Day Four - Our Last Day in Amsterdam and We Are Sailing

On Day Four, we woke up on the boat but we were still in Amsterdam! We had a canal cruise scheduled for the morning. It was cool and rainy but our little canal boat had a top so we stayed warm and dry. It was actually VERY warm on the boat but when we opened the window, it rained on the lady behind me.

I loved seeing everything from the water. Our tour guide narrated along the way.

Have I told y'all about the dancing houses? Amsterdam is built on wooden pilings shoved deep down into swampy land. There is water down there which eventually erodes the wood and the houses start to list. Luckily they are built side by side so they gently lean onto the next house. They were built in the 17th century, which was the Dutch Golden Age, along the Amstel river.

The reason that the buildings are so narrow is because they were taxed by their width. Most of them are only 15 feet wide!!

This is one of my favorite shots - looking through the bridges . . .and more bridges.

The architecture is just beautiful.

People who live along the water have their little boats tied up along the way.

This is a church right on the water.

Can you see the hooks up on top of the buildings? They can still use them to haul furniture, etc. to the top floors!

It was truly gorgeous - even on such a gloomy day.

Their music conservatorium is supposed to be excellent.

After our canal tour, we headed back to the boat because the AmaSerena was ready to go! We went to our room and opened the sliding glass door to watch the beautiful scenery. I did homework while Mark took a nap.

The grass was so green - like Ireland! The leaves were beginning to turn and everything was just beautiful!

This was a cool suspension bridge. We saw quite a few bridges!! The sun started to shine!

Every day they had sip and sail around 6 p.m. where they served a different beverage for each day. It looks like maybe this was a Cosmopolitan kind of day!

The dinner was delicious!! This was some sort of a stuffed chicken breast. The food was gourmet and smaller portions (like in one of the James Beard award winning restaurants), but don't panic. There was always a choice of grilled chicken or salmon or steak and you could get a burger at lunch and maybe dinner, too.

It was so cool to see the lock! I had never traveled through a lock and during this trip, we went through a lot of locks!! The problem was that the lock was broken and so we had a four hour delay. During the night, our captain "raised the boat" and had the engine at full throttle trying to make up the time so that we wouldn't miss time in our port. He made up all but 15 minutes of that 4 hours! I woke in the middle of the night and was slightly queasy and everything in our room was rattling - because of the rise and speed. I took a dramamine and went back to sleep.

We are on our way down (or up?) the Rhine headed to Cologne, Germany!

More to come! If there are any details that you want to hear about, let me know!