We are riding the boats today; the Canal Boats, that is. The ones we see slowly moving past our apartment windows each morning and evening. Those are the ones we'll be on today.
We walk over to just in front of the train station to board the Stroma/Gray Line "100 Highlights Canal Boat Tour" leaving at 10:15am. It's a one hour tour. Used both their app on our iPhones and their on-board narrative for descriptions of what we were seeing/passing. Sometimes they talked at the same time and I had one earbud in each ear listening to each narrative.
Water, ticket, map, and snacks. Ready to go canal cruisin'.
Took lots of pictures. It was colder out than it was supposed to be, according to the weather report yesterday (we flipped days because this was going to be better, but yesterday got sunny in the afternoon. Go figure.) Everyone has heavy coats on because it is so cold.
Too beautiful. This is the Dutch-designed EYE Film Museum.
Too funny. This is what they use to sweep their streets with. We see many of them.
After lunch at McDonald's, we boarded the Hop On Hop Off canal boat at the back of Anne Frank’s house at 12:32pm and make a full loop around the orange route.
Next, we rode the blue route all around in the opposite direction which included a few different canals. We had walked most of these canals when touring around the city, but it was fun to see the city from the boat.
Buildings with triangle top facades and shutters on their windows were warehouses in their previous life. Now they've been turned into expensive apartments or homes.
Only place on the canal where you can see 6 bridges.
The "Blue Bridge" used to be a blue bridge, but they rebuilt it in the style of the Paris Pont Alexandre bridge and couldn't part with the name so Blauwbrug it is.
These boats didn't use head phones; they had a tape running in four different languages. So a couple of times when the English announcement was made it was too late to get a picture. The captain of each boat also added some good information.
The Train Station IS really beautiful.
And this is how all of the bicycles end up in the canals.
The King and Queen are STILL in town, so there is an added military presence all over the city.
Work continues around the city keeping the 500 year old canals in good working order.
Dinnertime rolled around and we happen to be near our favorite Pancake House (OK, so we planned it that way) so at 4:30 we had pancakes in the Anne Frank area at the Pancake place we ate at earlier. I had the Dutch Poffertjes. They are very small (half dollar sized) fluffy pancakes. Served with butter (not much) and powdered sugar. I had mine with a little bowl of whip cream and it was delicious. Pat had bacon and apple Dutch pancakes (thinner than American pancakes but thicker than crepes) and it was just as good as the one he had the other day.
We waited for a boat in the cold wind, but after we boarded and sat down we found out it's only going as far as the train station area, not all the way to the stop closest to our apartment. So we walk home from near the train station.
Remembering that the citizens of Amsterdam are starting to gather at Dam Square for the Remembrance Day ceremonies, we walk down to check it out. We can see the chairs all set up and there are barricades up around where they are going to walk in from the palace. It’s two-deep around all the barricades and we walk around the back side of the palace to get around to our place.
Stopped at the grocery store for water and ice cream. We found the Remembrance on TV and observed the 2 minutes of silence with them at 8pm and then their national anthem.
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