Off the ship and into a car

Wednesday 13/6, we left the ship after an early breakfast and then went on a self guided walk of Amsterdam. Guess who found two patchwork shops, side by side. One was very nice and friendly and had lots of traditional Dutch fabric, and also a large range of USA fabric. The other had modern Dutch fabric designed here and produced in some cheap country. The owner was not very helpful and so we spent little time here. This made up for the longer time spent in the first shop. We then collected our luggage and travelled by taxi to our hotel. After checking in, we then returned to the city, this time by train, to have a final farewell dinner with 2 of the 3 couples that we shared much of the cruise with. The train trip to the city was shared with lots of backpackers and others travelling from the airport to the city, standing room only. The train trip back was just as interesting with a diverse range of passengers, but plenty of seats this time.

Thursday 14/6 was a house keeping day, luckily because we slept in till 8:45. After breakfast, we headed off by taxi to Hertz and collected our hire-car, a new snazzy little Fiat that I call Gina. With the help of our GPS that we call Annie, we negotiated the freeway back to our hotel with no problems. Then, Jean sorted our washing while George searched for Laundromats on the internet. Having discovered 4 Laundromats nearby, we headed off to do some washing and drying. The closest Laundromat had closed down, so off to the second, a “full service” Laundromat. The owner does the washing (40 mins), drying (20 mins) and folding for you and for 7 Euro for 5kg of clothes. We had about 9kg, so two loads were set off. Some of our clothes couldn’t handle industrial drying, but that’s no problem, just come back in 40 minutes time and sort out what needs to be rescued from the drying. We went and had lunch and came back for the sorting, then headed off to the supermarket whilst the drying was in progress. In the supermarket, we found some SE Australian white wine for Euro 2.99 a bottle; are we being ripped off somewhere? After this, it was back to the hotel, some ironing and re-packing of clothes, and then a nice dinner in the hotel’s dinning room. Our plan for tomorrow is to head north of Amsterdam and to see where Gina and Annie will take us.