About the Dutch

We made it! After a longer than normal flight which took us over New Foundland, the southern tip of Greenland and the northern tip of Iceland (north of the volcano), we arrived in Amsterdam at 10 a.m. Sunday(which is 7 hours ahead of Topeka time). The flight was uneventful but not the easiest to get a decent sleep. It was a crowded plane but Chris & I had the window side (Dad was seated smack dab in the middle of the row of 5).

The Amsterdam airport was busy and it took us a while to connect with the Uniworld guide, but eventually we were loaded into a bus and transported to the dock where the River Ambassador was waiting. It would be a couple hours before we could get in our room so we opted for a quick look into the city.

As I had experienced before, it is easy getting around in Europe and feeling comfortable on public transportation. We walked to the center of the city and caught a cable car to the Van Gogh museum. Even though we were dead tired, we saw the more than 200 works by Van Gogh plus many of his contemporaries of the impressionist era. My favorite was "Sunflowers." Because we were not so good with the language, somehow we rode the cable car back for free (let's hope the conductor isn't reading this). We tried, but no one seemed to know what we should do, so we just got on and rode.

My thoughts on Amsterdam: it's not that impressive. Everywhere we went (whether through the center of the city or riding the bus from airport) we saw lots and lots of trash and graffiti and most of the buildings are square and non-descript.

Our boat set sail at 5:00 and we are now slowly cruising up the Rhine (runs south to north) heading for Cologne tomorrow. Until then...