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Friday 17th February 2017
Cruise: N703
Port: Amsterdam
Sea Conditions: Calm
Weather: Overcast with spots of rain
After our lie-in yesterday, we were taking no chances with oversleeping this morning. We had a tour booked! Fruit Juice, coffee, hot chocolate and pastries arrived promptly at 7am as a back up alarm call and we got ready for our trip before heading down to the MDR for a civilised breakfast.
Jess was surprised that she could order a starter and main course for breakfast!! Fruit for starters and a selection from the English Breakfast menu for main course. Thank goodness she didn’t ask for the dessert menu!!
We arrived promptly for our tour – as did everyone else. We were pretty much the last people to board the first coach … and we were 20 minutes early! Our tour was called Windmills and Edam. Joopi was our guide, Sam the driver.
Our first port of call was at Zaanse Schans. An traditional village just outside of Amsterdam featuring the traditional Dutch buildings and windmills. After wandering through the village, the first stop was at a clog making factory/museum. The chap told us about the old way of making clogs – took about 2 hours to make a single clog!, then demonstrated the modern way – taking about 5 minutes per clog, using several machines although the final stages were hand finished. All clogs are make out of fresh wood – so fresh that when he blew into the clog, a load of water sprayed out! After this, the clogs are dried slowly for 2 weeks and become much tougher and hard-wearing.
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After a little shopping, we had a drive through Beimeister a village below sea level on our way to Edam.
Edam was a very pretty town built on canals. We walked from one end of the town to the other. All the local cheese makers brought their cheeses to sell in Edam and eventually were named Edam. Edam (the town) is named after the River E (in the same way that Amsterdam – named after the river Amstel, etc.
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Final stop of the tour was at the Henri Willig cheese factory and we saw the traditional way that Edam is made. They aslo make variants on the cheese – garlic, cumin, pesto, chilli and a few more! They had also introduced a Jersey version as they’d just bought some Jersey cows. That was Callum & Jess’ favourite.
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We’d been really lucky with the weather today – just a few spots of rain whilst out but when we got back to the ship, it was really overcast.
Lunchtime and Callum and Jess tried out the burger bar by the pool and mum the pizza place. I headed to the buffet and we found a table in the covered pool area. It was much busier onboard at lunchtime than we thought it would be.
After lunch, Mum had a little siesta (she hadn’t had much sleep the night before) so I took Callum and Jess out for a wander to leave Mum with some peace & quiet. First stop was shuffleboard. It took a few goes for Jess and Callum to work out how much strength they need to get the disk down to the other end, but they got the hang of it in the end and did really well. Round to the other side of the ship and this was set up for quoits. More throwing practise needed from them both!! Thankfully the chessboard was being used!!
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Back to the cabin and we needed to start getting ready for dinner this evening. Whilst everyone was getting ready, Callum and Jess amused themselves by playing Uno.
Tonight was another Smart Casual Night and we decided to try The Beach House. You couldn’t book but turned up about 7.30pm and we taken straight to our table. With a £7.50 cover charge per head, it seems to have put the masses off from dining here (it used to be free with a surcharge payable on one or two dishes).
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Jess was brilliant at tea tonight, trying new things. Guacamole (liked), ribs (not liked), Fajitas (liked) fried onions (eaten), bananaberry crush mocktail (really liked – and this was after declaring on Day 1 she didn’t like Mocktails!).
Jess chose Fajitas for her main course, Callum the ribs, I had the fillet steak cooked on lava stone and mum chose the Seafood (which came on a huge kebab!). All really nice but alas no room for pudding.
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Night cap and we decided to go back to the Glass House and see if service was any better in the other areas. Thankfully, normal service had been resumed, Callum and Jess entertained themselves with Uno (Jess won overall tonight) whilst Mum and I enjoyed a glass of wine (Eradus Sauv Blanc for Mum, the FMC for me). The kids had mocktails – they wouldn’t make a alcohol free Strawberry Dacquiri for Callum so the waitress suggested a Pussy Foot which he liked. Jess had another Bananaberry Crush.
We got back to the cabin and noticed it was a little foggy outside (you couldn’t see a thing!) and when we heard the foghorn sound, we were very grateful our cabin was at the back of the ship!
