Part 4 – the River Cruise

Monday, 7 August, 2017 – weather: grey, again

We are to move to the last major part of our journey, to the Riverboat for a two week cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. But we have been told not to go to the boat too soon, although there are conflicting messages. We had thought that we would go on our other river cruise but had already made the decision that that was too boring.

We have breakfast upstairs in the buffet again. Then Julie decides to go out prancing until around Noon when we should checkout. Some of her photos.

Julie returns at 11:59:58. We finish packing and go downstairs to checkout, which we successfully do. My plan is to stay in the lounge until about 1:30 and work on the Blog because the lightning speeds on the Internet are stunning. Julie has more prancing to do.

Julie returns and we pack up ask and ask for a cab. It takes a while. The driver drives us to the docks, it seemed like a very roundabout way but I guess it was OK and it was expensive but we got there. When we arrive the room is not ready so we settle in the large lounge.

There is a small buffet where we can have some lunch before we check in as well as drinks. We meet a nice USA couple, Ruth and Larry and have a long chat. Eventually I manage to check-in and we are escorted to our rooms.

Well, I am disappointed. I thought we had booked upmarket rooms with lots of space. No. We are in perhaps the second bottom level with a room that is quite small but modern and well done. My illusions were shattered. Never mind, we unload our suitcases into the cupboards and slide the suitcases under the bed, never to be seen again until we leave. Hooray!

We have a small balcony and Julie mixes up a gin and tonic from the mini bar. There is a bit of sunshine which helps. After that we go to dinner and meet another nice couple. Well, it too is a buffet and it would seem that most of the meals will be buffets, which are not our favourites. I pick up a dish from just inside the room where the cook is preparing prawns.

I grabbed a range of stuff with the “special” course being roast beef which is OK. I ask for horse radish sauce which they bring from the kitchen, again quite OK. When finished, we go back up to the bar.

We have a chat for a while with some fellow Melbournites. Then to bed. I sleep OK for a while until some one starts doing activities. A lot more sleep would have been welcome.

Saturday, 5 August, 2017 – weather: grey and then slow improvement to a very good day

Our three day visit to Amsterdam is coincident with one of its biggest Holiday weekends from 4-6 August, the Pride Amsterdam. This a celebration of Gay Pride in Holland and attracts many visitors from overseas. There is a splash of gay colours all over town and it is amazing how much the people embrace the celebration, young and old, hetero and homo, married couples, children etc. It is in direct contrast with the attitudes of our Australian ruling politicians. I am not preaching or anything like that but I just cannot understand the dramatic difference between the peoples.

Any way, enough of that – this is a food and wine blog after all. I will put a few photos of the events in this post and Julie has taken lots of them. We head out to a local breakfast place I spotted yesterday.

We then decide to go walking to a nearby Saturday market.

We were told that there is more control of pot by the government since 2012, at least for foreigners. Notwithstanding that, the smell was frequently around.

We then decide to walk back to the Hotel using a different route. A few of my photos along the way.

We walked for a long time and with the walk, the cobblestones, bricks, etc. it is very tiring. We get back to the room and I tell Julie that I am buggered and that she should go out prancing for the afternoon while I relax. The following photos are from her afternoon.

It was said that there were 800,000 people watching the parade. They were 6 to 8 deep everywhere and it was hard to get decent photos.

Julie returned just before 6:00 and did not really have any ideas of where to go for dinner as the only reasonable places she saw were too far away. However, Julie spends a bit of time on the Pad and comes up with an idea that is not too far away.

The menu is really quite interesting with lots of choices.

The Van Speyk Menu

After that is the short walk back home and good night.

Friday, 4 August, 2017 – weather: grey and then slow improvement to a very good day

We get up early today as we have a 8:52 train to Amsterdam. There is a taxi stand nearby but it may be that the taxis would all be in use given that it is rush hour on a workday.

We have our usual fried sandwiches with our leftovers. Then it is finish packing the bags and out the door. It looked like it was drizzling but when we get outside it is just overcast. We get to the taxi stand and there are two there. We hop in and the traffic is not bad so we get there in 5 minutes or so. We have a longish wait at the station but that is OK, we did not want to miss the train.

Julie finds out which platform we will be on and we go up there. We manage to get some of the few seats available. There is a train there but it is going the other way to Paris. Eventually it leaves and then ours arrives. We wait in line and a group from the sub-continent (wearing turbans) get on before us and they have so much luggage that they take up all the luggage space in our carriage. We make do by putting ours on top of theirs. This is the only problem with train travel, finding space for your luggage especially with big logs like we have.

We have reserved seats and we are in first class so there is food and drink service once we get going. Julie has coffee, water and orange juice and I have a ham sandwich and orange juice. Service is pretty good. Along the way, one of the curry munchers rearranges the luggage by dumping any that is not theirs into the passageway, nice. Fortunately, a good guy in the row behind us helps us out by lifting my suitcase onto an overhead rack and we arrange the rest.

The trip is around two hours. When we reach Amsterdam, the guy behind us kindly lifts my suit case down. We get off and are in a huge Amsterdam Central station. The station is on an island and it is a little bit tricky finding our way over the canals and through a huge number of people. We are in a very touristy area of Amsterdam.

We drag our suitcases over cobblestone / brick footpaths and roads being careful to dodge trams and other moving obstacles. Google maps said 6 minutes, it was more like 15 when we find our Hotel. When we arrive at the Hotel, we are informed that our room is not ready and may not be ready for another 4 hours. Yuk. We put our bags into the Hotel porter’s storage.

Julie in fact has a business meeting elsewhere. Apparently it is quite a train trip to the meeting. She goes off pretty much straightaway. A few photos from her.

In the mean time, I am stuck in the Hotel lounge waiting for our room to become available. It is really not that bad, probably better than our actual room in many ways, but I still hate it. After a couple of hours, I have had enough so go out to get some lunch and a look around.

When I finished I went back to the Hotel and our room was ready at last. I drag the luggage out of storage and up to the room which is small and somewhat disappointing after the fine Airbnbs we had been having. I then decide to have a look around the area, checking out possible restaurants for tonight.

David had warned me that the cyclists were very dangerous and he was right as they would appear out of nowhere at very high speeds coming close to knocking me down on a few occasions.

I have had enough so go back to the Hotel. I have a brief nap to freshen up. Julie had said that she thought she would be back by 6:00 so around 5:45 I go down to the lounge to wait for her because, of course, she had left before we had room keys / allocation. I had just ordered a G&T when Julie comes in very tired and ravenously hungry. It is as if I do not have time to finish my G&T, I did anyway, but I have to move quickly.

There are several restaurants around the hotel with outdoor areas in the street in front. I had looked at some of them earlier and they are all mostly the same, but I had decided one of them would be reasonable. Julie agrees with the choice. We talk with the waiter outside and he indicates there is an indoor area too across the way. We settle in to the place which has some Mexican food on the menu.

Not surprisingly Julie wants to go to bed early after a very long day.