From Paris we took a train up to Antwerp, Belgium to rejoin the ship.  The Antwerp station is one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen.  As you may have seen on the news, much of Europe was inundated with rain through the month of May.  Paris had a record month with almost 3 times the historical average rainfall.  We got lucky.  Paris weather was great, and Antwerp was even better.

We took a helicopter ride to get an overview of the city.  Outside of the “old town,” it seemed pretty industrial to us.  But we were docked at the edge of the historic area and enjoyed the architecture, the restaurants, the chocolate, and the beer! 

After Belgium, we stopped in Amsterdam, Netherlands for a couple of days. (I finally figured out that Holland is just a region of the Netherlands – I was always confused).  Since we’d been before, we went on a golf outing the first day, then went to the huge Royal Flower Auction the second day.

This is no ordinary auction.  It is, in fact, the world’s biggest flower market – they sell 20 million flowers every day!  It started as a little flower shop in 1911, but now is a fascinating complex that would cover 220 soccer fields.  A high degree of automation combines with 3000 employees moving racks of flowers through warehouses in what looks to be a chaotic fashion.  But if you watch the time-lapse video below, you’ll see that it’s more like a synchronized dance.  Direction comes from the “trading floor” where traders bid on each day’s crop of flowers.  While they used to all come from the region, this hub now handles flowers from many parts of the world – some just electronically, but most physically.

Fascinating!

Synchronized chaos (1 minute video):