Netherlands Day 2 Amsterdam to Maarssen

The next morning my wife and I were up early and had an expensive, but great breakfast at the Hotel Mercier. We had the morning to ourselves so we headed out on a walking tour of Amsterdam. This is a shot from our hotel as we were leaving.

More photos from the canal trip can be found on my website.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog we arrived in Amsterdam the day after Kings Day which is a huge celebration in the Netherlands. The streets had a lot of trash around. Early in the morning the trash collectors were out. Amazing how the trash trucks negotiate the narrow streets.

We notice there were public pissers placed all over town. This truck was going around and picking them up. I’m not sure what the women do. There also was, what appeared to be, a septic truck working the streets.

We walked down to Westerkerk which was near our hotel. From there we walked along the canal to Anne Frank House.

We then decided to find the Floating Flower Market. There didn’t appear to be a lot of flowers but there were a lot of bulbs.

Walking along the canals we stopped at the Dam before heading down to Central Station.

After spending the morning walking around Amsterdam we returned to our hotel and met up with the rest of the group. We had a taxi scheduled for noon which would take us to the Locaboat Base in Loosdrecht where we would pick up our boat. The goal was to sail the boat, on the canals from Loosdrecht in a circle route that would roughly take us to Utrecht, Gouda, Leiden, Amsterdam and back to Loosdrecht. As I mentioned earlier this was an attempt by Savvy Nomads to determine whether they wanted to add this trip to the boat tours they offer. There were many unknowns and we were along for the adventure.

This boat was to be our home for the next week. It was late in the afternoon when we started our adventure. The Locaboat folks insisted on giving us a demonstration of how to operate the boat in spite off the fact that Dave had sailed similar boats many times. Dave and Sara biked into town to pick up some supplies while I waited at the boat.

While we waited I walked around taking bird photos. There were a number of Common Wood-Pigeons around so I tried to photograph one.

We had only gone a short distance on the boat when we encountered our first locks and draw bridge at Mijndense Sluis Loenen aan de Vecht. To say they had a nice racket going is an understatement. The Locks and drawbridge is the only way to reach the canals from the Locaboat Base. As I recall they charge five Euros to transit to the canal. This a shot of Sara getting ready to tie off while we waited for the locks to open.

This seemed to be a fairly well to do area. Most of the houseboats were quite fancy and some of the homes looked like mansions to me.

This is a small boat we encountered as we approached Maarssen where we would tie up for the night. The Savvy Nomads were used to traveling in rural France and being able to tie up just about anywhere. In the Netherlands there were designated places where you were allowed to tie up.

We tied up for the night. There was electrical service at the docks but we couldn’t figure out how to use it. There was a help number but when we called it was all in Dutch. That evening we walked around town looking for a bakery where we could purchase some fresh bread in the morning. Maarssen seemed to be a sleepy little town with not much going on in the evening.

 

 

 

Netherlands Day 1 Amsterdam

In late April and Early May we spent two and a half weeks traveling in the Netherlands. We had always wanted to visit the Netherlands to see the tulips. A couple of our friends (David and Sara) from Duluth, Minnesota run a travel agency that specializes in wine canal tours in France. We found out they were going to do an exploratory canal boat tour in the Netherlands so we signed on. We caught a late night flight, with Dave and Sara, from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Amsterdam arriving late in the morning. We met the other couple (Lisa & Jim) from Seattle, Washington at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

More photos from the canal trip can be found on my website.

We encountered our first problem at the airport. Since we were going to need cash on the boat to pay for community food my wife stopped at an ATM and attempted to get some cash. Her debit card did not work. The bank sent us an e-mail indicating that their debit card was blocked in the Netherlands. Since we put a local chip in our primary phone we couldn’t call home to try and straighten the problem out we were stuck. We later used a travel card to get cash and that worked. Later we activated out other phone which allowed us to call the bank only to discover that the debit card was blocked in most of Europe. This was contrary to what we were told at the bank.

We all caught a train into Central Station in Amsterdam and after a little effort caught a tram out to the Hotel Mercier where we were all staying.

My wife and I love walking around cities so shortly after checking in we met up with the tour leaders in their room at the hotel. This is a shot of the ceiling in their room which turned out to be the honeymoon suite.

We went for a late afternoon walk along the canals.

Lots of bikes. In the Netherlands bikes and scooters share the bike lanes.

It was a nice afternoon but a bit on the chilly side as everyone was wearing there winter coats.

Cheese is big in the Netherlands. This was the first cheese store we encountered.

An interesting way to provide outside access for cats.

We arrived in the Netherlands the day after Kings Day. Some of the buildings still had their decorations up.

We finally found a street consisting mainly of restaurants. It’s hard to make a choice when there are so many to choose from.

We finally picked a pizza place that looked like it might be warm inside.. This was the group that would be making a seven day boat trip on the canals.