20260329 Viking Vela Northern Lights and British Isles - Day 14/32

Viking Vela In Search of the Northern Lights and British Isles Explorer Cruise Day 14/32 – IJmuiden, Netherlands - Wind Turbines, Windmills, Tulip Farming

Tulips aren't natively Dutch, as they are originally from Türkiye

We slept in this morning, mainly due to the one-hour time change overnight. We barely made breakfast at the World Café before they closed at 10:00. They were hustling to get set up for a Reuben Sandwich at 11:00 so folks on excursions could get an early lunch. We figured that we would just skip lunch today.

We spotted these odd protrusions from the ocean on the sail into IJmuiden.

Arlona guessed that the yellow things might be bases for a wind farm

As we continued sailing, we saw this.

Arlona was right, given that we passed multiple wind farms as we continued toward IJmuiden

The Netherlands is betting heavily on wind power, both onshore and offshore

We entered the harbor, protected by a nice breakwall.

You can see another offshore wind farm in the distance

Multiple lighthouses greeted us at this industrial port

Onshore turbines

Our planned docking time was noon, and we arrived right on schedule. We went to the Star Theater at 12:30 for our tour departure. Today, we took the optional tour, Dutch Countryside & Tulip Farm. We boarded Bus 18 and left the port.

Leaving the cruise terminal

Our first glimpse of a non-turbine windmill

We passed huge fields of daffodils

More windmills

The top of the windmill can be manually turned to align the blades with the prevailing wind

More planted fields

Hervormde Kerk Avenhorn church and a quaint house next door

Hervormde Kerk Avenhorn church

Hervormde Kerk Avenhorn church

We saw lots of homes with these unusually trimmed trees

Many homes had thatched roofs

The houses are just so cute

More interesting trees

We arrived at the Pronk Tulip farm, family-owned since 1959

We toured the Pronk operation that produces over 23 million tulips annually. Most are used to produce more bulbs for resale as well as replanting. Flowers from other bulbs are harvested and bundled for auction and sale.

Trays of bulbs starting to sprout

This bulb had just sprouted

They are kept in temperature-controlled rooms until they are exposed to light and water

This was the end of this growing season - this room would normally be filled with trays, floor-to-ceiling

Robotic machines that place bulbs into growing trays

The immature bulbs are exposed to different wavelengths of LED light to promote growth

The greenhouse has two levels - more mature plants are on top and exposed to sunlight

A tray of young plants

So many tulips

As the trays of plants mature, they are automatically moved through the greenhouse to different stations for light and water - they grow in water without any dirt or chemicals

The thick leaves protect the flower

That white box hanging down is a climate sensor, monitoring and controlling temperature and humidity

Automated systems move large containers of trays of tulips along the growing path - this includes moving them upstairs after the LED light treatment, and back downstairs for harvesting

Plants nearly ready for harvesting

They grow multiple varieties of tulips

Inferior bulbs unsuitable for planting are discarded - local farmers grab the tractor and trailer full of them and use them for compost

Automated bundling machines that trim the bulb and bundle groups of ten stems

The stems are wrapped and packed for shipment to the auctions, where they are sold and distributed worldwide

These are shorter and lower-quality - white wrappers are used

The premium-quality stems are bundled and sold under a different brand name

We only saw the greenhouse operation. They also plant outdoors with high-tech systems for monitoring, quality control, and harvesting. It is quite an operation and is making the transition toward modern tulip farming quite successfully. It was really interesting hearing all the information from a Pronk family member, and you could really feel the passion that the family has for tulips.

On the way back to the ship, we made a brief photo stop at the Schemermolens Windmills.

We didn't get to tour the museum, as we only had a few minutes for photos

The weather had changed from sunny to overcast, cold, and quite windy

The wind affected Arlona's hair more than it did mine

So quintessentially Dutch

As we arrived at the port, we saw a group of what appeared to be reindeer

We arrived back at the Vela a little before 5:00. We got changed and went to the Explorers Bar for a cocktail and to watch the sail out. We departed promptly at 6:00, leaving the protection of the breakwall and heading into the rocky North Sea.

The crazy Dutch were taking advantage of the brisk wind, even with the chilly temperature, to windsurf and kite surf

Exiting the breakwall

We dined at Chef's Table tonight. Chef's Table has a fixed menu each night. Every three days, they change to a new menu. Tonight's menu was British.

We enjoyed dinner. Everything was quite good. We booked Chef's Table tomorrow night too. It will be a new menu, and I'll share that tomorrow.

After dinner, we went to Torshavn for a solo performance from one of the resident vocalists, Libby.

She is quite an accomplished singer at only 21 years old - we really enjoyed her performance

A highlight of the evening was seeing our friend, and incoming Cruise Director, Katy Syrett. We sailed with her in 2022 on our world cruise, and she is a wonderful person. We're excited to have her as our Cruise Director for this British Isles cruise.

So good to catch up with Katy

Tonight is the final night of the "In Search of the Northern Lights" cruise. Only 16 of us are continuing on for the "British Isles Explorer" cruise. That means luggage - a lot of it - in the hallway for delivery to the terminal tomorrow morning. Thankfully, we don't need to deal with that for a couple more weeks.

Bags waiting for pick-up

Tomorrow morning, we will dock in Tilbury, one of London's ports. We will need to leave the ship to go through immigration before 10:00 am. We may take a walk in the port. The weather will play a role in our decision.

Tonight, we received our excursion tickets for this next cruise. We also received new stateroom key cards. Tomorrow at 10:00 am, our new ones will become active. We've done back-to-back cruises before and haven't gotten new keys. Weird.

This has been a good cruise. We look forward to continuing on with another great experience traveling through the British Isles. We get the hour back tonight that we lost last night as we shift to London time, so we get a bonus hour of sleep tonight.