Woke up this morning docked in Amsterdam. The Central Station is about 100 meters to our right as we face the city and the hotel we'll spend the next two nights is about the same distance to the left. The streets and canals radiate out in a semi-circular pattern from the Central Station. We weren't aware that the City of Amsterdam has more canals than Venice! Still as part of the cruise, this morning we are on a canal tour. Lots of interesting things to see. Most notable is the number of houseboats that line the canals. They are everywhere. All sizes, shapes and colors. There is a housing shortage, so this is an acceptable practice. One picture below shows a houseboat where you can see a chandelier hanging through a window. There are also BICYCLE everywhere. Some guide told us there are 809,000 bikes in the city - and 800,000 reported bikes stolen per year. That may have been a joke about the stolen bikes, but I don't doubt the number of bikes. There's of course the old city and the new city. Seems to be a staple for European cities - the ones we saw anyway.
We had time before lunch to do a little exploring in the city. Catty-corner across the street from the Rembrandt House Museum, we found a nice little public spot and a Coffeeshop. Note, if it spelled "coffee" it means they offer marijuana and hashish. If it's spelled "koffee", that means it's a real coffee shop - you can get coffee and food there.
After lunch on the boat, we were on a bus to Saanse Schans - a small Dutch village about 30 minutes away. Like the village in the Black Forest, I don't think this is where people lived, it's more like a showplace. There were many windmills and replicas of authentic Dutch establishments. We went into one windmill where the owner (manager?) told us that the main business of the windmill was to make dyes. We were somewhat surprised. They use imported woods and other commodities that they grind into powders that are used to make the dyes and paints. This was a huge industry back in the days of Rembrandt and the famous Dutch masters. Not so much now, but he told us it was slowly coming back. We also saw a couple of demonstrations of a couple of other things the village does for income. One, was making wooden shoes - clogs. They used to make them individually by hand, but now they have lathes that make it a few minute process as opposed to many many hours. The lathe is like one of the machines that makes extra key copies at a hardware store. They put a model in the machine and it shaves down a block to be an exact copy. Then they use a similar method to gouge out the inside. Interesting thing here. They mostly use poplar wood which is plentiful in the Netherlands. But, it is very porous so they need to let it "cure" for a few weeks before the shoe can be finished. To demonstrate how porous the new shoe is, the demonstrator poured some water into the shoe, covered the opening with his mouth and blew hard into it. The water virtually poured out of the toe! The second demo we saw was a young, rather pretty girl showing us how they make cheese - in particular Gouda. And of course there was a shop right after that where we could buy Gouda - about 8 or 9 different kinds. The samples were delicious!
So then came Saturday night and our final excursion with Avalon - a trip to the Red Light district of Amsterdam. The girls in the windows, the sex toys shops, people milling around in the street. Very crowded and very carnival like. Taking pictures of the girls was forbidden. Well highly discouraged anyway. One of the funny things were the outside urinals. Right out on a public corner. Only for men or possibly a very adventuresome female. I have a picture of one in use. It was about 10 PM and the sun was just going down. This was our last night of the cruise.
We had time before lunch to do a little exploring in the city. Catty-corner across the street from the Rembrandt House Museum, we found a nice little public spot and a Coffeeshop. Note, if it spelled "coffee" it means they offer marijuana and hashish. If it's spelled "koffee", that means it's a real coffee shop - you can get coffee and food there.
After lunch on the boat, we were on a bus to Saanse Schans - a small Dutch village about 30 minutes away. Like the village in the Black Forest, I don't think this is where people lived, it's more like a showplace. There were many windmills and replicas of authentic Dutch establishments. We went into one windmill where the owner (manager?) told us that the main business of the windmill was to make dyes. We were somewhat surprised. They use imported woods and other commodities that they grind into powders that are used to make the dyes and paints. This was a huge industry back in the days of Rembrandt and the famous Dutch masters. Not so much now, but he told us it was slowly coming back. We also saw a couple of demonstrations of a couple of other things the village does for income. One, was making wooden shoes - clogs. They used to make them individually by hand, but now they have lathes that make it a few minute process as opposed to many many hours. The lathe is like one of the machines that makes extra key copies at a hardware store. They put a model in the machine and it shaves down a block to be an exact copy. Then they use a similar method to gouge out the inside. Interesting thing here. They mostly use poplar wood which is plentiful in the Netherlands. But, it is very porous so they need to let it "cure" for a few weeks before the shoe can be finished. To demonstrate how porous the new shoe is, the demonstrator poured some water into the shoe, covered the opening with his mouth and blew hard into it. The water virtually poured out of the toe! The second demo we saw was a young, rather pretty girl showing us how they make cheese - in particular Gouda. And of course there was a shop right after that where we could buy Gouda - about 8 or 9 different kinds. The samples were delicious!
So then came Saturday night and our final excursion with Avalon - a trip to the Red Light district of Amsterdam. The girls in the windows, the sex toys shops, people milling around in the street. Very crowded and very carnival like. Taking pictures of the girls was forbidden. Well highly discouraged anyway. One of the funny things were the outside urinals. Right out on a public corner. Only for men or possibly a very adventuresome female. I have a picture of one in use. It was about 10 PM and the sun was just going down. This was our last night of the cruise.
