Amsterdam

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Bicycles everywhere, tall narrow ornate houses along canals, some leaning precariously, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, flowers and sex and marijuana for sale that is Amsterdam.

On the first day we went to the Rembrandt Museum and the Van Gogh Museum and took a canal cruise and briefly walked through the red light district (Jan was NOT comfortable). By 9:00 PM jet lag and our busy day caught up with us and we went to bed.

Dutch Countryside

For our second day in Amsterdam we decided to visit the Dutch countryside, since checkout at the hotel was 11:00 A.M. and check-in for the ship was 2:00 P.M. We arranged for a private car and English speaking driver with the hotel concierge for 65 Euros per hour. We asked to be picked up at the hotel and 10:30 A.M. and to arrive at the cruise terminal for 1:30 P.M. (giving ourselves 30 minutes grace) This allowed us three hours for our tour. Johann arrived promptly at 10:30 with his Mercedes S Class car to take us on our tour.

After talking with the concierge we decided to visit a tiny village of De Zaanse Schans (40 homes), because it still had five authentic windmills remaining from the seven hundred that used to dot the area. Today they use electric motors for pumping the water.

Next we visited the fishing village of Volendam, on Lake ???, a huge man-made lake built in ???, which is 250 km around. Johann joined us for a fish lunch at the highly recommended Spaander hotel in Volendam. Excellent.

After lunch Johann drove us to the cruise terminal arriving at about 1:45 PM. What a fantastic way to spend the time between checkout at the hotel and check-in for the ship.