Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of The New York Historical. “The exhibition tackles fundamental issues like freedom of speech, religion, and association, inviting reflection on how our past informs today’s cultural and political climate.”
When the exhibit was first developed in 2016 by the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and opened in 2018, “no one could have anticipated” how uncomfortably close to what is taking place in the United States today, with book bans, loyalty oaths, people seized from the street by masked men without badges or warrant, shutting down of research and education, and the attacks – a la Cultural Revolution – on academics, scientists, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, while political violence and terror is allowed to surge.
“We also couldn’t have anticipated the rise of antisemitism now, as then,” Mirrer said at the opening reception. “This is an uncannily timely and meaningful show that hopes to teach about courage and American traditions, and how precious our democracy is.” She said she hoped the exhibition would spark “discourse as we think about who we are as Americans. History has power to change lives.”
Civil Rights Congress, America’s “Thought Police”: Record of the Un-American Activities Committee, 1947. Courtesy of the Unger Family
The exhibit, which makes starkly clear the connection between the “anti-Communist” crusade and the link with antisemitism, racism and anti-unionism, generated some revelations for the Jewish Museum Milwaukee exhibit curator Ellie Gettinger, who we met at an opening reception at New York Historical in front of the section noting the Blacklist never actually ended, it just gradually faded into disuse.
“People think the Red Scare was McCarthy, but we showed it was not one individual, it was so many – in government, in industry, so many throughout American society,” Gettinger said. Why weren’t the people who were persecuted protected by the First Amendment? “Because it wasn’t the government doing the blacklisting. It was the industry. Even the Hollywood studios controlled by Jews.”
She reflected, “In 2018, so many were shocked [by the exhibit and parallels to today]. People are really disturbed now, feeling politically impotent and overwhelmed. We have to keep fighting.”
Just as today, a culture that engendered empathy, compassion and understanding of others became the enemy of those who wanted to keep power and profit. It is no accident that Trump and the MAGAs have effectively rendered illegal so-called DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and CRT (critical race theory) in school curricula, admissions and hiring, going after academia, corporations, research institutions, legal firms, and media.
The Blacklist was largely antisemitic because Eastern European immigrant Jews were social justice activists at their core, were identified with Bolshevik Russia, and were considered the rabble rousers for workers rights, union rights, civil rights and voting rights. Jewish immigrants led the formation of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), in 1900, organizing major strikes in 1909 and 1910 and reaction to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 which lead to better wages, working hours, and safety standards for garment workers and advocated for social needs, educational opportunities and health services – issues that then as now were branded “communist.”
“The Blacklist flourished when political and corporate interests superseded First Amendment rights. Freedoms of speech, association and assembly – all protected under the First Amendment – became casualties. Each of the three branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial-prioritized national security over civil liberties. Their actions exposed the dangers of unchecked political power in the US. Numerous industries purged employees suspected of being sympathetic to communism. Hundreds of people lost their jobs, and thousands stood by silently, afraid of jeopardizing future employment.
“Supporters and critics of the Blacklist both claimed they were fulfilling their patriotic duty. The Hollywood Blacklist shaped the nation’s political and cultural landscape for decades to come.”
The parallels to today are terrifying – including the capitulation of media moguls like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Washington Post); Shari Redstone (who controls CBS) and Robert Iger (CEO of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC).
Impact of the Blacklist: “I’m a man of a thousand faces, and all of them are Blacklisted,” stated actor Zero Mostel.
The Blacklist impacted, even destroyed lives but also society in its quest to assert White Christo Fascist cultural foundation (they could call it whatever they like, but that’s what it was).
We meet Julie Garfield in front of the portrait of her father, John Garfield, she lent to the exhibit, an acclaimed, dashing Hollywood leading man who starred in such patriotic films as “Pride of the Marines” (the uniform he wore in that movie is on display). She wrote her father’s blacklisting “killed him, it really killed him. He was under unbelievable stress. Phones were being tapped. He was being followed by the FBI. He hadn’t worked in 18 months. He was finally supposed to do ‘Golden Boy’ on CBS with Kim Stanley. They did one scene. And then CBS cancelled it. He died a day or two later.”
There is a list of those who “whether by heart attack or suicide, all were killed by the relentless pressures of inquisition,” wrote Alvah Bessie, screenwriter and one of the Hollywood Ten.
Blacklisted features more than 150 artifacts, including historical newspaper articles, film clips, testimony footage, telegrams, playbills, court documents, film costumes, movie posters, scripts, and artwork.
Among the personal objects on view are Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s Academy Award Oscars for Roman Holiday— originally awarded only to co-writer Ian McLellan Hunter since Trumbo was prohibited from working in film under his own name—and The Brave One, awarded to the fictitious Robert Rich (one of his pseudonyms). Trumbo finally received his Oscar for “The Brave One” in 1975, 20 years after it had been awarded and his wife, Cleo Trumbo, accepted his Oscar for “Roman Holiday” posthumously in 1993, 40 years after the film’s release.
Also on view is Lauren Bacall’s costume from How to Marry a Millionaire, a 1953 film released during the height of the Blacklist. Bacall was one of the founding members of the Committee for the First Amendment, which initially supported the Hollywood Ten. Unlike other committee members, Bacall was able to work steadily until her death.
The exhibit draws clear connections between antisemitism and racism at the heart of the “Red Scare” “The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) included avowed segregationists and antisemites, with the larger objective of “the preservation of the established social order disrupted by New Deal initiatives and World War II,” On display is a pamphlet, “Today…Hollywood. Tomorrow…the Whole Country.”
“HUAC members Rep. John Rankin (D-Mississippi) and Rep. John S.Wood (D-Georgia) advanced a reactionary white supremist agenda.” Rankin defended the Ku Klux Klan’s racial violence and terror, asserting “the KKK is an old American institution.” Wood added “threats and intimidations of the Klan are an old American custom, like illegal whiskey-making.”
But the Red Scare did not begin in the post World-War II era with fear of the Soviet Union getting the nuclear bomb. The first Red Scare came after World War I (simultaneous with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), with a crackdown on immigrants and political dissidents. The Espionage Act of 1917 became the basis for censoring publications; a year later, the Sedition Act made it illegal to speak or write about the US government with “contempt, scorn or disrepute” – legislation the Trump administration is drawing upon to deport migrants and quash dissent.
In 1919 and 1920, the crackdown on dissent and free speech intensified (note: the war had already ended in 1918) and was used the power to go after union organizers and those upholding workers rights, many of whom were Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer authorized federal raids of labor and “radical” organizations, arresting more than 5,000 and deporting hundreds of immigrant activists, including Emma Goldman.
We associate the era with Senator Joseph McCarthy, but as the exhibit points out, McCarthy “was only one of many who used the politics of Red-baiting to gain political leverage and power.” (McCarthy’s claim to fame was his crusade to root out alleged communists in the State Department, but he actually had little to do with the Hollywood blacklist.)
The creatives who became known as the Hollywood Ten were largely successful film industry people. During World War II, each contributed to the war effort in meaningful ways, developing films that combined patriotic plots with a social conscience such as “Tender Comrades” written by Dalton Trumbo; “Pride of the Marines,” written by Albert Maltz and starting John Garfield; and ‘Crossfire,” produced by Adrian Scott and directed by Edward Dmytryk. But all 10 had at some point been members of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) because of its advocacy of workers’ rights and social justice. The list included Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, and Adrian Scott in addition to Dmytryk, Maltz and Trumbo.
The Hollywood Ten were found in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions, and sentenced to prison for up to one year. The claim of First Amendment protection was rejected by the lower court and by the time their case reached the Supreme Court, two liberal members died and the Court declined to hear their case.
“Guilty until proven innocent,” one section proclaims unnervingly in light of today’s events, as we see people being rounded up by masked goons and thrown into jails or deported to third countries without the ability to prove their innocence or exercise the Constitution’s right to due process. “The role of hearsay and the assumption of guilt in the hearings became central to the ongoing operation of the Hollywood Blacklist throughout the 1950s…HUAC’s targets had no recourse, they could not sue for libel or challenge the damage to their reputations and livelihoods.” They were even blacklisted if they asserted their Fifth Amendment right.
It is shocking to see films that were tagged for blacklisting:
“The Best Years of Our Lives” that won seven Academy Awards was blacklisted, prompting Gene Kelly to write, “Were you subverted by it? Did it make you Un-American?” The FBI analysis drew upon producer Cecil B. Demille’s assessment that “this picture portrayed the ‘upper class in a bad light.’” The FBI noted, “The banker was portrayed as a mean, avaricious individual,” and that the film contained communist propaganda and “subversive half-truths.”
Imagine, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” was deemed “subversive!” “This picture represents a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers,” the FBI analysis stated.
Best picture winner “Gentleman’s Agreement,“ starring Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and John Garfield, in which Peck plays a journalist who poses as a Jew to expose antisemitism, was blacklisted. It’s blacklist connections included Director Elia Kazan (who named names), and blacklisted actors John Garfield (who was actually Jewish) and Anne Revere. It ran afoul, the FBI analysis claimed, because “A Police Lieutenant is party to antisemitism and as such is subjected to much criticism…This was a deliberate effort to discredit law enforcement.”
“Pride of the Marines” was blacklisted for screenwriter Albert Maltz and actor John Garfield. The FBi Analysis noted “’Maltz’ had the actors say everything possible to ‘provoke doubts’ concerning representative government and free enterprise; they accused employers of everything from racial prejudice to a conspiracy to scuttle the GI Bill of Rights.”
Even “High Noon,” starring Gary Cooper who won Best Actor, was blacklisted because its screenwriter, Carl Foreman, “invoked his privilege under the Fifth Amendment… in connection with this Communist affiliations.”
This being New York City, the New York Historical put its own stamp on the exhibit with a reference to the 1920s anti-immigrant (antisemitic) Palmer raids and Emma Goldman’s deportation, and a whole section on New York Theater and the Blacklist, in which it is shown that the city’s theater community pushed back.
“Broadway and the theater became a vital space for creative expression and social commentary. Though many Blacklisted artists still struggled financially, theater became an indispensable source of employment for those barred from movies and television. Some also performed for receptive audiences at labor unions, local synagogues, and community organizations across New York City.”
Playwright Arthur Miller, so famous for his Tony Award-winning play, ”The Crucible,” in which the Salem witch trials were a metaphor for McCarthyism, wrote, “We are at times ruled by the collective fear of each other and of those who may take away our rights and persecute us.”
Broadway and the broader theater community, we learn, never adopted a formal Blacklist. The labor union Actors Equity Association charted a different path from that the forcefully anti-communist Screen Actors Guild (SAG ). While there were anticommunist factions among the membership, Actors Equity passed a resolution in 1951 condemning the Blacklist, arguing that blacklisting “by its very nature is based on secrecy and prejudiced judgment and results in conviction by accusation.’ The following year, Actors Equity began including anti-Blacklist language in its contracts, a practice that continues to this day.”
So while there are those who look at what is happening as people are grabbed off the street by thugs without badges wearing masks, without court order or anything resembling due process, effectively guilty without the ability to prove innocence and say “this isn’t who we are as Americans,” the truth is, yes it is. There has always been this strain of bigoted, racist, sexist, anti=democratic evil, often masquerading as “religion” and “patriotism”. The task is for the forces of the “all are created equal” faction to beat it back and reestablish the civil liberties we claim make America “exceptional.”
The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West (77th Street), New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.
Jewish Museum: Social Activist Ben Shahn and “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt”
A brilliant companion to “Blacklisted,” is the exhibit at the Jewish Museum, Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, who used his art for social justice in ways that are unnervingly relevant today. The 175 artworks and objects from the 1930s to the 1960s show how this prolific and progressive artist chronicled and confronted crucial issues from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, to Civil Rights and Workers Rights. (On view through Oct. 12).
Also, a phenomenal exhibit, “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” (on view through Aug. 10) shows how the story of Queen Esther resonated with the Dutch in this time. “The Dutch interpreted the story of Esther’s bravery as a symbol of the Netherlands’ newly won independence from Spain. Rembrandt was part of a larger cultural trend that reimagined this story for the new century, new secular art market, and new national purpose,” write Abigail Rapoport, curator of Judaica Jewish Museum, and Michele Frederick, curator of European Art, North Carolina museum of Art, Raleigh.
Anne Frank The Exhibition, on view at the Center for Jewish History through October, is the first time that the Anne Frank House presents a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam to immerse visitors in a full-scale recreation of the Annex rooms, fully furnished, where Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and four other Jews spent two years hiding to evade Nazi capture. Four exhibition galleries immerse visitors in place and history through video, sound, photography, and animation; and more than 100 original collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Anne Frank The Exhibition provides an opportunity to learn about Anne Frank not as a victim but through the multifaceted lens of her life—as a girl, a writer, and a symbol of resilience and strength. Tickets at AnneFrankExhibit.org. Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, cjh.org.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
The annual eight-day Parks & Trails Cycle the Erie Canalway bike tour from Buffalo to Albany is 400 miles and 400 years of history but this year’s ride July 12-20, 2025 is particularly special because it marks the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. An engineering marvel of its time that transformed the United States, all along the way, riders will enjoy special events and celebrations.
The Erie Canal propelled the Industrial Revolution, opened the frontier, united the country, birthed canal towns and cities, and made New York City a financial capital of the world.
You see all of this unfolding from the first mile out of Buffalo and over the course of eight days of riding (averaging 50 miles a day), filled with activities and camaraderie.
Cycle the Erie Canalway participants experience one of the best trails in America as they cycle through historic canal villages and discover the small-town charm of upstate New York that makes people like us Downstaters marvel, “This is New York!” Along the way, canal historians and local experts will introduce riders to the people, places and things that make the Erie Canal so important to the history of New York and the nation during its Bicentennial Year. Cyclists pedal between 40 and 60 miles per day on the mostly flat (but it seems the campsites tend to be at the highest point of a town) and mostly traffic-free Erie Canalway Trail, and visit some of Upstate New York’s most iconic attractions, such as the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls and Fort Stanwix in Rome, a full-scale fort recreation from the French and Indian War.
The Parks & Trails NY tour is actually one of my favorite bike rides in the world – for the scenery, the sights along the way, the activities like lectures and museum visits that are arranged, the camaraderie of camping and riding together with some 650 cyclists from all over the country and all over the world, and the Erie Canalway itself –a 356 mile-long car-free recreational path that is the west-east part of New York State’s new 750-mile Empire Trail Network (the north-south trail network connects Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan to the Canadian border). Between the relatively flat nature and superb support provided, Cycle the Erie Canal offers unparalleled cycling for all ages and abilities (I’ve seen families with little ones in trailers or car seats and riders as young as 10 and as old as 92 bike on their own.)
Though there are bike tour operators (such as Wilderness Voyageurs and Pocono Biking) that offer inn-to-inn bike tours on portions of the Erie Canalway, this annual supported biking/camping trip, in its 27th year, is organized by Parks & Trails New York, which for decades has successfully advocated to open these recreational trails and improve parks.
Each day’s ride is highlighted by fascinating attractions all along the Erie Canalway
In Lockport, see the original engineering marvel that made the entire Erie Canal possible: the famous “Flight of Five”, a staircase of five locks built to elevate boats through the then-impossible 50-foot Niagara Escarpment; take a cruise through the modern lock (the GE motors that run it are over 100 years old), explore underground sluiceways, caves and the “Upsidedown Bridge.”
Leaving the historic village of Medina, look for the tunnel under the Erie Canal, where you see that the Erie Canal is really like a bathtub.
Ride through New York’s Amish Country (who knew!) on the way to Seneca Falls, birthplace of the modern Women’s Rights movement and visit the Women’s Rights National Historic Park, National Women’s Hall of Fame (housed in a former knitting mill) and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home (the museums stay open for us).
You also get a taste of the women’s movement at the Peppermint Museum in Lyons (don’t miss it!) where you learn about the inventor, Hotchkiss’s daughter, a suffragist, who took over the company.
On the way to Syracuse, stop at the Visitors Center at the Old Erie Canal Heritage Park at Port Byron, then pedal through the authentic enlarged Erie Canal Lock 52 to the c. 1895 Erie House Saloon, Blacksmith Shop, and Mule Barn; visit the Jordan Historical Society Museum, and ride on the towpath on an original aqueduct over Skaneateles Creek which takes you to Camillus’ Erie Canal Park where you stop at Sims Store, a re-creation of a 19th century general store (where riders are cheered for passing the half-way mark at 200 miles)
In Syracuse, visit the zoo, and the next morning, the Erie Canal Museum, the best of the Canal Museums along the way (they open especially for the cyclists)
On the way to Rome, visit the Chittenango Canal Museum and dry docks and the Canastota Canal Town Museum and see the spot where the first shovel of dirt was turned for “Clinton’s Ditch” (deliberately in the middle of the canal). Chittenango was also the birthplace in 1856 of L. Frank Baum, famous throughout the world as the creator of The Wizard of Oz and his mother-in-law Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a prominent women’s rights advocate, abolitionist, and writer, known for her radical views, derived largely from the Oneida women and her work alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the women’s suffrage movement).
In Rome, camp at the restored Fort Stanwix National Monument, built during the French and Indian War, populated with costumed interpreters, and learn how seemingly minor battles actually shaped the outcome of the American Revolution.
In Little Falls, explore the glacial potholes of Moss Island, a National Natural Landmark, and tour Revolutionary War General Herkimer’s home.
At Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, once a trading post and a fort (they found the footprint after a hurricane), look where you can see all three Erie Canals (yes, 3 Erie Canals have been built).
Coming from Schenectady to the finish line in Albany, stop at Cohoes Falls, one of the most powerful falls east of the Rockies and a major challenge for Erie Canal engineers (a wonderful bookend with Niagara Falls in the west); visit Peebles Island State Park, where, during the Revolutionary War, American forces prepared defenses to make a final stand against the British, and finally, bike along the Hudson River into downtown Albany, New York State’s 300-year-old capital.
Registration for Cycle the Erie Canal includes camping accommodations each evening with restrooms and showers (even swimming pools and charging stations and the possibility of indoor camping); eight hearty breakfasts and six delicious dinners; two refreshment stops daily stocked with fruit, snacks and beverages; SAG support and baggage transport; daily cue sheets and marked routes; entertainment and historic presentations every evening; and guided tours of the Canal, historic sites, museums, other attractions, and expanded celebrations for the Canal’s 200th Anniversary.
The price for the eight-day ride, July 12-20, Buffalo to Albany is $1,300/adult, $700 (youth age 6-17), $300/child (5 and under). There is also a four-day version with an optional shuttle.
(Note: they arrange for parking in Albany ($120, at the Quackenbush Garage July 12-20, 2025), and a shuttle bus to Buffalo on July 12 ($120/rider), or oppositely, parking in Buffalo ($25) and a shuttle back from Albany to Buffalo at the end of the tour.)
Parks & Trails New York, which is celebrating its own 40th anniversary this year, is a leading statewide advocate working to create a network of parks, trails, and greenways so that New Yorkers can enjoy the outdoors close to home. Cycle the Erie Canal supports Parks & Trails New York’s work on the Erie Canalway Trail and on trails in communities throughout New York State.
The New York State Canal Corporation, the agency charged with operating, maintaining and promoting New York’s Canal System and the Canalway Trail, is the Premier State Sponsor of Cycle the Erie Canal. The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor is the event’s Heritage Sponsor.
For more information on Cycle the Erie Canal, visit www.ptny.org/canaltour, email eriecanaltour@ptny.org or call 518-434-1583.
Erie Canal Bicentennial Events
The Cycle the Erie Canal bike tour, July 12-20, is one of the biggest events honoring the canal’s bicentennial, but there are many events happening in various towns and cities along the Canal:
On Fri., May 16, 2025, the Bicentennial Navigation season will kick off in Waterford, where the Canal meets the Hudson River, with a parade of vessels.
Fairport, NY, the jewel of the Erie Canal, celebrates its 48th Canal Days from June 6-8, 2025. One of New York’s premier arts festivals features artisans, music, local cuisine and fun for all ages, and brings more than 100,000 visitors to this Rochester suburb.
Canal enthusiasts, historians, engineers, environmentalists, artists and travelers from around the world can attend The 2025 World Canals Conference from Sept. 21-25, 2025 in Buffalo, NY, complete with canal-themed excursions for participants, in addition to hours of learning, discussion and networking.
The Water Music NY: More Voices Festivalreturns in Summer 2025, with The Albany Symphony Orchestra performing free concerts across the entire New York State Canal System. The project is a collaboration of composers, local arts partners, cultural & educational institutions and community members fusing arts, cultural heritage, and contemporary issues to re-envision the past, present, and future of people and communities bordering the historic waterway.
For the grand finale, a replica of Seneca Chief, the boat Governor Dewitt Clinton used for his inaugural Erie Canal journey to open the Canal in 1825, will set sail on September 24 and recreate the maiden voyage from Buffalo Canalside to the New York Harbor, making multiple stops along the way with celebratory events at each community stop including flotillas and a grand commemoration in New York City on October 25.
Can’t make it to the Parks & Trails NY Cycle the Erie Ride? The bike tour company, Wilderness Voyageurs offers a four-day inn to inn ride, New York Erie Canal West, that begins in Lockport and stays in places like the historic Genessee Country Inn (2025 tour dates: 6/30, 7/27, 8/10, 800-272-4141, wilderness-voyageurs.com).
Another extraordinary way to experience the Erie Canal is by a live-aboard canal boat! This European-style self-skippered houseboat that was specifically designed for the Erie Canal let’s you make your own way on the Erie Canal, going through locks and under the lift bridges, and experience the 200th anniversary of the canal just as it was then, by boat and bike. Erie Canal Adventures provides this one-of-a-kind experience with live-aboard, fully-equipped canal boats. Accommodating 2 to 6 people, each of these charming, easy-to-pilot boats features cozy bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms – cooking utensils, linens, fuel, mobile app and bikes. You get 3-4 hours of training, including safety training, systems, and navigational training (and how to go through the locks which are SO fun. You learn how to work the radio to call up to the lockmaster and the bridge operators to lift the bridges. And you tie up where you like. Erie Canal Adventures, 1125 Marina Parkway, Macedon NY 14502, (315) 986-3011, Option 1, allie@eriecanaladventures.com, ericcanaladventures.com.
“This year, New York State is rich with opportunities to experience major milestone anniversaries, stay in new hotels and explore new museums and exhibits,” I LOVE NY Executive Director of Tourism Ross D. Levisaid. “The Bicentennial of the Erie Canal‘s completion can be celebrated throughout upstate communities, while downstate, New York City commemorates its 400th anniversary. The 100th anniversary of the Great Gatsby can be explored at Gold Coast mansions on Long Island, where the famous novel was set. For more information, visit iloveny.com
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
On Day 4 of Discovery Bicycle Tours’ six-day Idaho Trails trip, after breakfast at our base at the Silver Mountain Resort, we are shuttled to Shoshone Park in the mining town of Mullan for an easy downstream ride through the “Silver Valley,” home to several historic mining communities.
We soon pick up the official start of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, enjoying views of the rocky, forested mountains, as we make our way to the utterly charming “wild west” town of Wallace.
We have been primed for Wallace’s character (and humor) when we had a talk by a local historian at the Roosevelt Inn in Coeur d’Alene so are prepared for the “history (and some hilarity!) that await us as citizens of Wallace have tenaciously preserved their town amidst an ever changing landscape of fortunes lost and gained.”
Now, we stroll around the town looking for some of the sights she pointed out, like the town’s last brothel, a mining museum, a silver shop, before we join the Sierra Silver Mine Tour that Discovery has arranged for us. It begins with a delightful narrated tour of Wallace in an open-air trolley that takes us up to the mine.
Who knew that Wallace was the “Silver Capital of the World” – some $138 billion worth taken out of these mines –$20 billion of metals just last year (did I hear that right?) – 1 million ounces of silver. In the 1960s, incredulously, Wallace was the “richest little city” in America with the highest number of millionaires per capita, as well as a thriving brothel industry. (The last running bordello was shut down in 1989 when the FBI raided tax dodgers – there is still resentment in the town – but you can visit the Bordello Museum.)
When mining began in 1886, Wallace’s population was 500; at its peak, in 1940, when some 200 mines were operating (quartz, gold, silver, copper, zinc), the population peaked at 4000, but, with the collapse of silver prices in March 1980, most of the mines closed, the miners left and the population fell to the present number of 800. Today, there are still four active silver mines, including the Lucky Friday and the Galina mines, and one gold mine.
In 1890, a chimney fire destroyed most of the town – the buildings we see today date from 1890-1920. Indeed, Wallace has the rare honor of the entire town being listed on the National Register of Historical Places.
Other tidbits: only one sitting president has visited Wallace: Theodore Roosevelt came in 1903 on a campaign whistle stop; the town spent $5000 just on flags to welcome him. There was a shootout on Valentine’s Day, 1951 – one of the tommy guns is on display in the museum. And Wallace’s most famous native is Lana Turner went one day to a grocery store where she was discovered.
You would be forgiven if you thought Wallace was a theme park creation (the 1997 movie “Dante’s Peak” was filmed here), but the history and the heritage are real, as is the miner, “Fast Freddie,” who is our guide into the silver mine.
“Fast Freddie” is a colorful character (he looks as if he came from Hollywood casting), with a marvelous sense of humor, amusing and engaging, but most important, he is authentic, speaking of his own experience working 21 years underground in these mines. “You need a good sense of humor in a mine,” Freddie tells us. “We used to play tricks.”
This mine was only briefly used, he says, because the silver was very low grade and not worth the expense. It was turned into a mining school, where students learned the techniques of mining and could be hired right into a job.
After the collapse of the silver market and the closure of mines, Wallace looked to tourism to compensate. This mine was turned into an attraction, getting as many as 18,000 visitors a year.
As we enter the mine and pass a skeleton sitting on a chair, Freddie tells us that one of the worst mining disasters in history took place on May 2, 1972 when 91 miners lost lives and just 2 survived. ‘It took 2 weeks to recover all of them. They didn’t have a system to know who was down there.’ After that, the Mine Safety Administration mandated a tag system – larger mines have more sophisticated program.
We actually see a canary cage – used to let the miners know when oxygen is low (the proverbial “canary in a coal mine.”)
In this mine, future miners were taught to run the jack, the drill, and to blast. The miners work alone at different levels, so each one has to do everything – digging, setting the dynamite charge, moving out the ore. “You have to get everything done so you can blast before the next shift arrives.”
The veins of silver go down for miles – in 1964, they were mining at 250 feet. The Lucky Friday Mine, the largest in the area, is operating at 9600 feet below ground. The deeper they go, the hotter it gets – at 9,000 ft, as much as 170 degrees – so they designed a refrigerated ventilation system to cool to 100 degrees.
After being returned by the trolley, we have time to wander around Wallace before biking back on the trail on our own to the Silver Mine Resort.
Wallace is really interesting – like a time warp and not really just “tourist quaint”, quirky and fun. Just strolling around, you find the Wallace District Mining Museum, the Idaho Silver Shop, Northern Railroad Depot Museum, and everyone’s favorite, the Oasis Bordello Museum.
These folks in Wallace have a sense of humor – and an eye for a profit-making tourism-promoting gimmick: they designated a manhole at the crossroads in the middle of town as the “Center of the Universe” (that’s what is engraved on it). Based on what? “What’s the evidence that it isn’t?” comes the reply.
I find a shop that sells guns, antiques, curios, and collectibles. In a glass cabinet is a large mummified “mermaid” (calling to mind a similar fantastical creature displayed in a store in Banff, Canada, and P.T. Barnum’s museum of oddities).
It’s a delightful bike ride from Wallace to the Silver Mountain Resort in Kellogg, where later we have dinner together in the mountain village base.
DAY 5: 39 or 46 miles, Cataldo Mission and the Coeur d’Alenes
The plan on Day 5 is to set out from the Silver Mountain Resort biking on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, and after 11 miles or so, to visit the Cataldo Mission, Idaho’s oldest standing building, lunch at the Rodehouse before continuing biking, with a choice of 39 or 46 miles of cycling to Harrison, where we are to be shuttled back to the resort for a celebratory dinner in Kellogg for our last night together.
But it is a drenching rain.
Our guide, Calista Phillips, says “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing” and says her job is to cheer lead for biking, but if we don’t want to, we can choose to shuttle the first 11 miles instead of bike to the Cataldo Mission. After assuring us we won’t be missing much in the way of scenery and that the portion from Cataldo to Smelterville is the pretty part, we vote to take her up on her offer to drive us to the Mission. (I’m just so grateful it wasn’t raining like this when we did the Route of the Hiawatha, especially when I see another bike tour heading out there this morning.)
The visit at the Cataldo Mission starts with an excellent video that explains how the local tribe invited the Jesuits (“Black Robes”) to come here and build the mission. At the time, the introduction of the horse meant that tribes that had coexisted in their own land before, began to encroach on each other’s territory. The tribe believed that the “Black Robe” missionaries had a superior power, a Great Spirit, who would enable them to triumph over their enemies.
The Mission of the Sacred Art was built in 1850-1853, by Father Pierre Jean De Smet, chief of the “Black Robes” who answered the tribe’s invitation to come, along with Father Ravalli, an Italian-born religious leader who designed the building and supervised construction with simple tools and without nails.
The Old Mission church is simple and beautiful – the wood-beamed ceiling painted blue with huckleberries, to make the native people more comfortable since they were used to praying outside. We learn that the walls were decorated with fabric bought from the Hudson Bay Company and a hand-painted newspaper from Philadelphia that Fr. Ravalli had received in the mail. Tin cans were used to create the chandeliers. Both wooden statues were carved by Fr. Rivalli with a knife to look like marble.
What I find most fascinating, though, is the museum there that better represents the tribe’s point of view – how they were initially drawn to Christianity with its values of “comfort, community” the sense of miraculous to be found in nature, and a Great Spirit with power to grant protection, like their own spirits, which seemed (at first) to conform with their own values and beliefs.
The Coeur d’Alene people – the Schitsu’umsh, meaning “Those who were found here” or “The discovered people” – were initially drawn in because the early Jesuits were tolerant of native culture and traditions, even blending the cultures together.
The mission became a stop and supply station for traders, settlers, and miners traveling on the Mullan Road, and a port for boats heading up the Coeur d’Alene River.
Over time, the Coeur d’Alene people regretted the decision to give the Black Robes a stronghold when they realized the Jesuits’ mission was to create an Empire of Christianity. At the same time, white settlers looking to exploit the region’s resources, who brought guns and small pox, were taking territory and pushing out the indigenous tribes. In 1877, even the mission was forcibly relocated from the ‘House of the Great Spirit.”
The museum displays photos and artifacts that show the effort to Christianize and eradicate native heritage and culture – but done in an understated, polite way since this museum, is apparently a partnership between the tribe and the mission. (The Cataldo Mission became a state historic park in 1935, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.)
We have lunch at the Rodehouse, right across the road from the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. By this time, the rain has all but ended – it is grey and humid – and we get back on the trail for the 16-mile ride back to the resort. The cloud formations make for dramatic scenes.
We cycle along an enchanting stretch of wetlands – part of the trail is a berm with marsh on either side. We have been told “just after Metamonk Village (mile 20) to be on lookout for moose.
I spot an osprey with fish in its claws so heavy it couldn’t take flight so dropped it; a black furry creature (otter? muskrat?) carrying what looked like a mouse dashes across the path; a flock of blue heron, a family of deer, and finally, when we are almost at the end of the trail, we come upon a moose with her baby.
DAY 6: 16 miles to the end of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes
Day 6 is our final day of riding. We pack up our luggage, have breakfast, and shuttle to Harrison, the point on the trail where we ended yesterday’s ride. Today, we bike the last section, 16 miles, through a series of chained lakes to the end of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. It is glorious.
It’s a perfect day – sunshine, cool temp (60 degrees), a bit of a headwind. We ride along the Lake Coeur d’Alene, then cross over the Chatcolet Bridge, a really interesting bridge which was once a swinging trestle (the challenge is to ride over the hump), then into the forest where we climb for about seven miles, through the Coeur D’Alene reservation, to finish at the trail’s end, at a moving Indian Warriors and Veterans Memorial.
Here we have a picnic lunch, feeling extremely satisfied and happy, before we pack into the van again for an hour-drive back at Spokane Airport or downtown.
Discovery Bicycle Tours has just joined Austin Adventures, a Montana-based North America National Parks small group tour company, under the umbrella ownership of Active Adventures, a New Zealand-based small group adventure travel company. These companies primarily offer hiking and multi-sport options, and just like Discovery Bicycle Tours, focus on small groups (averaging 12 guests).
Austin Adventures is a Montana-based North American National Parks expert offering small group tours with personal touches, flexible options to do as much or as little as you want, and “wow” moments. Austin Adventures also specializes in family and multi-generational tours across North America and around the globe.
Active Adventures, based in New Zealand, has expanded over the past 30 years to South and Central America, Europe, the Himalayas and Africa. They offer small group, inspiring bucket-list adventures worldwide, with a mix of activities ranging from hiking, biking, and kayaking to snorkeling and caving. Each trip is designed to be flexible, so if you’re a little short on time or you’d prefer to skip an activity, they can alter the itinerary to suit you.
The merger means that the teams behind Discovery Bicycle Tours, Active Adventures, and Austin Adventures are located around the world in five countries, 15 cities, and even a campervan.
“Across the three brands, we’ve been running tours in North America for 77 years, Europe for 50 years, New Zealand for 25 years, South and Central America for 20 years, the Himalayas for 14 years, and Africa for five years. That’s a world of knowledgeand deep local experience across our brands,” Scott Cone, Discovery’s owner, stated.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
Nothing puts you as instantly into the story of Spokane, Washington as a stay at the grand, historic Hotel Davenport.
For the past 110 years – except for the 15 years it was boarded up with a wrecking ball looming – the Davenport has been at the center of Spokane’s society. Staying here puts you into that story – most remarkably when you see the black-and-white photographs on the wall and see the rooms just as they were, easily imagining the people filling them just as then.
Since the Davenport opened in 1914, it has been known as Spokane’s “living room” and folks would make their date to “meet me at the fireplace.” Today, it is even more than that – it is like someone who has been listening and watching all these things unfold over the past 110 years and is so anxious to share.
Louis Davenport who built this grand hotel had been operating a hugely successful restaurant with a grand ballroom at a time when the number of business travelers and salesmen coming through the Spokane transit hub on the Great Northern Railway was burgeoning. Davenport was approached by local investors to build a hotel that would cater to the growing demand.
Considering Davenport’s humble beginnings (he is a classic incarnation of the American Dream), he was surprisingly sophisticated in wanting his hotel to not only give visitors the feeling of making a Grand Tour through Europe, but with state-of-the- art construction and the most modern amenities.
The Davenport was the first hotel in the country with air conditioning, a central vacuum system, ice cold drinking water piped to each guest room, housekeeping carts and accordion ballroom doors, Marshall Taylor, the Davenport’s Guest Experience Manager, tells me on a grand tour of the hotel. Davenport used steel-reinforced concrete for his building material and imported artisans to make the pillars look like veined-marble and the cast plaster beams to look like wood with gilded reliefs. Indeed, this is how the structure, even after being closed for more than 15 years, could be restored, albeit at the cost of millions, to its former grandeur. (Guest rooms were in fact gutted and rebuilt and redesigned to appeal to modern guests/meet modern standards).
Davenport hired architect Kirtland Cutter who had become Spokane’s most prominent architect after the Great Fire of 1889 destroyed most of the downtown, responsible for so many of the city’s iconic mansion homes (I later see the magnificent Campbell House), buildings and bridges (including the majestic Monroe Street bridge) to design the Davenport Hotel to bring the world to Spokane. The lobby is in the Spanish Renaissance style, with utterly stunning beams and a skylight that in fact is lighted by sunlight (they had to put black tar on it during WWII because of the proximity to Fairchild Air Force Base; it was cleaned up during the restoration.)
The Isabella Ballroom, named for Queen Isabella, was originally the hotel’s dining room is in the the Spanish Renaissance style of northern Spain.
The Marie Antoinette Ballroom is in French Neo-Classical design (Mrs. Davenport’s favorite room in the hotel) – the crystal chandeliers are original, each costing $10,000 (more than the cost of a family home at the time). You can still feel what it was like to dance on the original floating dance floor, suspended on cables so dancers could been light on their feet. There is a photo of the ballroom on opening night in 1914. Women used to gather on the balcony and if they spotted a fellow they liked, might drop a glove that the fellow would return and ask for a dance. Originally there was a door that led to salesmen’s rooms, where they would conduct mini-trade shows to show off their wares.
The Elizabethan Room is in English Tudor-style, possibly the first hotel ballroom in the world to employ folding panel doors to divide one large room into several smaller rooms (the original panel doors are still used). The chandeliers are original, each made with 75 pounds of sterling silver. A few of the hotel’s original 405 telephones are along the base of the window wall.
The Grand Pennington Ballroom evokes Imperial Russia. This room was created during the renovation and named for the Pennington Hotel that once occupied the site. New chandeliers are from Spain, carpeting from England.
The Hall of Doges, designed by Cutter, is almost mythical in its beauty – it literally takes your breath away – you feel you have been transported to Venice. Spokane’s oldest ballroom, the Davenport boasts it is the only “flying ballroom” in the world. Indeed, the room was originally above Davenport’s restaurant in 1904, the year Cutter converted the red brick façade of the restaurant into a Spanish mission design, and a decade before the hotel opened. At the time, it was the largest and grandest ballroom in the West (you can well believe the hyperbole), built at a cost of $30,000. Cutter took as his inspiration the Palaces of the Doges in Venice. But in the 2000 renovation, the entire Hall of the Doges was removed intact by a crane and placed inside the newly constructed east wing of the hotel (the original restaurant was completely removed and now serves as the carport). There is actually a photo of the ballroom “flying” in the air.
The Peacock Lounge with its magnificent stained glass ceiling of some 5,000 pieces, has a décor and ambiance that exudes the flamboyance of the Jazz Age. With the Davenport in the center of Spokane’s downtown entertainment district, the Peacock Lounge the place for pre-and post-show libations (check out the award-winning double martinis and custom cocktails). (Open seating, first-come, first-served).
The fireplace in the lobby restaurant, which Davenport insisted upon as a symbol of hospitality, was first lit by architect Cutter in September 1914 and, as Davenport decreed, remains lit each and every day, even in summer. “Meet me by the fireplace” was a popular expression among the locals.
For the restoration, they were able to preserve the exquisite woodwork and detail, copying what needed to be replaced. Taylor points me to a bit of wood molding where if you look closely, you can see where the words are scrawled, Will…..You….Marry….Me…stretched out on the wood trim.
It is legend about how it got there (encouraged by the hotel, no doubt), but most believable is that during the 2000-2 restoration, the restorer fell in love with a woman who worked in the banquet department and he embedded the words to propose. “It has become the popular place for proposals,” Taylor relates.
I love exploring this place – there is so much to see, discover and marvel at, especially with the wonderful ways the hotel showcases its history and heritage just about everywhere you look.
To say the Davenport is grand would be an understatement – the hotel has hosted almost every US president of the 20th century as well as a few royals.
Spokane has always been a hub for culture and entertainment, as much as for business and commerce as well as for the entertainers and audience-goers – Mary Pickford, Tyrone Power, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Bob Hope, Will Rogers, John Philip Sousa and Elvis Presley. and that tradition continues today with more recent celebs – Cher, Neil Diamond, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Seinfeld and Sting because Spokane is still a cultural hub, which you see when you cross the street..
Most notably, though is Bing Crosby – the illustrious singer and movie star. He was born in Spokane (you can visit his childhood home on the campus of Gonzaga University. But before Crosby was so established as a singer, the young Harry “Bing” Crosby was the drummer for a local band called the Musicaladars that played on the KHQ radio station. KHQ, one of the first commercial radio stations in the Pacific, first went on the air in Seattle in 1922 and moved to Spokane to broadcast from the Davenport Hotel’s roof tower in 1925. The station featured local bands like Brill’s Orchestra and The Musicaladers. Crosby was featured on a radio interview, which led to him getting his national contract, Taylor relates, and the rest, as they say, is history. There is a marvelous display about Bing Crosby in a china cabinet on the mezzanine floor. (A theater named for him is right outside.)
Bing Crosby’s story is wonderful, but I am most fascinated with Louis Davenport, who epitomizes America’s self-made man.
Taylor tells me that Louis Davenport came to Spokane in 1889 when he was about 20 years old, to help his uncle, Elijah Davenport, with his restaurant. His uncle’s restaurant burned down in 1889 with the Great Fire that destroyed most of the downtown.
“Louie went into the rubble and found a waffle iron. He built a temporary shop with a wood frame and canvas cover and used that waffle iron to sell waffles to the workmen clearing the debris. He opened his own restaurant in one year.”
With the rail line, Spokane had become a hub and a crossroads for commerce. Davenport’s restaurant was so successful, that Spokane’s founding fathers approached him to build a hotel to accommodate the business meetings of salespeople coming from Montana, Idaho, north and west, selling silver and gems from the Idaho mines, fish, seafood, lumber. They needed a hotel with a large meeting space – the closest other business hotel would have been the eight-story-high Empress Hotel in Victoria, Canada, built in 1908 with only one ballroom.
The Davenport, at 14 stories, was the tallest building in Spokane until The Paulson was built in the 1920s.
You can see from the photos on the wall that the Davenport was a locus for history. The most profound photo is of the first American Indian Congress, in 1925, a gathering of the indigenous tribes in the Davenport ballroom that followed the 1924 passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. (I see the photo in an exhibit, 1924: Sovereignty, Leadership, and the Indian Citizenship Act, at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture).
The Davenport operated through the Great Depression and World War II. Louis Davenport sold the hotel in 1945 and died in 1951. The hotel changed hands several times, and when it finally closed in 1985, was in disrepair. At one point, the city wanted to demolish it and put up a proverbial parking lot. But the cost of asbestos abatement would have been ruinous.
Local entrepreneurs Walt and Karen Worthy came to the rescue. They spent two years and millions of dollars to restore the Davenport to its grandeur (the guest floors and service areas are new). The Davenport reopened in the summer of 2002 with stunning amenities including a gorgeous pool and a luxurious spa.
The restoration was really a labor of love – and we get to appreciate the extraordinary artisanry of Melvin Holmes, the main restorer. His wife, Janice Holmes, was passionate about the restoration, especially the Marie Antoinette ballroom, where she scraped off layers of whitewash to find the original colors underneath – salmon, teal – and insisted it be restored to the original. Today it is absolutely magnificent (not gaudy) – with the soft salmon and delicate mint green, and gilding that does not overwhelm. She passed away before the project was completed so her husband, Melvin, painted a portrait of her in 1930s mid-century modern dress, which is on the balcony.
Now owned by KSL Capital Partners (which owns the Alterra Mountain Company and Ikon Pass), there are five hotels in the Davenport Hotel Collection here in Spokane – each with a different theme, spirit, ambiance and vibe: Besides the Historic Davenport (Old World elegance), there is the Grand, which opened 2015 with a modern, Vegas style; the Tower, built in 2007 which has a safari theme; and the Centennial, which is a convention hotel.
The fifth property, the Lusso (a boutique hotel across the street from the Davenport, where Louis Davenport, himself, used to live, which was acquired in 2009 and has an Italian theme), has since been entirely renovated and renamed, and reopening in March as
The Louie at Davenport Hotel, a 48-key boutique property offering personalized luxury including Butler Service (the first and only offering of this kind in Spokane).
I love that The Davenport is walking (or biking) distance to most of what I want to see (especially just a few blocks from Riverfront Park, where I find myself at least twice a day, and where you will find America’s largest urban waterfall), making for an ideal base for exploring the city’s hot culinary scene, nature and cultural offerings, like the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, and the riverfront Centennial Trail. What isn’t in walking distance is easily accessed by a superb public transit system not more than a block away, which provides frequent service to take you everywhere else (including the airport, just about 20 minutes away) for a $2 fare (the return is free within two hours).
And so I immediately go off to explore. My first stop is by bus: the magnificent Manito Park, where I discover a fountain in its formal garden was donated by Louis Davenport.
The 284-room Historic Davenport Hotel, offers electric car charging, convenience store, hair salon, indoor swimming pool, wedding services, concierge service, three restaurants, two bars/lounges, 18 meeting rooms, conference space, self- and valet parking, full-service spa, 24-hour fitness facilities, steam room, hot tub, disability accommodations, sustainability programs and is a member of the Marriott Autograph Collection (and Marriott Bonvoy loyalty)
The Historic Davenport Hotel, 10 S Post Street, Spokane, WA 99201, DavenportHotelCollection.com, 509-455-8888, 866-238-1697.
