Amsterdam. Last Day.

Usual story. Up early. Shower and down to breakfast. Then on the bus and off for a tour of the canals of Amsterdam. All the quaint thin houses pass our window from the canal boat as we meander onward through the canals past the house boats of which there are two and a half thousand of them. The architecture is so old and typically Dutch. 

Bicycles line the footpaths as this is the favoured mode of transport. We sit and marvel at the sights. What a wonderful way to take in the sights. Back on the bus we make our way to Ultrecht about forty five minutes away. Along the way we stop at a windmill for a photo opportunity. 

These windmills have to be maintained in working order so that they do not deteriorate. Next we travel through the lush green countryside and fields surrounded by irrigation waterways.  The cows and sheep look so well fed and watered. It was a feast for the eyes. Next we travelled through an affluent suburb with huge houses that were truly magnificent.  Fortunately the weather was great with a lovely sunny day of thirteen degrees [mid April] . It did not feel that cold but quite mild. I only wore a light coat. They drove us back through Ultrecht to our boat -The Travel Marvel Sapphire for lunch. What a feast. We ate shell pasta with artichokes and sun dried tomatoes with parmesan. It was my favourite meal on the boat. Heidi had wine but I did not feel like any at lunchtime and wanted to write for the afternoon. For dessert I ate a chocolate brownie with custard and fresh fruit.After lunch we went to the lounge where our resident pianist was playing the piano. We settled in with a cup of grunner tee and started to write. The boat was going to be travelling for the afternoon and night. We were underway.A short while later we came to our first loch sitting in it for a while till we were ready to go through. Heidi chatted up all the older gentlemen on board as we travelled through. All the staff stared at her as she was the only young person on board. First loch done and dusted. Only sixty-eight more to go. All of a sudden the emergency alarm goes off and fire drill was on. We all congregated in the lounge and had our names ticked off.Not much to practice just how to put on your life jacket.Then back to normal and floating down the Rhine. In the afternoon I sat in the lounge writing and doing word search. I met a lovely lady from Warrugal who had written a book about her family history and published it. We chatted and searched and searched the internet for her book and had a lovely cuppa with a simply divine piece of layered cake. Life could not get any better than this. The views out the window are simply stunning. Every night we meet in the lounge for the next days briefing. Gunther our cruise director tells us the agenda for the next day. It is called the Port Talk. Tonight is the Captain's dinner and after the talk we all queue up to go in. The captain greets us with a glass of champagne and a long stemmed elegant red rose. We feel very special. For dinner we ate vegetable lasagna with a salmon fillet.Fresh fruit for dessert. Back in our room at nine pm we collapse into bed. The TV was not even turned on. We slept through till the morning. During breakfast we found out that we had missed Cologne cathedral so up on deck we just glimpsed the top of the two steeples. Gunther had told us that we would not be stopping in Cologne due to demonstrations and they felt it be too unsafe. We are now floating past Cologne and onto Bonn for the afternoon.