Earlier this week I told you about taking a Viking River Cruise along the Rhine River in Holland, Germany, France and Switzerland. And I told you that I had so much to share about that experience. Well, today I want to tell you a little about our time in Amsterdam.
When I left off, I had shown you pictures of our Stateroom and told you that we had spent the day walking around the Old Town. Well, now I want to show you what we did after we checked in onboard our ship, the Ingvi, after we arrived that morning. We did take a quick tour around the ship and found our way up on to the top deck, where we saw an amazing view of the city from the Rhine. And, we saw where we could practice some putting if we ran out of things to do. Also, the plants lining the center of the deck are herbs that the chef actually used when cooking our meals. On several occasions when they were grilling they brought the containers down and used the fresh herbs in our dishes. Talk about delicious!
Here you can see the many deck chairs ready for lounging as we cruised the Rhine. Also, you can see a view of the massive Central Train Station to the upper middle and right. The center is the old building, which is a beautiful example of Neo-Renaissance architecture. It is a central hub for Rail Europe.
The modern mixes with the old in some parts and is mostly separated in the Old City Center, where the older architecture and canal structure is preserved. That is what we were anxious to see.
And here is a better view of the Rhine. You can see how wide it is here. It is a main thoroughfare for transporting goods and people throughout this part of the world. Yet it always appeared to be clean and never had any foul smell like some rivers can when they are not healthy. And with as much traffic as was on this river, you would think it would have issues, but we never noticed any.
We did notice before we even got off the ship the amount of trips these ferry boats made across the Rhine. And they were not ferrying cars across, just people and bikes. It should have been a sign for us.
They were constantly packed and were on a continuous trek across, docking and dumping off the passengers and bikes and taking the next group across. I am sure this is not unusual, but since I have only been on two ferry boats in my entire life (once in Ireland on the River Shannon and once just last year in Smithfield, VA) this is something that is fascinating to me.
There was no end to the barges that go about their business in the channel, too. They would be with us all up and down the river for the remainder of our trip. And most of them appeared to have houses built on for the operators and their family to live in while they worked on the barge. Some had cars, boats and even swingsets for children. We were told that the families did live on them during the busy shipping season and would use the boats or cars to get around when in a port.
Pleasure boats were also a common site along the Rhine and this cute little community sat right across from where we were docked in Amsterdam.
We had finally seen enough from the top deck and were now ready to head into the Old Town. Until next time….
This is not a sponsored post. This is my experience from my trip with Viking River Cruises. Email me to find out how you can save $100 when you book your first cruise with Viking through their referral program.
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