Friday, June 5, 2015
Clay woke me again leaving the room. It was 6am and
breakfast started today at 6:30am also I looked out and we were already in a
canal. I don’t know long we sailed due west before turning back east last
night. The good news is that the extra sailing time in the English Channel was
calm so no harm. We arrived on time and the ship cleared on time. I was a
little worried because I watched as we sailed past Central Station, past the
river boat dock and past the cruise terminal! We pulled into another channel
and it looked like we’d keep going but at some point we just spun around over
there and came back and docked on the port side.
It was very sunny and unseasonably hot at nearly 90F today
in Amsterdam. It was not a dry heat and was very sapping. Always something to
complain about I know, but it seems Europe skipped spring entirely and went
straight to summer.
So, since we had been here before we had planned to just
knock around and maybe revisit some museums. We had planned to use a shipboard
credit on the next cruise’s stop here to take a ship’s tour to Edam for cheese
and windmills. But, then a man on our Cruise Critic roll call asked for someone
to replace his travel companions today for $125 pp on a similar tour in a
private car. We stepped up. The driver/guide’s name was Stefka and her email is
info@hollandprivatetour.com.
The car was a Citroen Picasso. Three of us sat in the back and one up front
with her. It was a nice car with good visibility but it was not a roomy van. Our
first stop was Clara-Maria in Amstelveen. It was a family farm where they made
wooden clogs and cheese. It was interesting. I love to see things being made. They
only made Gouda cheese there. But they make it in a lot of flavors. We all liked
all the cheeses as well. We bought a small smoked one. All along the drive,
Stefka explained the pumping and dykes and dams and how the harvesting of peat
was how most of The Netherlands got below sea level in the first place. Polder
is what they call the low flat land that has been pumped dry. Again, it was all
interesting. Next stop was an old windmill at Etersheimrbraak. It was still
able to function, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t enough wind and there was an
electric pumping station at the other end of the field. We saw a lot of birds,
rabbits, cows and sheep this morning and the domesticated animals all day long.
At one point, we had to slam on brakes for a line of ducklings crossing the
road. The roads! They were supposedly 2-way, but were a single lane with a bike
lane on either side! Keep in mind there was usually water on one or both sides and
sometimes a lane of parked cars. It was crazy! We decided to skip a Dutch apple
pie and coffee stop here in lieu of lunch soon after. It seemed that we drove a
long time through the polder after that and looked at local styles of historic
architecture much with a roof of tile and thatch. The buildings reflected the local
farming history as well as the technique of building atop a former lake bed.
Everything was manmade and laid out in a grid and is a UNESCO world heritage
site. The area is the Beemster. They have their own cheese that tastes
different because the grass the cows eats is salty or something. We didn’t have
any cheese even though Clay thought he ordered a sandwich with some at lunch,
but the sandwich didn’t come with cheese and they told him he didn’t order it.
Oh well. He did get a local blonde beer. I got my Dutch ham & cheese
pancake. I also learned that the Dutch would still put sugar beet syrup on a
savory pancake. I never knew that before. I ate 2/3s without syrup and the last
1/3 with as dessert. Oh, we had lunch in the blazing sun for an hour of misery
at Wapen van Munster in De Rijp. After lunch, we walked around the immaculate
little historic town. It still has canals and a lock but they don’t really use
them anymore. It was originally a fishing village before the land was drained
and a dam was built and they couldn’t get to the sea anymore. After lunch we
went straight to Volendam and wandered. It was a seaside tourist town. It was
the first really crowded place we went. We were all exhausted and spent by
then. The hour long lunch in the blazing sun was clearly a mistake. After that we
drove through Broek in Waterland Noord. Then we drove right back into Central
Amsterdam and returned to the cruise terminal.
It looked like the cruise terminal was a nice building. It
looked like it must have had free Internet based on the number of people
sitting around in there when we returned.
We will just eat at Terrace tonight. We will not go to a
show. The show is Edward Garth again. Tomorrow we are in Bremerhaven, Germany
where we must not have any plans. We should be there from 10am to 9pm.
I don’t think I have mentioned the dramatically different
passenger demographic on this segment of the cruise from the past 2. We think
from the number of children aboard now that the average age must have just
dropped by about 20-30 years. It has been amazing. I guess it will be really
felt the first time we have any sailing time. I think maybe it has to do with
the time of year and school ending vs. the 2 earlier segments. But who knows?
Maybe it is the itinerary.
We are back from dinner with bad news. First, for not the first time on this segment, Clay has failed to get served at the Terrace Grill. He either never gets to order because the same team of 3 guys never asks him for his order, they just keep passing by him to the next person who comes up, or like tonight he places his order 3 times and they keep cooking and giving his food to someone who ordered after him. Either way, it meant I only ate an appetizer and a dessert because of the wait. He is pretty angry about it but as I told him, he needs to complain to someone who can do something about it. I think he doesn't want to because one of the guys is according to Clay "my buddy". The other bad thing was that I put out our Please Make Up My Room sign when we left, but when we got back it had been turned to Privacy Please, so our room had not been serviced. Our room stewardesses were appalled and so were we but given that someone also stole our Newfoundland magnet, it was less shocking. We are in the card room now, while I update this entry for the last piece of bad news.
We left the cabin at 6:30pm to go to dinner. We were still tied to the dock. We should have sailed at 6pm. There had been no announcements. We looked around Amsterdam from a top deck and it started raining as we walked downstairs. Stefka, our guide today, had warned us that they were predricting storms around sunset today because the unnaturally high heat of the day was going to destabilize the atmosphere and cause early evening storms. The other cruise ship in port with us, Magellan, left before we did and I guess got out. At 7:10pm, Julie James our cruise director, came over the loudspeakers and announced that the pilot and the captain had decided that due to predicted 50 miles or knots per hour winds at the IJmuiden canal locks. We didn't even know we had come through locks last night to get here! I knew we were in a canal this morning when I woke up but had no idea! So they decided we could not safely reach the sea. Because of that we are spending the night docked in Amsterdam and will sail at 3pm tomorrow. We are skipping the port of Bremerhaven and sailing straight to Oslo, the next port on the itinerary. I guess the good news is that we did not have any plans there!
We are back from dinner with bad news. First, for not the first time on this segment, Clay has failed to get served at the Terrace Grill. He either never gets to order because the same team of 3 guys never asks him for his order, they just keep passing by him to the next person who comes up, or like tonight he places his order 3 times and they keep cooking and giving his food to someone who ordered after him. Either way, it meant I only ate an appetizer and a dessert because of the wait. He is pretty angry about it but as I told him, he needs to complain to someone who can do something about it. I think he doesn't want to because one of the guys is according to Clay "my buddy". The other bad thing was that I put out our Please Make Up My Room sign when we left, but when we got back it had been turned to Privacy Please, so our room had not been serviced. Our room stewardesses were appalled and so were we but given that someone also stole our Newfoundland magnet, it was less shocking. We are in the card room now, while I update this entry for the last piece of bad news.
We left the cabin at 6:30pm to go to dinner. We were still tied to the dock. We should have sailed at 6pm. There had been no announcements. We looked around Amsterdam from a top deck and it started raining as we walked downstairs. Stefka, our guide today, had warned us that they were predricting storms around sunset today because the unnaturally high heat of the day was going to destabilize the atmosphere and cause early evening storms. The other cruise ship in port with us, Magellan, left before we did and I guess got out. At 7:10pm, Julie James our cruise director, came over the loudspeakers and announced that the pilot and the captain had decided that due to predicted 50 miles or knots per hour winds at the IJmuiden canal locks. We didn't even know we had come through locks last night to get here! I knew we were in a canal this morning when I woke up but had no idea! So they decided we could not safely reach the sea. Because of that we are spending the night docked in Amsterdam and will sail at 3pm tomorrow. We are skipping the port of Bremerhaven and sailing straight to Oslo, the next port on the itinerary. I guess the good news is that we did not have any plans there!
