Hal Jespersen’s European Barge Trip, May 2026 [Part 1]

These are my (Hal’s) notes on my trip from Amsterdam to Paris on the luxury canal barge Aurora, arranged through the Hotels Afloat agency. Nancy and I were originally scheduled to take this trip together, but she decided to send me alone while she dealt with some lingering health issues at home. My companions are our long-time travel friends from Cincinnati, Ray and Pat.

Since this is a lengthy report with lots of photos (iPhone 17 Pro Max), I have broken it into four parts:

Thursday/Friday, May 7/8 — to Amsterdam

I flew on United Airlines direct from San Francisco (SFO) to Schiphol (AMS), scheduled to depart early afternoon on Thursday and arriving mid-morning on Friday. However, plans went awry. The 777-200 had what they called minor maintenance issues, and we spent over four hours taxiing back and forth to the gate to get things fixed. The fixes didn’t work in the end, so we were rescheduled for 12:25 a.m. on a new plane with a new crew, almost a ten-hour delay. (United soon gifted me 25,000 mileage points as an apology.)

I had plans to visit the nearby town of Haarlem Friday afternoon and meet our friends for dinner at a well-known pizzeria, Piccolo Forno, but the delayed schedule got me to Amsterdam way too late, after 9. Ray reported on Facebook that the pizza was excellent, which really burned my bacon. After navigating a brief couple of lines through the new not-fully-working European Entry/Exit System at Schiphol—much shorter than the wait in baggage claim—I Ubered downtown. The hike to the pickup point from baggage claim is at least a kilometer. For the next two nights, I am a guest of the Hotel Esthéréa, a seventeenth-century building that is small and quirky but charming and comfortable. It’s directly overlooking the Singel canal, the city’s oldest and widest.

I wandered around a bit through the Friday evening merry crowds and passed by the famous Dam Square, dominated by the Nationaal Monument op de Dam, unveiled in 1956 to commemorate the victims of World War II. I had a very light dinner at a small restaurant that specialized in hamburgers, but instead I had bitterballen, a local specialty of gooey meatballs, heavily deep-fried into a hard crust. Super hot inside, served with mustard. As I continued my quest for non-alcoholic beers, I drank a local brew called Affligem Blonde 0.0, which was quite good.

Saturday, May 9 — Amsterdam Food Tour

A beautiful day, sunny in the low sixties. There are lots of bakeries and cafes about. I had a Dutch pancake with bacon and cheese at “The Happy Pig.” I met up with our friends, who are staying at an Airbnb apartment outside the central tourist area that my hotel is in. We took a food tour offered by the company Secret Food Tours, which I have enjoyed in the past. Our tour guide was a young Italian man named Lorenzo who commanded perfect English, although he was rather soft-spoken. We made a number of stops. First was “’t Westerhuys,” a cafe in which we had Poffertjes, the famous Dutch mini pancakes, just a little bit bigger than a silver dollar. We walked by the Lindengracht (Linden Canal) market and Lorenzo told us an interesting story about an old contest in which men tried to jump and grab an eel hung by a rope high above the canal; because of concerns about eel cruelty, this celebration was eventually replaced by the current King’s Day, which is the most famous holiday in the Netherlands.

At a shop called JWO Lekkernijen, we got to sample four different varieties of local cheese. We walked through an area called Willemsstraat, which was a former slum but is now gentrified. We crossed the Brewers Canal and saw commercial buildings that are now primarily residential. Some have large statues or icons on top to denote what the original commercial purpose was. At a fishmonger called Vishandel, we sampled raw herring and a lightly fried cod called kibbeling. The latter was excellent, better than traditional English fish and chips. At a sandwich shop named Comestibles Kinders, we had a half sandwich called a Broodje Halfom, a popular street food of Jewish origin traditionally containing equal parts pickled/smoked beef (pekelvlees) and cooked veal liver (lever) on a soft white roll.

At Blauwe Pan we had a decent fresh apple pie. Finally, we stopped at a wine and liquor store where the very enthusiastic owner conducted a tasting of jenever, a forerunner of gin. It is made by distilling malt with juniper berries. I got to smell it, but I do not partake in alcohol any longer. Other people on the tour said it tasted very good, although none of us bought any.

I walked back to Dam Square to get a daylight photograph of the war monument, but the place was crawling with competing political protests, one anti-Israel, the other anti-Russian. After some afternoon chilling time, my friends and I went to dinner at the restaurant Jansz, which happens to be in the Pulitzer Hotel, the one Nancy and I stayed in at the end of our Christmas market cruise in 2024. Very nice meal. For dessert, I found a Stroopwafel shop called Melly’s and had one made fresh and warm, coated with pistachios and chocolate. This was not your typical small United Airlines snack Stroopwafel, but one the size of a salad plate. Quite yummy.

Sunday, May 10 — Embarking Aurora

Breakfast in the hotel followed by a short walk to the Grachtenmuseum (Museum of the Canals), recommended by Ray. It’s quite an interesting museum, which covers the initial layout of the city and its defenses, the expansion of the canal network, the construction of the houses along the banks of the canal, and modern developments. All of the presentations are done in quite modern multimedia style, and it was entertaining as well as informative.

After a long walk around the city at random, I met Ray and Pat at my hotel, and we were picked up in a van by André, the driver (and, it turned out, the sommelier) for the Aurora barge. We met the other two passengers, Gary and Eve from St. Louis. They had taken a previous sailing—a different, shorter itinerary—and were warmly welcomed by the crew when we arrived at the ship near Rotterdam, a neighborhood called Coolhaven. There are four cabins on the boat but one is unoccupied for this sailing. Our captain and also the chef is an affable Kiwi named Steve. (He calls Aurora a ship because it occasionally ventures a bit outside inland waterways, but that challenges the traditional distinction of boat vs. ship and I won’t hear of it.) His Slovakian wife Karina is first mate with a wide portfolio of responsibilities that span the galley, deckhand, and tour guide duties. The crew is rounded out by a young American, Karolina, and a very chill Golden Retriever named Faye.

We had an introductory talk with champagne and hors d’oeuvres. I was pleased that a non-alcoholic sparkling wine was offered to me, and Steve said they had a number of different NA beers and wines available for the next two weeks; he has also reached the age in life at which he is eschewing alcohol. I selected a cabin, which is quite spacious and very comfortable, and unpacked everything for the two-week sailing. I logged into the Starlink-provided Wi-Fi, getting about 40 Mb/s download. Then we hopped in the van. The other four passengers went to see a large windmill (with a still-operating mill) and some of downtown Rotterdam, but I was offered the opportunity to visit the local World War II museum, so I jumped at that.

The museum is rather small but very well done. It is focused on the artifacts collected by a man named Arie Mast, who was a child during the bombing and subsequent occupation of the city. There is a large section recounting the history of the city during the war, which is written in Dutch, but I was given an English translation pamphlet to carry with me. There is also a multimedia presentation about the bombing, which had an emotional impact.

Rotterdam had a pretty sorry history during the war, hugely damaged by the bombings in May 1940, then there were the persecutions and killings of the Jews, lots of privations, and near starvation toward the end. When I walked back to the boat, I had a brief conversation with Steve, who was also interested in World War II history. In a previous life, he was a fighter pilot for the New Zealand Air Force.

The group met for informal cocktails and then had a very nice dinner starting at 7 p.m. I do not intend to chronicle all of the meals that we ingested over two weeks, course by course. I’ll just say that the cooking and service were excellent and emphasized locally sourced ingredients.

Monday, May 11 — Rotterdam to Willemstad

The beautiful Amsterdam weather has disappeared, and today is chilly and overcast. A few very short rain showers occurred later in the day. After a nice breakfast, we got underway, transiting through a lock to the Nieuwe Maas (aka Meuse) River. Although we expect to see many locks on our journey, this first transit really caught our attention. (It looked like only about a ten-foot elevation boost.) We went through busy Rotterdam harbor and admired the skyscrapers that have grown on ground totally obliterated by the Germans in 1940 (and the Allies for the rest of the war). There is an interesting bridge called Erasmusbrug, known as the Swan Bridge. We also passed by a large replica of Noah’s Ark, a failed tourist attraction. Then we turned south on the Noord River.

Our first stop was the city of Dordrecht, the oldest in Holland. (NB: the terms Holland and the Netherlands do not refer to identical areas; look it up for extra credit.) I had visited here in December 2024 on a Viking river cruise, but we docked in a different location this time, and the tour we took then covered completely different areas of the city. André drove us by van to the visitor center, and in the meantime, Steve piloted Aurora over rough waters to reach our second stop of the day. Our excellent tour guide was a man named Kees. We examined some buildings that had a common facade style made from bricks, which is unique to this one city in the Netherlands. We visited two old folks’ homes, which were interesting because they consisted of large courtyards surrounded by small apartments, and the courtyards had beautiful trees and gardens. Very restful.

We saw a statue of William of Orange, who was the primary figure in the revolution against Spanish rule. We visited both the Old and New Harbor areas and admired a number of the modest yachts parked there. In [Ary] Scheffer Square, we discussed this famous artist who was one of the inspirations for Vincent van Gogh. Just down the street was a house where van Gogh stayed for about six months before he decided to become an artist. Also nearby was a church where he was an assistant preacher and practiced giving sermons, but was encouraged by parishioners not to follow that profession. We passed by the Old City Hall, which impressed me with its beautiful lion statues out front. Our final stop was outside the Great Church of Our Lady (Grote Kerk of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk), a large Gothic structure from the thirteenth century.

André picked us up at the church and drove us to the small town of Willemstad (which is also the name of the main city in Curaçao). Just as we pulled into the parking lot, Aurora appeared, fighting strong winds and whitecapped waves. It was impressive to see the nautical skill required to ease it eventually to the pier. We took an unguided walk around the town, which struck me as being impeccably manicured, almost like a Dutch city by Disney’s EPCOT. The town is laid out in a very large star-shaped fortress arrangement, surrounded by moats. However, there wasn’t really very much to see other than an operating windmill, and the windy weather made it too cold to hang around idly.

Tuesday, May 12 — Antwerp

An early start under cloudy skies, beginning a lengthy trek to Antwerp. Leaving Willemstad, we transited the Volkerak locks, the largest and busiest inland navigation lock complex in Europe, connecting two significant water bodies in the Rhine-Maas-Scheldt delta region of the southwestern Netherlands. To the north lies the Hollandsch Diep, a broad tidal inlet and estuary—essentially the merged outflow of the Maas (Meuse) and Waal rivers flowing westward toward the North Sea. To the south lies the Volkerak, a former tidal estuary closed off by the Volkerak Dam in 1969, which converted it into a controlled freshwater lake connecting southward toward the Belgian waterway network. Unlike the Panama Canal, which lifts ships 26 meters over terrain, the Volkerak locks manage a tidal differential rather than a fixed elevation change: the Hollandsch Diep remains tidal, rising and falling with the North Sea, while the Volkerak is held at a stable freshwater level, resulting in a typical lock differential of only one to two and a half meters.

In the Volkerak, we shared the waterway with numerous large cargo ships all moving faster than we could. We turned into the narrow Scheldt-Rhine Canal (Schelde-Rijnkanaal) and headed south. We passed by some bird sanctuaries and saw swans, loons, and goose families. The canal temporarily opened wider as we traveled next to a freshwater lake called Zoom Lake (Zoommeer), just behind the Oesterdam. The giant Kreekrak locks were next. They separate the freshwater of the lake from the saltwater in the Scheldt-Rhine Canal. We were faced with an excessively long wait because one of the locks was broken, so André brought up the van and we scrambled from the roof of the boat, traversing a narrow wooden beam, to the shore and drove to Antwerp.

On the way, the Inland Waterways building offers an interesting study in architectural contrast, its contemporary addition like a giant diamond sitting atop older stonework in a combination that looks really bizarre. Downtown, a lady named Shabnam led us on a walking tour and displayed a solid knowledge of the city’s history with a number of historical asides that made it very interesting. Our first stop, Het Steen, is the city’s oldest surviving building, a squat medieval fortress on the Scheldt waterfront. Outside stands Lange Wapper, a large bronze figure from Flemish folklore—a shape-shifting giant said to attack drunken residents traveling from the waterfront—rendered here in a posture that manages to be both comic and unsettling. Throughout the town, the residents mounted hundreds of statues of the Madonna and baby Jesus to ward off the Wapper.

One of the guild houses near the harbor belonged to the butchers, its façade built in alternating red and white brick—a pattern the locals call the bacon style. The building now houses a collection of musical instruments. Napoleon ordered the city’s medieval canals bricked over, and they still run beneath the streets. An underground tour takes visitors through the vaulted passages.

The Grote Markt was the site of the Spanish Fury of 1576, when mutinous Spanish troops killed several thousand citizens in what proved a turning point in the city’s decline as a commercial power. The square’s Brabo Fountain, cast in 1887 by sculptor Jef Lambeaux, depicts the legendary Silvius Brabo flinging the severed hand of the giant Druon Antigoon into the Scheldt—the story that is said, somewhat fancifully, to explain the city’s name, and hand symbols appear commonly everywhere. The market is surrounded by numerous handsome buildings from the Renaissance. My friend Ray remarked that walking through these streets was like visiting a real medieval city.

The St. Charles Borromeo Church (Sint-Carolus Borromeuskerk) was completed by the Jesuits in 1621, and Peter Paul Rubens supplied 39 ceiling paintings for the interior. A lightning-caused fire in 1718 destroyed all of them, leaving the church as an elegant but somewhat melancholy reminder of what was lost.

The Cathedral of Our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) is the largest Gothic church in Belgium and hosts four Rubens paintings, among them The Descent from the Cross. Only one of its two planned towers was ever completed; that tower is owned by the city rather than the church, an arrangement dating back to the Napoleonic period. A poignant white marble monument of the boy Nello and his dog Patrasche from the now-obscure 1872 novel A Dog of Flanders stands nearby; the statue draws a steady stream of Japanese visitors for whom the story, popularized through anime, carries considerable emotional weight. Created by artist Batist “Tist” Vermeulen and inaugurated in 2016, it depicts the orphan boy and his dog from the 1872 novella sleeping under a cobblestone blanket. The story goes that both the orphan boy and his loyal dog froze to death, mistakenly locked in the cathedral over Christmas.

The restaurant district nearby offers a wide range of attractive options. I cut short my hour-long visit to the cathedral and went to the House of Waffles, recommended by Shabnam, where I had a delicious Brussels-style Belgian waffle and a hot chocolate. (In retrospect, I should have ordered the darker Liège style.) André picked us up in the van, and we headed downriver to meet Steve and Aurora. She had to wait five hours to get through the lock. Back on board, we sailed about an hour through the immense, labyrinthine port of Antwerp, having no problems navigating bridges and locks, and reached a calm enclave called Kattendijkdok where we docked for the night. Dinner featured Osso Buco, arguably the best I have consumed.

Go to Part 2.