Coming to a close

Amsterdam - Day One

Woke up early this morning to watch the captain negotiate Amsterdam Harbor and dock. Opened the curtains. Fog so dense I couldn’t see the bank of the river. Occasional glimpses of ‘something’ through the fog. Enough to tell we were moving. Until the fog opened for a brief moment….and we weren’t moving. I looked to the left out of my window and there was a stanchion with a painter tied around it! He had navigated in zero visibility through the harbor and docked so softly I couldn’t even tell it...not even the sound of thrusters at work. As I complimented him later the docking he said he couldn’t see the dock until they were right up on top of it.

As one of the other passengers commented, he’s Dutch and seafaring is in their blood.

The day turned out to be extraordinary,,,in many ways. First, just to get it out of the way, there were enough requests from the cruise guests they did a special walking tour of the red light district. No, I didn’t go.

What I did do was go to the morning tour at the Hermitage Museum. There our tour group got a private showing of the recently discovered Rembrandt painting, “A Young Man.” Truly extraordinary. (There’s that word again. I seem to have run out of superlatives to use on this cruise.”)

What was unbelievable, though, was that after the docent had finished the tour and was taking us back to the beginning of the museum's recorded tour, I was lagging behind as usual. As we retraced our steps past the room with the Rembrandt hung I suddenly realized it was empty. I stopped and had a full 15 or 20 minutes by myself...yes, totally alone! No guards, no other cruise members. All by myself. Although I’m sure it was alarmed and I was being watched on closed circuit TV cameras, I could have touched the painting I stood so close.

Didn’t try to blog last night. One, we didn’t have an internet connection, and two, I was having too much fun having dinner with my new friends, the sisters from Reno and California, and their husbands, plus a couple from Columbus, Ohio.

The sister from California is a corporate lawyer specializing in non-profit law, and, - you guessed it - rather liberal. The husband of the other couple has a steel processing plant and is quite conservative. The sister is also a drop of water on a hot skillet...enthusiastic and quite brilliant (as are both the sisters.) The husband couldn’t leave well enough alone and started teasing the sister about conservative politics. It got quite lively with he and I fist-bumping several times as we thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

But it had to end, and Sebastian, my butler came to help me pack. Afterward, knowing I had to be up by 6:45 to get my luggage out of the room I went to bed.

Lots of reflections on the day, but I just haven’t written them down. I’m headed to bed. Maybe before you wake up in the morning I’ll have something, and something about today, which has been really full.

Just couldn't resist two pictures today. Notice any similarities?

If you’d like to see the rest of the pictures, click here.

Blessings and peace!