2016/05 Europe cruise - Amsterdam |
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Dear All,
Part 1 of this story described our first week in southeast England. We were now setting off from Heathrow to fly to Schiphol 
airport in Amsterdam, where we’d meet our Viking minders. It’s a short flight, almost not worth sitting down, but we had some excitement. As we came into land the steward was hammering on the bathroom door, saying that the person had to come out so we could land. Eventually he got the master key and broke into the bathroom even though the Asian lady protested “I have to do this!” She returned to her seat, and was being interviewed later as we all filed off the plane.
We easily found our Viking greeters and one of them whisked us and a Welsh couple, Diane and Colwyn from Monmouthshire, off to a van. They said that they’d recently had to abandon a similar cruise in Cambodia as he’d been ill. It was a 30 minute drive to our boat, the Ingvi, one of Viking’s longships, just one in a lineup of similar cruise vessels.
More staff quickly got us and our luggage down to our cabin and showed us how everything worked. Little of this sunk in, of course, but our first impression was that everything was nice and new. We were told that there was a bus trip into town and a walking tour and we had five minutes to get on deck and get to the bus. We weren’t expecting this. It wasn’t one of the advertised excursions, but why not?
It was a good introduction to our new role as tourist cattle. We learned to keep our eyes on the Viking lollipop so that we didn’t lose contact with the herdsperson/guide. Less obvious was the need to remember our ship’s number, 29. There were often two or three Viking ships in town and returning to the wrong one would be a problem. Each day we were given cards with the ship’s number and a letter to specify our guide/bus for the day. We also were given a personal tag that we had to return after each excursion so the cattle baron would know if any cattle had gone missing.
Each of us had a Quietvox receiver and earpiece, tuned to the microphone of our allotted herdsperson. They worked very well as long as we didn’t wander too far, but they aren’t directional so we still needed to keep an eye on our lollipop. The guides are all local so we had more than a dozen of them over the fortnight, with a wide variety of accents and familiarity with English.
The bus took us the short distance into Amsterdam’s Centrum, probably walkable if we knew the way. Our guide didn’t want to lose any cattle, so she warned us about the different dangers of a large European city: the pickpockets, the buses, the trams, the canals, and above 
all in Amsterdam, the cyclists, particularly the cyclopaths. Stay off the bicycle trails!
We’ve been to Amsterdam before and don’t remember its being as busy and chaotic, but this was, we heard, the first warm weekend of the year and everybody was out partying and enjoying the sunshine, on foot, bikes, and boats. Our guide said that she’d had sleet and hail for this tour just a week ago. The pictures give an idea of the traffic on the canals and the crush of people and bikes on the streets.
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Amsterdam |
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Of course, we could only get a taste of the city in a couple of hours, walking the back streets and along a couple of canals. We saw beautiful architecture, a replica of a Dutch galleon, leaning buildings, the edge of the red light district, a nearby condomerie, and even a distant windmill. We were warned not to eat cake in certain coffee shops unless we wanted to experience the local variant of high tea.
Back at the boat we had time to unpack; suitcases under the bed and plenty of room for our clothes in the wardrobe and 
cupboards. We had no chairs but we weren’t going to be sitting and looking out the window: ours was a narrow slit at head height, just above water level. We didn’t see the point in paying thousands extra for a balcony room. The bathroom was sparkling clean with a large shower and a washing line. To those of us used to living in campers it was palatial, but some of the balcony dwellers above complained of lack of space.
Before dinner, the program director, Rob, a South African, introduced himself and gave us a description of how our daily excursions would be managed. Each day he’d also tell us details of the next day’s program, when and where we’d be and when we’d be moving on.
There were three courses for dinner, with three or four choices. Or you could eat all the desserts if you wanted to! Nobody was keeping count. Plentiful house wine and beer was included, not outstanding but better than we usually buy. We could have paid for a drinks package but there’s no way we could have done it justice.
The picture gives some idea of the dining area. Seating for meals was informal with six and eight seater tables. We’d get there early, sit at an empty table by one of the windows, and see who showed up to share it. We gave up on trying to remember names but we could usually remember where people came from. We’d traveled to the areas of everyone we met, so conversation was easy. The boat was slightly below its maximum capacity of 190. Over half the passengers were American, with the remainder split amongst British and Canadian. There were a couple of Aussies. Most were about our age or older, but there was a handful of young people who looked rather out of place. At the other extreme was the “leisure” group who weren’t able to do the walking and had alternatives, like bus tours.
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Life on the Ingvi |
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We watched the sun set over the harbour. The boat left the harbour at about midnight, traveling mainly on canals. We were amidships and never heard the engines, though others behind us complained of the noise.