Trip Belgium and Holland in Springtime Day 12

Friday April 17th

Our last full day on this trip. We are taking by bus to Amsterdam for a boat ride on the canals.

Our 4 groups fit on two boats. 

The boats of course had windows and reflections showed up in my photos. I was disappointed but with some cropping it is ok.

We had commentary and it was very interesting. But too much for me to repeat here.

There was no "official" commentar about this house but I had to take the photo because of the two people (probably having breakfast) on the balcony.

This is the spot (and you have to be very fast with your camera) where you can see 7 bridges in a row.

This is also a famous bridge but only for pedestrians (and bicycles of course.) 

The tour took about an hour and we got out at the same place.

The trip leaders gave us several options what to do next. James and I opted for "walking with local guide".

There are strict guidelines in Amsterdam. There can not be more then 15 in one group and our guides are not allowed to even guide us to the place were we meet the guides with there flags raised. We all have to pay good attention walking. 

We are three walking groups and our local guide is Rene, and older gentleman. 

We are not totally happy with ours because he is not always good to understand and he spends forever at the place of the stock exchange talking about companies and money.

Of course every tour guide leads you through the "red light district". 

This was funny. One mayor some time ago had decided to have bilingual signes at what the call chinatown. He invited a Chinese dignatary for the ribbon cutting who immidiately laughed. The mayors wondered what was the matter and the Chinese person explained that they write vertically. The mayor should have checked in the beginning.

Because we had chosen not to come immidiately back after the boat ride and didn't have lunch on the ship we were given money. But we didn't have lunch in Amsterdam. We had taken the 2 pm shuttle back to the ship and after a cabin stop decided we needed a walk. The weather was pretty good. We were surprised to find that there were some cafes and tapas places close by which looked inviting. We had a very delicious onion soup each which carried us nicely over until dinner. 

Our ship is docked very close to the Batavia (museum). So we walked to have a closer look.

Captain's farewell dinner and many good-byes. We skip the entertainment because we do have to pack. 

Step count: 13,255    Not bad. Quite happy with that. And not even dancing ha-ha.

Trip Belgium and Holland in Springtime Day 11

Thursday April 16

A big deal happening today. Everybody says “the main reason for this trip”. Well, we had a glorious day. But all days were great so far anyway. 

From the bus: trees trimmed in a funny (to me) way.

The first tulip fields!

 

Our first stop was "Annemieke's Pluktuin". The only company they are welcoming as a group is Grand Circle because they supported them at the start. Annemieke's story is heartwarming. The end of the story is that she wanted to give young people with difficulties in their lives a job to ground themselves again, no matter how their productivity is each day. 

And her husband Peter is supporting her. She took some of his fields to plant tulips and later in the year all sorts of mixed flowers for "pick yourself". They were both wonderful friendly, kind and helpful people to us too.

We were tought the proper way to pick the tulips (grab at the very bottom and just pull ... with or without the bulb, doesn't matter). We each could pick 10. 

It was so much fun. 

They wrapped them for us with the room number written on the paper and put into the bottom of the bus.

And then we continued to Keukenhof. Yes, the Keukenhof which is only for about 6 weeks each year. I must say it was very good organized even though there were so many cars, busses, group of people. Then we were free to wander around. We had a paper map but it didn't do much good. We are good at map reading but if you didn't know which entry you came in you really need to study it. So James and I just wandered. It didn't matter.

The ship had given us lunch boxes and since it was passed noon we "dealt" with that so we didn't have to carry it any longer in the green OAT backpack, only in our bellies. We could not find a bench but these stones.

A mechanical organ which played very loud and cheerful.

There was also an indoor flower show. We popped in briefly and the Proteas caught my eyes. 

But soon we decided to be rather outside.

Oh no. A whole stand with amaryllis ... and we can't take them with us.

I forgot to take a picture at the entrance when we arrived. So here is the map we had (which didn't really help us much). But we are back at the bus and soon on our way back to the ship.

Got text from Maren asking for the address of the ship, where to pick us up tomorrow.

Screenshot! That is where the ship is.

As soon as we arrived of course I wanted to take care of our tulips.

Randy had suggested the ice bucket. No way. That thing is way to little. Really don't want to cut the tulips short. The insert of the bathroom trash can is just right.

And some short tulips in a champagne glass. The first photo makes the tulips in focus but James out of focus.

And vise versa.

We were all greeted when returning with music. Vasil played New Orleans music. Nice.

It was around 5pm. It was a lot of driving. At 6 pm we needed to be in the lounge to hear the Disembarkation Briefing. At 6:45pm the Port Talk. At 7pm dinner.

But afterwards we went to our room to get sorted out a bit. Texting and emails. It has to be done sometimes. And later we had to keep our fingers crossed and then got the good news that William passed his driver's license road test. Congratulations! But it makes us think how time runs away fast.

The step count? 9,676 (to much bus-sitting)