Boarding Day

Today had a few interesting diversions.  We had arranged a car to pick us up at the Airport Sheraton at 11AM and bring us to the NH Amsterdam City Center hotel where the cruise representatives were to meet all the cruise passengers.  What we didn't realize is that there are 2 hotels with similar names, the NH Amsterdam City Center and the NH City Center. Of course, our driver delivered us to the wrong one. When we got to the lobby and discovered that the Avalon representatives were not there, we experienced a few minutes of panic.  While I asked the receptionist to get us a taxi, Ray went outside to see if our driver had left.  Luckily, he was just getting back into the van and Ray was able to stop him.  Once the driver rechecked his paperwork, he realized the mistake and took us to the correct hotel.  Since this now made him late, he got there by the most expedient route - navigating around bicycles and scooters, going the wrong way down several one way streets (we would call them alleys) and once driving onto trolley tracks to get around a truck blocking the road.  It was an interesting ride, but we arrived safely and in plenty of time.

Avalon had a conference room set up as a reception area where we could have coffee while waiting for our 1st tour.  We met several of our fellow passengers while waiting.  At 2PM we headed to the bus for a tour of Zaanse Schans,  which is sort of the Williamsburg of the Netherlands.  They have moved examples of some of the historic windmills here and recreated some of the typical Dutch artisan shops.  We toured a windmill used for grinding various material into dye powders, which were ultimately mixed with linseed oil to make artist's paint.  There were also windmills used to cut lumber, mill flour, and pump water out of swamps.

After the Windmill, we toured a shop producing Gouda cheese and another showing how wooden shoes are made.   There were some really unusual and beautiful wooden shoes in their historic display wall.  You can see below that Ray & I both tried som, on, but I don't think these were our size.   Of course, each demo ended with a gift shop.

The tour bus brought us to the ship a little after 5pm. Tonight's agenda included the obligatory life jacket safety drill, a champagne reception where the officers were introduced and we were briefed on what to expect on a river cruise, and then dinner.  We immediately discovered several differences between a river cruise and an ocean cruise.