First day on the river cruise. Leaving Amsterdam

We had a lovely buffet breakfast this morning. Gluten free bread is provided at each meal. I'll have to find my toasta bag so I can put my bread through the toaster. I ordered an omelette and stood and watched it getting made.

Then we hopped on a bus and had our tour of Amsterdam, seeing a little of what we'd seen from the canal boat yesterday and a lot more areas, wider out, but still within the city. The commentary was very good. That portion of the tour took an hour, and then we went to the Van Gogh Museum for just over an hour. It was very interesting listening to the stories behind each painting (via an audio guide tour), and watching the development of Van Gogh's style. I was disappointed that the 'Starry Night' painting wasn't part of the collection.

Next was an hour long drive to catch up with the boat at one of the locks. that turned out to be a bit of a tiki tour because the bus tried to access the dockside from the wrong direction, and ended up backing, then taking a shortcut through a shingle yard and meeting up with a shingle truck! Finally we got on track and found the boat.

It was straight in to lunch with multiple courses available to choose from. David and I had salad, a thin vegetable soup, and fish stew. The food policeman I live with was watching me so I didn't have the wine or dessert when they were offered.


After lunch we had the safety drill and everyone had to muster on the top sun deck and put on life jackets. It was so nice up there that we remained on that deck relaxing in deck chairs and taking in the sights as we passed through two locks. I'm guessing the temperature was around 22 degrees and the sky was partly cloudy.

It's a small world because I ended up sitting next to a woman on deck who is from Auckland, and who is gluten free AND who has just had surgery for a sprained ankle. We compared notes! I'm going to give her some of my language translation cards for GF.

We later attended a very long briefing by the tour director about upcoming tours. Several people were nodding off and it was all very complicated. Then it was time to get ready for dinner. WOW, what a wonderful meal it was! And, we sat next to the wife of the chef who was visiting the ship for a week - she was very nice and is intending to visit NZ next year.

Finally, there was a concert by a classical trio called La Strada. They were very good, but there was a very rude group of Aussies who talked their way loudly through the whole performance and really p-ed everyone off.