Howells in a Castle

Wednesday 14^th September 2016

The ship docked in Amsterdam at 8:30am. This is our last port and our last day on board.

Weather continues to be very hot with temperature expected to be 29° with no wind and clear blue sky.

Breakfast early again this morning as we had to be ready for our bus & canal boat tour of Amsterdam which departed at 9:00am

After an interesting 1hour drive round the city we boarded a canal boat for a tour of the Canals of Amsterdam. Amsterdam in an interesting city. The city is full of bicycles and the riders appear to be a law to themselves as the ride through red traffic lights and cycle along shared footpaths at a great pace with no apparent regards for pedestrians. There are also a lot of motor scooters that are legally allowed to use the cycle paths as long as they don’t travel in excess of 30kph. No one wears helmets.

Got back to the ship at 12:30pm and after a light lunch we spent a very entertaining few hours sitting on the sun deck watching cyclists riding past the ship. There really were some amazing sights, including parents with toddlers in seats mounted on the front of push bikes. There were also a few that had a toddler on the front and another one on the back. They also have bikes called box bikes. These have a large wooden box mounted on the front, which is used to carry shopping. Some have seat belts fitted and are used to transport children to and from school.

The population of Amsterdam is 880,000, however, there is said to be over 1 million pushbikes in the city. They are currently doing a census of the bikes in the city to find out how many there actually are.

Tonight was our last on board we had had a lovely 4 course dinner with our new friends, Desmond & Alan from UK, Eleanor and her niece Marlene from Canada and Paul & Di from Singleton NSW.

After dinner it was time to pack up ready to disembark ship in the morning.

Thursday 15^th September 2016.

This morning is our last on board ship. It is hard to believe that stage 2 of our European journey has come to an end.

Weather is expected to be hot again today with temperature predicted to be 29°.

Following a hearty breakfast of fruit, bacon, eggs, toast, tea & coffee we went back to our cabin for the last time to complete the last packing and put our luggage out for collection at 8:30am.

Our departure time was 9:30am so we had some time to bid our new friends farewell.

We disembarked on time and the taxi was waiting on the pier to take us to our hotel which will be home for the next 2 nights.

Our rooms were not available when we arrived at the hotel so we completed the check-in process, stored our luggage with the concierge and spent most of the day walking round the streets and canals of Amsterdam. It is an interesting city with lots of old building that the lean at angles less than perpendicular. The city is also not the cleanest with rubbish in the canals and cigarette but on most of the footpaths.

Finally got back to the hotel at 4:30pm, checked into our rooms and had a cuppa before going down stairs to an open air café outside our hotel for dinner. While the food on the ship was excellent it was great to have grilled lamb chops, salad, chips and a beer. Lynne had chicken kebabs, chips, salad and a glass of wine.