Day 1 - It's Our First River Cruise & We Have Arrived!

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This is our first river cruise – my mom was always a big fan – and we thought we would give this travel mode a chance. We’ve been on lots of cruises, mostly in the Caribbean, and a couple of bus tours of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, so this time we thought we would try to see how the river cruise compares. We looked around for cruise companies and decided Viking is probably the best, and a 15 day tour from Amsterdam to Budapest is probably a good representation. Viking is more “all-inclusive” than typical cruises, as it includes shipboard wi-fi, beer, wine, and soft drinks (but they’re only free with meals, if you want a drink in the lounge, there is a charge). The ships are small, with 95 staterooms and about 190 maximum guests. No one under 18 is allowed on board, so no kids activities. There are 3 decks with rooms and a topmost sundeck, but there is no pool. There is one restaurant, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (dinner is at 7:00pm). There is a lounge area at the aft of the ship with a bar, and some live entertainment at night. There is evidently a small buffet in the lounge for snacks in the off hours.

Our flight was uneventful, it was nice that we left at 12:55 in the afternoon, so we weren’t scrambling to get to the airport in the early morning hours. Jody had a run-in with some ancient Karen next to her in the plane who didn’t like Jody’s backpack encroaching on her floor space. The lady tried to get her seat changed, but the flight was full, and she just had to deal with it. I’m so glad to see that the airlines are doing more with streaming video for inflight entertainment. Unfortunately, I didn’t think much of the selections, and ended up watching the new Jurassic World movie (which was ok, but kind of predictable) and Nomadland (which was good but depressing). But quickly, it was 7:00am local time and we were arriving in Amsterdam. The airport transfer was easy, and we were at the ship by 9:30. Luckily, the room was ready, and we were able to catch a couple hour nap to recover from the flight.

By noon, we were up and around and ready for a quick lunch in the restaurant. The restaurant is small, and the seating is shared with other couples at larger tables, which we like. We met a couple from Pennsylvania(Jan & Kent), and a lady from California(Debbie) at lunch and they were very nice. They had already been in Amsterdam staying in a hotel for a couple of days, so they were fully rested, and we were still a little zombie-like from our flight.

The feel so far is much more like a cruise than a bus tour. The total group is less than 190, and there is a cruise director, so I assume over the next 15 days, we will meet most of the people on the boat, but most of our time is our own, except when heading out for shore excursions. There is generally an included shore excursion every day on the tour, and we are doing some of them. Others have been augmented with an additional paid shore excursion, or we have replaced the free one with a better paid shore excursion. Unfortunately, we made those choices long ago, so we’ll have to figure out what we’ve booked over the next few days.

This afternoon, there was a short walking tour of Amsterdam for about 1-1/2 hours with a local guide. They use the audio boxes like on the bus tours, and they kept our group size to below 10 people, so that was nice. Per was our guide, and though originally from Sweden he’s lived here for 28 years. Amsterdam has a population of about 900,000 in the city itself, with about 1.5 million in the metropolitan area. Amsterdam looks like a fun city, there’s lots of people, mostly young, and a LOT of bicycles. Since there are no subways in Amsterdam, and the city is either at sea level or below, so there are trams that run on rails to travel around the city. Unfortunately, this means the trams must stop for traffic, so travel by tram is slow. For that reason, most people ride bicycles. And most bicycles are “shabby” bicycles.

According to Per, bicycle theft is a big problem in Amsterdam, and if you have a really nice mountain bike, or electric bike, it will quickly be stolen. The answer to that is to ride an old beat up shabby bicycle that no one would want, use 2 really good locks, and hope for the best. Per said that in the 28 years he has lived in Amsterdam, he has had 14 bicycles stolen (actually probably 13 because he thinks one of the stolen bikes is just one that he thought was stolen when he was younger, but he may have just been too drunk to remember where he had parked it). In any case, there are more bikes in Amsterdam than I have seen anywhere. They even have 3-story parking garages just for bicycles!

The rest of our Amsterdam tour consisted of visiting the older parts of the city, built on a canal system with most of the buildings made of stone, but built on wooden pilings. Evidently, as long as the pilings remain submerged, all is well, but if the water levels drop, the tops of the wood pilings can be exposed to air where they will dry out and deteriorate rapidly. Once the pilings deteriorate, the building begins to tilt. Once tilted, it cannot be returned to straight, it can only be prevented from further tipping. There were a few buildings where the tilt was dramatic! There is the coffee shop district where marijuana is sold, also a former hippie Flower Power district where people live ob houseboats in the canal and decorate bicycles with flowers since its heyday in the 1960’s.

We got back to the ship around 5:00, and probably should have gone back out for a little shopping, but we decided a rest would be better. So, we relaxed around the room and showed up for the 6:15 orientation in the Lounge. Turns out, there are only 165 people on the boat, and it appears there is enough water to take us all the way to Budapest. There have been droughts and low water levels in the rivers of Europe lately, and there was concern that we may need to swap boats halfway through to bypass the low water level. But it seems that our route is not currently on the list of too low water levels, and our trip will be proceeding without interruption.

The crowd at the orientation was older than or regular cruises, but that may just be because of the “no under 18 rule” which limits younger families. Everyone was nice, and it looks like this will be a fun trip! Right after the briefing, we headed over to dinner and sat with two other couples at a table for 6. As soon as they spoke, we realized we were with the Australians! Sue and Murray and Sue and I forget his name were great and such fun to talk to! They have been on several road trips around the United States and we were happy to share our common experiences with our motorcycle adventures.

We probably should have stayed later after dinner and had coffee, but we were both getting tired from jet lag so we made our apologies and headed back to our rooms to get ready for bed. During the night, we leave Amsterdam and should arrive in Kinderdijk, NL around 8:00am. Our shore excursion to the Kinderdijk Windmills leave after breakfast at 8:30. Should be a great day!

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