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Published: August 19th 2013
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Lock to the North Sea
Looking back to the lock after we'd passed through it. Amsterdam.
Before we even got to Amsterdam we had to pass through a lock at Ijmuiden which separates the North Sea from the North Sea Canal that leads to Amsterdam. I actually woke up early, went to the balcony, and thought we'd reached port. The ship had stopped it's forward movement and was moving close to what I thought was the pier. I looked forward and aft and saw what I thought were the ends of two docks that were were slipping between. What I thought were the ends of two docks were really the gates of the lock. We were soon moving forward slowly through the lock. It never registered with me that the front "dock" was gone! Tonight I'm going to try to be on my balcony for the whole maneuver. The lock lowered our ship below sea level.
This was our first tour sponsored by Carnival and it was much easier to find our cruise guide...we just went to the main theatre where all the tours assembled and waitid until we were called. We were tour 8 and wore little stickers with the number 8 on them so we could recognize ourselves. We never forgot which
tour we were on! lol
Amsterdam sf full of what I think of as very interesting architecture. My son-in-law may or may not agree with me...he's the architect in the family. I took several pictures of buildings I thought were interesting to show him, but he may already have seen them or he may think they're boring! To get it over with, the tour's first stop was for us to get a picture of a windmill. This windmill happens to be attached to a brewery. We got an extra treat when we were talking to our vantage point when we saw an electric car on the side of the street plugged into an electric outlet!
We were driven along a street where the Jews were pulled from their homes and taken to a theater for the night. Their children were separated from them and kept in a church. The adults were sent to concentration camps the next day but brave citizens saved those 500 children. Many were spirited out of Amsterdam and lived on farms for the remainder of the war. We didn't see them, but there are many memorials in memory of the lost Jews and the
brave people who saved as many as they could. We weren't able to drive by the Anne Frank house, but we did see the line of people waiting to get in. Our tour guide said the last people in line would wait at least 2 hours to gain entrance.
I thought you might enjoy seeing a picture of the Hotel de l'Europe. It was owned by Freddy Heineken. He died only a few years ago and now his family owns it. Apparently he used to sit at the bar in his hotel and drink his beer and if you visited the bar you might very well be sitting next to Freddy Heineken downing a few brews and you wouldn't even know it! His name is over the front door of the hotel, but I couldn't get a good picture of it.
A couple of things you just can't miss in Amsterdam, are the number of bicycles and the number of houseboats. There are 800,000 residents of Amsterdam (out of a population of 16.69 million in the Netherlands) and there are 600,000 bicycles! Bicyclists have the best cycling lanes I've ever seen and they are very respected. Pedestrians are
more fearful of bicyclists than people driving cars. And there are approximately 2,500 houseboats in the many canals of Amsterdam. The houseboats are for permanent residents and are owned, not rented. The government has decided no more houseboats can be added to the canals, so the only way to get one now is to buy an existing one. You can replace it with a new one, but you can't put a new one in a new space. And the houseboats truly look like homes. The have patio furniture, grills, and an occasional motorboat tied up for a trip to the store.
That's all for Amsterdam. You all do know that I've only been able to give you maybe 1/100 of our experiences, don't you? I wish I could share it all, but then you'd have to sit through the hours of tours that I did and you really don't want to see what my typing/writing would be like after all that time.
I still have to tell you about St. Petersburg...that was 2 FULL days of touring. I'll do that at home. It will be easier anyway since I won't be typing, then waiting
3 times as long as it took to type for it to show up on the screen. You don't even want to know how long it takes to get the blog software to work. But it's been worth it for me and I hope you've enjoyed it, too.
St. Petersburg to follow.
Carol
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MK
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FUN!!
Forgot to tell you that Marge is living in the Netherlands right now!! That would have been wild for you to run into her!! Glad you are having fun - looking forward to hearing all about the other 99/100s of the stories!