Sunday, July 19, 2015
I slept in today. I have no idea what Clay did. I think he
was coming into the cabin when I awoke, but I can’t swear to that. It was cold
and rainy when the day started. It stayed that way until mid-day. That worked out
for us. We went to breakfast and by the time we were suited up in raingear for
the weather, it was time to go ashore. The Captain said yesterday that he would
pick up the pilot at 4:15am to bring us through the lock and up the river Ij to
dock in Amsterdam at 9am. We were right on schedule. We got the closer in spot
of the 2 today. That little bit shorter walk was nice. It was pouring this
morning. We went out and went straight to the tram stop for 25/26. We bought 24
hour tickets from the driver for 7.50 Euro pp. We took it to the Central
Station and walked across the square to the other side and got tram 14 to
Muntplein. We got off and walked along Singel canal’s floating flower market to
find some US/Canada certified importable tulip bulbs. We bought 3 bags for 13
Euros. We also found an Amsterdam patch there. We walked on and found a
Starbucks but on seeing it we were both sure we already have that one at home.
I hope that is true. They had a great one for all of Netherlands but that
seemed like one mug too many, so I didn’t buy it either. We didn’t really have
anything else to do so Clay located The Grand Hotel which was the most
expensive hotel he ever stayed in once on a business trip without me. It was on
the southeast side, we have previously spent most of our time in the Joordan.
Then we walked back to Central Station and took the 26 tram back to the
Passenger Terminal and dropped off our bag of tulip bulbs and set out again. It
was still pouring rain even harder now. We took 2 trams to the Westermarkt and walked
up Prinsengracht past the Ann Frank house and its very long and soggy line to a
short soggy line outside the Pancake Bakery. We waited in line about 15 minutes
to get seated. We shared one ham & cheese pancake and one Nutella pancake.
Clay had a big draft beer and I had a hot chocolate. Clay has decided that we
have to have a crepe/pancake maker for Christmas. We’ll be online shopping
soon. He already had a waffle iron purchase fail online while we’ve been away.
It was on back order for months and while we’ve been away, it was cancelled.
Too bad, we’ve had a wide variety of waffles too while over here in the Scandinavian
countries. From there it was only a short walk to the Ij Dock. This is a new
small reclaimed land island since we were last here. The best news was that the
rain system had finally finished moving through after lunch. We were already
wet and in waterproof gear but it was dry, windy and sunny for our 2-hour
Segway Tour. It was a private tour with a young man named Tine as our guide. He
had actually been to NC before! He told us that in a few days he will post photosfrom our tour on facebook.com/amsterdamsegway. We covered a lot of Amsterdam
and we specifically went around the Hortus Botanicus and the Artis. Those are
some very old parks. One is the botanical garden and the other the zoo. We went
on a little East of there to see the tallest wooden mill in the Netherlands
which adjoins the Ij Brewery. That was cool. It looked a lot like the thatched
windmill we visited outside Amsterdam on our last stop here. This one was much
taller though. We had never been in this part of Amsterdam before so it was
something new for us. We were out on the Segways from 2 to 4:10pm. Amsterdam
was the most difficult city we have ever toured on Segway. We used bike lanes
like in Stockholm, but here there was a lot more traffic and scooters and motorcycles
were using the bike lanes as well. We had a number of mishaps and collisions.
Clay was off his twice but never fell down to the ground, so Tine never seemed
too disturbed or surprised. I think he was more surprised that we didn’t kill
ourselves! He gave us cards afterwards that said: “If you can ride here, you
can ride anywhere.” True enough.
We were back onboard by 5:10pm. We had been delivered
letters last night about turning in our passports before Zeebrugge and they
collected them when we came back aboard. This is evidently the passport
collection that they missed when we entered Schengen in early June. You may
remember our difficulty leaving Schengen for Svalbard from Tromso because we
had never “legally entered” Schengen. The problem is that we still haven’t
legally entered Schengen. We got stamped leaving Tromso, but when we came back through
the Oslo and Stockholm airports, we still never got stamped as entering. We’ll
see how the Purser handles this in Zeebrugge. The letter said the ship had to
clear everyone to exit Schengen for the UK. The letter doesn’t say how long
they’ll keep the passports but I am guessing that they will keep them until we
are cleared to enter the UK. Otherwise, we’ll all need to go through passport
control on arrival in Southampton and that would be a mess with people trying
to make flights.
We’ll go to Terrace for dinner. We are sailing out of
Amsterdam now. We are on the port side this time, so we have a different view.
Nice. The Captain hasn’t announced when we’ll arrive at the lock, but hopefully
we’ll get to see it again. We are just passing IJ Dock where we rented the
Segways. Cool! I’ll go ahead and post now and edit later if needed.
I'm back. The Captain did speak but we only heard the last of it about entering the North Sea again after 8pm. He did say he expected much calmer seas than when we left with only 4 foot waves.
We had a letter on our bed when we got back. Bad news all around. We change the clocks tomorrow night before our arrival in Southampton. Also, as predicted we must have a face to face meeting to enter the UK. This took our 3-day crossing to do on the way over here! On Wednesday, we have to be out of our cabins by 8am and off the ship by 9am. Our Brown 4 luggage tag group has to be in Marina Lounge at 8:20am to meet face to face with UK Immigration. We do have to catch a bus at 10:30am in Southampto, but thankfully not a flight that day! We also had a letter pointing out to us, in case we hadn't noticed from the earlier preliminary invoice, that we have a $15 non-refundable credit balance to spend or lose. We went down to the boutique and shopped after dinner. We bought 3 $5 bags of Maltesers!
I'm back. The Captain did speak but we only heard the last of it about entering the North Sea again after 8pm. He did say he expected much calmer seas than when we left with only 4 foot waves.
We had a letter on our bed when we got back. Bad news all around. We change the clocks tomorrow night before our arrival in Southampton. Also, as predicted we must have a face to face meeting to enter the UK. This took our 3-day crossing to do on the way over here! On Wednesday, we have to be out of our cabins by 8am and off the ship by 9am. Our Brown 4 luggage tag group has to be in Marina Lounge at 8:20am to meet face to face with UK Immigration. We do have to catch a bus at 10:30am in Southampto, but thankfully not a flight that day! We also had a letter pointing out to us, in case we hadn't noticed from the earlier preliminary invoice, that we have a $15 non-refundable credit balance to spend or lose. We went down to the boutique and shopped after dinner. We bought 3 $5 bags of Maltesers!
