A Riverboat Fantasy

Day 1Amsterdam

Arrive in Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, and transfer to your ship.* After boarding, the rest of the day is yours to relax or begin exploring the city on your own.

She says on behalf of both :

Our big adventure is now underway!

I guess before I write about the cruise, I should summarize the trip from Canada.  My Facebook friends will already know that I suffered a major setback in my packing and organizing the night before we left.  Traumatizing, it was!  I was sorting out things to go in my purse.  I picked up my leather passport case  and decided to check one more time to make sure I had my new passport and not the recently expired one.   The case was empty.  No problem; it had to be there somewhere nearby.  I cleared off the desk it had been on, and then the bed where my packed suitcase and carry-on bags were sitting.  Nothing.  Under the bed?   No. I dumped out my purse, then my carry-on.  Still no luck.  Finally, in the middle of unpacking my suitcase and frantically trying to remember when I had last seen it, I remembered that the previous day I’d scanned it and sent myself a copy so if it got lost or stolen in Europe, I’d have the information I’d need to get home.  Problem was, I’d stupidly left it in the scanner.  Thank goodness I checked when I did.  Somehow, I don’t think I would have made it very far by presenting an empty passport case to the airport security guys!

We travelled Swiss Air.  Since they don’t fly out of Ottawa, they provide a coach transport from the Ottawa train station to PET airport in Montreal.  We’ve done the transfer on past trips and it’s never crowded, but this time we were the only passengers, so we had our own private chauffeur and plenty of room to stretch out for the 2 hour trip.  That almost made up for the way Swiss Air packed us into their plane.  We’ve done Air Transat excursion trips to Cuba and the Dominican, so you’d think we’d be used to tourism togetherness, but this plane must have broken the Guinness Record for sardine packing!  But the food and the service were fine, we made our connecting flight from Zurich to Amsterdam by the skin of our teeth after another trauma at security, and the Viking people were there to meet us and transfer us to the boat, so it was all good.  (I won’t get into the security trauma except to say that Richard’s magnetic personality always sets of security alarms, and that he now knows the ins and outs, so to speak, of a full body search.)

It’s been my experience that the brochures don’t always reflect the reality, so it was a lovely surprise to see that this boat really does look the way Viking advertised it.   It’s a year old and beautifully maintained, and the staff are incredible.  We arrived mid-morning, and knew before we arrived that people from the previous cruise wouldn’t be leaving until noon, and we wouldn’t be able to get into our cabins until 3 PM, but the lounges began to fill early with jet-lagged, grubby travellers anxious to shower and change, and staff members did everything they could to make our wait bearable.  They fed us a wonderful buffet lunch, made sure we knew where the toilets and bar and coffee dispensers are, and took care of our luggage so we could wander around the city while we waited.    They also offered a walking tour of the downtown area of Amsterdam.  Our original plan had been to walk to the train station and take a hop-on, hop-off boat tour of the city but it was pouring rain and we were exhausted, so we talked ourselves out of that idea and convinced ourselves that it would be better to stay dry and sample the food and drinks on board while getting to know some of our fellow travellers.

At 3 on the dot, we received our keys and were shown to our cabin.  I think we were too tired to appreciate how bright and well thought-out the place is in a sleek Scandinavian style, but we were happy to unpack and shower and have a chance to lie down for a bit.  We’d been told that there was an introductory get-together at 6:30 that we should attend so we could hear the plans for the following day, so we made sure we were awake for that, but being a practical, self-disciplined pair, we decided that we’d come back to the cabin right afterwards and skip dinner; we needed sleep much more than another meal, after all.  But during the meeting, such delicious smells wafted through the room that we agreed that perhaps we should go into the dining room for a bowl of soup or a light snack before turning in.

Then they brought the menu.  Hmm….lobster bisque sounds nice.  Oh, look!  Surf and turf with king prawns.  Then the gooey chocolate dessert for me and the cheese plate with assorted Dutch cheeses for Richard.  And, of course, the complimentary wine that accompanies lunch and dinner, and the great-smelling coffee, and two hours later, we rolled back to the cabin and I swear we were asleep before our heads hit those cloud-soft pillows.  Heaven!