A Few Days in Amsterdam

The last full day and overnight of the cruise was spent in Amsterdam. We arrived very early in the morning, and once we got up we noticed that there were another four river cruise ships in the area. It seems that Amsterdam is 'the Miami of the Rhine', even though it is on the Ij River. For much of the late evening and the overnight we had been cruising through a long canal that connects the Rhine River with Amsterdam. The Rhine itself disperses into a fairly large delta in the form of lots of small rivers - and remember the Dutch are the masters of reclaiming land - so much of the landmass used to be the river delta. The Rhine River now flows out into the North Sea through Rotterdam.

We of course had one more day of touring here, which included a short bus tour, a canal cruise and a visit to the Rijksmuseum, or the National Museum, one of the finest in Europe. We'll continue our explanation in photos:

One of the last 6 windmills in Amsterdam,
according to our guide

Some of the old houses on the canals.

One of the houses on the Herengracht, that used to be where the rich
merchants lived. We checked out a few real estate offices and found
one like this with 5 bedrooms going for a mere 6.8 million Euros!!

The view along the 'Seven Bridges'. When lined
up properly, from a boat you can see under
seven bridges in a row

The outside of the Rijksmuseum. It just underwent
a massive renovation that had 3/4 of the building
shut for about 10 years

The new main entrance foyer

Most people come here to see Rembrandts. This
is one of his early pieces.

One of the few landscapes Rembrandt painted. He is much
better known for portraits and 'life scenes'

There is also space devoted to other Dutch artists. This is a
small Jan Vermeer painting. When looking at it, the
little red shutter seems to jump right off the canvas

The world famous 'Nachtwacht' or Nightwatch. Art historians now
believe that Rembrandt didn't paint the whole thing, but had some of his
students help out on the background figures. A small copy of the original had
also been commissioned which now hangs next to it. From that, you can
see that sections on the left side and bottom of the large painting have been
cut off, apparently to make it fit into a space in the Royal Palace. The small
copy shows all the missing bits.

Back on board in the evening, we were treated to a performance by La Strada, a violin and guitar trio based in Belgium, that travels around Holland and Germany as well. Tauck obviously has them entertain on many river cruises as we were told they were not to be missed.

As it turns out, they were every bit as good as their billing. Their music was from a wide range, and their performance was excellent. What a nice way to end off the cruise!!

On Monday morning we were transferred to our hotel - as it turns out, we could easily have walked, but it might have been unwieldy trying to drag our suitcases across the cobblestones. The Grand Hotel Amrath is very interesting. It was built around 1912 as the combined head office of six shipping companies all based in Amsterdam. It was built in the Amsterdam School of Art Nouveau with lots of embellishments and decorations. The shipping companies moved out after the war, and ultimately the city sold the building to a developer who made huge renovations to turn it into a hotel. It certainly is quirky - the rooms are all in wood; ours had the bathroom in an adjoining room, and it seemed like they had just lowered a modern, glass enclosed bathroom into the middle of it!

The hotel from outside.

As we stepped out of the hotel on one of our walks, the Google Maps camera car came down the side street. We'll have to keep checking to see if we've been immortalized (at least for the next year or so). Look for Prins Henrikkade 108 and check the street view. Who knows??

The view from our window.

The 'room within a room' bath. We could walk all the way around the
bathroom insert. The door on the other side doesn't open any more.

The elevator lobby. Everything has been redone in the
Amsterdam School Art Nouveau design.

We had lots of time to walk around the central city, and also joined some of our former shipmates on a walking tour they had booked ahead. Our guide was a retired professor of history from the University of Amsterdam,  very knowledgeable and interesting. He showed us parts of the city we would not have seen at all on our own. Here are some photos of our combined wanderings through the city:

                        

With our tour guide at the Anne Frank House.

The small statue of Anne around the corner from her house.
Many people don't even know it is there.

The Royal Palace

Near the Botanical Garden

All buildings need to be on some kind of support or
they will sink into the soft ground. Some of these
have been around since the 1600s, and have consequently
shifted a bit. These are some more extreme cases.

The Amsterdam Flower Market. All sorts of flowers, plants and
bulbs. And each one of these shops is actually floating in the canal!

As always, we had to find something interesting and different to eat - although apparently if we let Teresa's Larry make our pancakes for us, they would look something like this:

A proper Dutch Speckpannekoek - crepe-like pancake
with bacon cooked right in. Slather it with syrup
and dig in!

Delicious! That wasn't the only good meal we had, but we figure that all the walking we were doing was keeping us from putting on any weight. Our clothes were still fitting - but then we hadn't reached Bremen yet!