A Pilgrim-y Birthday for Mama

It was a lovely day in Leiden, where the gang took me to celebrate my birthday on Saturday.

Leiden is a university town, and it became so in the 1600's when it threw off Spanish rule. William Orange, boss of The Netherlands at this time, offered the town the choice of no taxes or the founding of a university.

Leiden residents opted for a university, which proved to be a smart decision because the town went on to become a renowned intellectual center.

Now, pretty please!  Hang with me here.  I've got a Colonial history alert!

The pilgrims who fled England, and then showed up on Plymouth Rock?

They hung out in Leiden between 1609-1620.

The Pilgrims took up temporary residence in Leiden because Holland was tolerant of most religions, and it gave them time to raise money and organize before setting sail for North America. But, guess what? When they took off from the harbor at Delfthaven, it turned out their ship was not seaworthy, so they swung by England again to jump on board another ship full of more pilgrims fleeing England.  The name of that ship? THE MAYFLOWER. Yup, many of the original settlers in New England first spent a decade in Holland.

The famous minister, Edward Winslow, who wrote the pamphlet telling the story of the first Thanksgiving? He was one of the folks who lived in Leiden before becoming a major leader and founder of the Plymouth Colony.

Food for thought, as Thanksgiving approaches. Oh, and fyi . . . no fewer than seven U.S. presidents are direct descendants of the Leiden pilgrims. No joke.

And here's another historical kicker: Rembrandt was born in Leiden. In 1606.  This would have made him an early teen while all those pilgrims were milling about. Interesting overlap, huh? Rembrandt eventually moved to Amsterdam when he was twenty-six, where, of course, he became kind of famous.  Then bankrupt.

Anyway.

It was a beautiful fall day on the canals.  Leiden is one of a handful of cities in The Netherlands built around a canal system, but it's much, much smaller than Amsterdam.  Very collegiate, with lots of trees and broad lanes. Cozy.

We had a fun sushi birthday picnic on the boat!  Thanks for the idea AKS!

There's actually quite a bit of documentation about the Pilgrims' time in Leiden, and this gentleman has made it his life's work to know every detail about this period.  He re-created a seventeenth-century interior, inside a fourteenth century house, with authentic, local, period pieces.

This teeny-tiny Pilgrim Museum is strange, but at the same time, strangely interesting.

The house was built in the 1300's for the clergy who tended to the neighboring church.  That's a portrait of Edward Winslow hanging in the photo above.

The chair in the photo below is 800 years old. The museum director let Reese sit in it.

  This processional banner is also 800 years old:

Here's the neighboring church.  It's not even the most important or architecturally grand cathedral in Leiden.  A & R sure look tiny.