Katies do Euro Summer

[Katie]

Monday 4 August, cont.

L plate tram driver - wonder if they have to do 100 supervised hours like kids in Queensland??

After checking out of the DT and leaving our luggage with the bell desk, we made our way to the Beursplein for a walking tour, boked through what appears to be a Spanish company (Guias y Tours), but luckily our tour was in English. The Beursplein was full of Pride dance party antics this weekend, but it was all clear on Monday morning.

Random doorway



The tour guide was informative, I learned a lot as I hadn't learned much in my prior visits to AMS. I noted, similar to the walking tour in Brussels, there was more of a nod to the colonial riches the Netherlands accumulated, rather than just describing that era as a time of prosperity. We learned about the 3 Xs (though Google is now suggesting to me that fire, flood, and plague is incorrect). I enjoyed being able to ask the guide questions, such as why tours don't go in the red light district (it's a working zone and tramping groups of tourists through it interrupts the people working there) and some idea I had about Amsterdam having a curtain tax or something during the war.

We saw this invention to prevent wildplassen:

(because the pee will shoot back onto you if you pee there)

Protestant church, signified by the cough on the top. Catholic churches have crosses.


These relatively newly built buildings are in the former Jewish area of Amsterdam; the Frank family lived in this general area. In Anne Frank House, there was a map of Jewish residents of Amsterdam with dots representing the population density, and this area was heavily dotted. When there was a food and I think firewood shortage in Amsterdam around 1944-45, many of these empty Jewish houses were ransacked for their wood, etc.


Jewish citizen memorial on the Amstel


Some famous painter painted this view in some famous painting


The tour guide asked what was wrong with this sculpture. I had the answer.

Cool lantern


We ended near the Homomonument and Anne Frank House. Mumma Katie and I had poffertjes for lunch! Hoped to get a free wee in that restaurant, but needed a coin to wee, and all coins were donated to some worthy cause.

 

[Katie]

Monday 4 August still ...

Oops, after lunch, we wandered, stopped for a mimosa (and free wee, well, for the price of a mimosa) and went back to Stephen and Penelope!

I'm sure it's a rule that knitters MUST go to Stephen and Penelope every day while they're in Amsterdam. On our way, we stopped at De Afstap, another local yarn store without the colour and intensity of S&P, but with plenty of yarn and a cosiness to it. De Afstap is also conveniently close to Puccini Bomboni, a delicious chocolate store. I may have bought one to nibble on our walk:


I wondered if this building had anything to do with the Astor family. I can't remember reading about it in the book about the family written by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe (I thought their Astor book was superior to their Vanderbilt book, despite it being about Cooper's own family).


Oh the mimosas! Little did we know it would be the last time paying for booze for a week!!



So, back to S&P because rules and it was actually on the Monday that Mum bought some small gifts for her friends. And I got some Mohair yarn (Glowhair!!) well, because I could and it was sooo soft and squishy.

We may have walked back to the hotel, however we got back, we were buggered and not up to dragging our suitcases the ~1-1.5km to the dock. We got a taxi from the hotel; Mumma Katie reckoned it was the best EUR15 she ever spent.

Our taxi mounted the kerb to drop us off, we were met right there by a couple of the crew, ready to deal with our luggage for us. What a relief to not lug it for the next 6 or 7 days! Little did we know what else we would accumulate over the coming week.

We had room 329 on the Violin deck, the top deck with rooms on it. With the tour basically taking over the whole boat, we selected our type of room, but not the actual room IIRC. 329 has a French blacony, I knew I wanted the option of some fresh air. It was a snug 170 sq ft, especially in twin bed construction - and the twins were not the generous size of the BRU Hilton the prior week. But it was all comfortable and quite well laid out - and importanting the boat is 50cm less wide than the thinnest lock we went through.
We did have some slight pangs of jealousy as we saw the space of the larger rooms when we walked by during cleaning time, but then we calmed ourselves by the money we saved as we really didn't spend much time in the room at all!

As we arrived on board, we were greeted by Deb and Janine from Skein Sisters in Sydney. They are truly such gorgeous women. Two other yarn stores were hosts of the cruise, Rosehaven yarns in Ontario and Espace Tricot in Montreal.

Our room and around the boat:








Looking back, the outdoor deck furniture in front of the wheelhouse was a lot nicer than any other deck furniture we saw on other boats as we clambered up and down for shore excursions.

We started off with some nibbles and the safety information in the lounge. Oh, and bubbles!

View from our room after we changed docking spots with the boat next to use, so they could embark their passengers on Tuesday.
On Monday night, we stayed in Amsterdam and didn't leave until Tuesday after lunch.

 

[Katie]

Monday 4 August - here's the first cruise food post!

Oh holy moly cannoli, I was not expecting this much food! Thank goodness portion sizes were European, and also you can order as few courses as you choose!!

On the first night, we took a little while to get down to the restaurant, and ended up sitting in one of the private dining areas at the back of the restaurant - about 12 people can sit there. We joined an Aussie Mum and her non-knitter daughter, and a very anxious American woman whose sister had missed her connection in DFW on Sunday (due to weather delaying her flight in) and didn't arrive in Amsterdam that morning.

For anyone cruising for the first time - never ever ever arrive into your port on the day of your cruise. Luckily for that lady, we stayed in Amsterdam overnight and she arrived Tuesday morning.

We had wines, beers and basic liquor included in our package - we thought it was only at meal times, but it seemed more like anytime there were bar staff around we could have a drink.


I had the shrimp cake, beef ribs and raspberry parfait. Yummo!


We were also served some petit fours.

We popped back to our room after dinner to find our first surprise gift - Patty Lyons' book! And my PJs folded more nicely than I'll ever bother to do ...

We popped into the lounge for some knitting and enjoyed the music on offer. In my case, it was "tink"ing, as I was un-knitting most of the knitting I did on the trains between Berlin and Amsterdam.

 

[RB001]

I wondered if this building had anything to do with the Astor family.

No Astor connection, unfortunately.
The Astoria was one of the first office 'towers' in Amsterdam, built in 1904/5 to a whopping 37 metres! It was built for a bank/insurance company.

 

[Katie]

Tues 5 August - Amsterdam then cruising towards Cologne
At some point maybe after dinner, our boat swapped places with the one next to us, so that boat could be right at the dock for its embarkation on Tuesday.
We woke up on the water in Amsterdam and there was a canal cruise on offer as the excursion for the first morning. We knew this was an offered excursion, so hadn't been on a canal cruise during the weekend.

But first - breakfast! We went to the restaurant for brekky, and the lounge is also an option. A light/early brekky was on offer in there - bacon, scrambled eggs, some pastries. In the restaurant, there was a Breakfast special each day or you could order something particular from the breakfast menu, or just enjoy the brekky buffet.



Breads were apparently baked fresh daily (maybe not served the day they were baked??), but they weren't a patch on what I'd been eating in Germany.
'

I can't remember what I ate for brekky that day, no photo evidence to remind me!! By 9:30 or so, it was time for our canal cruise. Our guide was Andy, who taught us how to say the guttural gh/ch sound in Dutch - he said to imagine you're eating popcorn and you get a kernel stuck in your throat and you're trying to cough it out!

I've just noticed in this photo that not only is it me and Mumma Katie, but a woman who did nursing training with my second cousin 30+ years ago and the lovely Deb from Skein Sisters!


The sheer size of the cruise ship on the left was astounding from our canal boat and in comparison to our river cruise boat!!


The row of 7 bridges at Reguliersgracht and Herengracht- you can see 15 in total, but this is only on the right side from the direction we were facing.


IIRC, that bridge in the background is "the" Ted Lasso bridge. IYKYK.


The canal cruise went for about an hour. I found it funny that when we went close to the Doubletree, my phone tried to connect to the hotel wifi.

We had maybe 2 hours before our All Aboard time. Mumma Katie was happy to stay on the boat, but given our location I just couldn't resist one last visit to Stephen and Penelope!!
This time I just wandered ... and bought both a silver and a pink ball of mohair yarn - called Glowhair in this shop!! And I tried to remember what pattern was recommended for the yarn I bought on Saturday to make a beanie.

Maybe it was this one?


Next up: lunch!
Mumma Katie had lunch in the lounge, and I went to the restaurant to see what the offering was like.



The appetizers were served family style, to be shared between two people at the table. They were automatically served. Despite my dislike for mushrooms, I had the Traditional Dutch Hackballen, followed by Bread and Butter pudding.

I think it was around the lunch service that we started to think that the wait staff were being paid based on how much alcohol we consumed, as the wine was certainly free-flowing! Though one of the bar staff you had to get in quickly before she went to the next table/lounge chairs for orders.

I was given this beautiful stitch marker by the lovely Lesley, owner of Rosehaven yarn shop in Ontario. Lesley was one of the three yarn shop hosts on the cruise. A suitable stitch marker for a frequent flyer, no?!

I'd signed us up for the Chef's Table dinner on Tuesday night, and we found our invitation in our room after lunch. The head chef on our cruise was from Indonesia and named Ketut. The Aussies all had a giggle about his name and wondered if any of us were named Rhonda!



As we went to dinner on Monday night, we were all (or all ladies, and we were about 90% ladies) presented with a red rose. Our roses were set up beautifully after lunch.
We set sail after lunch or at lunch, and proceeded along the human-made canal to the Rhine.

On Tuesday afternoon, special guest Patty Lyons gave us insights into the creation of her first book, the one we'd received the night before.


It was fun listening to her and looking outside the window at the countryside. Soon, we were going through our first lock - we had 12 in total to go through. So many photos and time lapse videos were shared on the cruise WhatsApp chat!!!
I was surprised how close we got to the walls, not realising until later that the boat is moored to a wall while the water goes up or down in the lock.