Our arrival in Amsterdam signaled the halfway point of our cruise. We had just under two days in Amsterdam and had opted to do a tour on the first day called Grand Holland that got us into areas of The Netherlands that we hadn’t previously visited.
We set out in rain for our first stop, which was Delft. On our way we passed the town of Aalsmeer, which boasts an enormous flower auction. The guide described it in detail, explaining that it covers an area of about 150 soccer fields! Two of our friends on the cruise later told us that they’d been there and it’s truly an amazing sight to see. We had to satisfy ourselves with the outside, but it would be something to consider another time!
Our guide explained in detail how they build up the land in the Netherlands, describing the dike system and the reclaimed land for homes and farmland. Very interesting to see the canals everywhere we go!
Just as we arrived in Delft, we began to see patches if blue in the skies, and we hoped that it was a good sign. We entered the Delft factory (now just more or less for show), and immediately headed for the restrooms. I was fascinated by all the Delft patterns in the tiles on the walls in there – and they even had a pattern in the toilet. (I think this is the first time I’ve ever taken a picture of a toilet bowl, but I couldn’t resist!) Our tour guide in the factory explained the process of hand-painting and firing the pieces. The painting looks black, but the cobalt in the paint turns blue when fired. We were interested in seeing the process, and it was amazing to see a life-size delft “piece” of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch on display there. Naturally the end of the tour brought us to the gift shop, where I left more than a few Euros behind!
When we came out, the sun was shining and the skies were blue – finally!!! From the factory we proceeded to the center of Delft, where we were given a choice of free time or going with the tour guide on a short walking tour. We opted to stay with the guide, and it was well worth it! We saw some very interesting sites, including the old meat market (adorned with sculptures of cows and sheep), as well as the Old Church. When we looked up at it from nearby, it looked fine, but when our guide took us down the canal, we saw that the steeple was leaning because of the weight of the bell. It leans 2 meters in one direction and one meter in another. It was quite obvious when we were a distance away. Now they only ring the bell on Christmas, Easter, and state occasions. We also took a walk along the longest bridge in the Netherlands. Dubbed the Butter Bridge, it runs quite a distance, but because the water isn’t visible underneath the bridge, we weren’t even aware that we were on a bridge!
We were given a few minutes of free time before returning to the bus, and we were sure to be back with time to spare. Our bus (the second of two taking this tour), set off, making a u-turn and continuing down the street before someone told the tour guide that they thought two people were missing. The guide had counted before we left and had thought she had the correct number. But when she recounted, she realized that two people were definitely missing! So we had to get back to the meeting site, which took longer since a canal bridge was being lifted to allow the passing of a canal barge. We commented that if it had been us, we’d have been mortified to get on the bus, having been late and made it necessary for the bus to return. Someone else commented that the people owed everyone a beer for having wasted 15 minutes of our time. We were stunned when the people got on, absolutely irate that they’d been left behind. They were late – obviously the last two people back on both buses, and they hadn’t even been in time to see that the bus made a u-turn right in front of the meeting spot. But they were angry, saying that according to their watches, they were on time! (Seems strange that they were the only ones whose watches were wrong!) However, you can well imagine that for the rest of the day when the tour guide said, “We are leaving at such-and-such a time,” everyone was back on the bus!
We had lunch in a seaside restaurant with a nice view of the ocean. The food was very good, but this time when given the choice of salmon or chicken, we both opted for chicken as we didn’t want to press our luck! During our conversation, we found that a few people had connections to Chicago. Toward the end of the lunch, the man next to me got up and went out. I was talking with his wife, and she said, “He started a little company in Chicago. You may have heard of it. It’s called US Cellular.” I assured her that, yes, I had heard of that little company! She in turn assured me that he had retired, turned the helm over to someone else, and was on a world cruise when he read a blurb in the online newspaper that stated that the company had bought and renamed Comiskey Park, US Cellular Field. She commented, “That was not my husband! He would never have done that!”
After lunch we drove the very short distance to our next stop, called Madurodam. This can only be described in one way – The Netherlands in Miniature! It was opened in the early 1950s in memory of a young man named George Maduro. He was an only child, and when he died in Dachau early in 1945, his parents decided to honor him by donating the money to build this miniature city. All proceeds go to charity, and everything in the village is exactly 25 times smaller than in reality. We strolled through the village, amazed at the small replicas of well-known places as well as the ones we were not familiar with. We got a kick out of seeing two men on their knees trimming the landscaping around the Peace Palace (which we later saw in real life). This, along with a seagull sitting on top of a building, really put the sizes into perspective. We were fascinated by watching the activity at the miniature Schipol Airport (Amsterdam) and strolled across the miniature Erasmus Bridge (Rotterdam landmark). We watched a barge canal boat sailing along, and suddenly a fire broke out on board. Out came the fire department boat and immediately doused the fire. One thing we really got a kick out of was watching some small children feeding the carp in one of the canals. Numerous fish came to the surface and practically “climbed” on top of each other, mouths open, trying to get to the bits of bread the children were offering . We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this amazing little village!
Our final stop was at the Peace Palace in The Hague, especially interesting having seen it in miniature just an hour or so before. We had a bus tour of The Hague also, driving past the Royal Palace where Queen Beatrix lives and also past the Houses of Parliament. It was a lovely city.
Arriving back a few minutes early, we even managed to get to dinner without being more than a few minutes late. We really enjoyed the excursion.
We had been warned that they were doing some safety checks on the ship, including a test of the stabilization of the ship. Therefore, there would be no food available between midnight and 5:00 AM, as well as no ability to go ashore during those hours. They told us to be sure to stock up on food just in case we thought we’d get hungry between those hours, and they also indicated that we may notice the ship “tipping” a little. We had visions of trying to sleep on our heads, but of course we were completely unconcerned about having enough food to sustain us between midnight and 5:00! We have no clue what was done as we weren’t aware of any differences – fortunately! We got up as usual, and had breakfast as usual, so everything must have gone as expected.
We took a short walk to Central Station in Amsterdam, not far from the Cruise Port. We had been in Amsterdam last year and had stayed in almost the same location, so we didn’t take a lot of time to explore.
We did discover that there was free Wi-Fi in the cruise terminal, so we both had a chance to get caught up on email without spending a lot of minutes of our onboard account. Unfortunately , I hadn’t had a chance to write this blog.
We are now starting into our very busy stretch. We have eight days in a row when we’re in port. (Yesterday and today are two of them, but we at least had time to catch up today.) The next six will each be in a different port. Not only that, but we’ll be switching between Pounds and Euros five of the next six days! Tonight we gain and hour; tomorrow night we lose an hour; the next night we gain an hour as we go from The Netherlands to Dover, England to St. Malo, France, to Falmouth in Cornwall, England.
Barb
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