We arrived in Amsterdam after flying through the night. We were met at the airport by a pre-arranged taxi and delivered to our hotel. It was well before check-in time but they allowed us to check in anyway. We are right on the water and the cruise terminal is right outside of the hotel so we should have no trouble getting to our ship.
The view from our hotel
This week is Pride week in Amsterdam and the highlight of the week is a Pride Parade on the Canals. There were groups of people gathering in and around our hotel. Most of the boats had a theme and the people on the boat were dressed to the theme.
Google Boat
Flintstones Themed people waiting for their boar
We walked to the location where we were supposed to take our Canal Tour, and had a nice tour of the city by waterway. At one point our captain took us to a part of the Pride Parade in a canal, it’s hard to show in pictures but there were thousands and thousands of people on the sides of the canals, on bridges and on boats. It was a huge festive party and we got to be right in the middle of it, it was fun!
Pride Parade
We also went on some of the quieter canals and saw a lot of the old architecture. It was a very nice ride.
Our Boat in the canals
After our Canal Tour we walked to a wine store to get wine to take on the cruise, then we walked to the Ann Frank house but it was completely enclosed and the line was very very long so we decided to walk back to the hotel.
After a shower and a few minutes to relax we will be meeting Cindy a woman from the Netherlands who lived with us for a year when our kids were little and was their Au Pair. We have kept in touch all of these years and she comes to the US sometimes, but this will be our first time visiting her in Amsterdam. She will come to the hotel and have dinner with us.
Post Dinner update – we had a lovely dinner with Cindy and her friend Astrid. Lots of laughs and memories.
We slept only a couple of hours on the plane last night and we have had a very full day with 15000 steps of walking already so I think we’ll head to bed after dinner. Tomorrow we leave on the cruise ship which should be docked right outside of our hotel by the time that we wake up. I didn’t have a lot of time to edit pictures today so I’ll add more as I have time.