KEUKENHOF AND THE GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

I'm now fully recovered after a ten-hour sleep, partly because I opted out of the Windmills of Lomderdijk tour because I already saw an ancient windmill at Keukenhof. Yesterday was just too much for an old man. But let me first quickly review our visit to Keukenhof Gardens, then move on to our Maritshuis Museum exhibition and gala dinner next door at a high end men's club.

I left you yesterday with a hodgepodge of photos from Keukenhof. Today, a more organized and limited summary.

The motor coach took us an hour to get to the gardens. I use motor coach because these buses we're the latest state-of-art vehicles. Really posh.
A couple of shots as we approached Keukenhof.

Is there such a thing as a BLACK tulip? The answer is that the Paul Sherer tulips can get very dark, but are not quite black.

Similarly, BLUE tulips do not exist. Nor blue or aqua orchids, Well this article hints that you can find blue orchids, though they are rare. Those that you see are dyed These here are artificial. Most of the orchids on this ship are plastic.

But all these tulips in this blog are indeed real.

Even azaleas.

The weather was overcast and blustery, making for a cold windchill day. However, now and then the sun shone. And no rain. Unitil, after five hours we went back to the bus, and as it was heading back to the ship, rain fell. After a two hour period of recovering, we again boarded the bus to the Mauritshuis Museum, where the gala dinner was schedule next door. These two buildings border the equivalent of Buckingham Palace in London. Noordeinde Palace is the official workplace of King Wilem Alexander and Queen Maxima since 2013.

The bus could not get close to the Palace, so we walked a bit to the museum.

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, or, simply, Erasmus, was born in 1466.

Was orphaned and impoverished in childhood because of the bubonic plague.
Became a prime influencer of European thought as a Dutch humanist, Catholic theologian, satirist and philosopher.
He wrote On Free Will, in counterpoint to Luther.
He owned this home we visited where the museum now rests, and the Girl,
He lived in the backdrop of the religious Reformation,
Is ranked #5 among the famous Dutch, with Van Gogh at #1, #2 Anne Frank, #3 Rembrandt, #4 soccer player Johan Cruyff, #6 Willem-Alexander, the current king and #8 Mata Hari.

So we entered Erasmus's museum, had a champagne recention and went to see the Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted by Johannes Vermeer in 1665.

Sold in poor condition in 1881 for a current worth of $25 or so. Made world tours, but is now supposedly permanently housed in the Mauritshuis Museum.

What is it worth today? Priceless.
You might have seen the 2004 film with Scarlett Johansson as that girl and Colin Firth as Vermeer. Cillian Murphy in in this movie.

As I took the above photo, I looked outside the window and saw this.

This face is everywhere, including on aprons and such.

Then on to dinner, where we were serenaded.

The meal was fine, but nothing special. I had a chicken truffles.

Finally got back to the ship near midnight. Went to sleep.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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