We decided to escape the city and see some Dutch countryside. We took the local bus to an area north of Amsterdam called Waterland. It is full of small towns and farms. The bus ticket allowed us to get on and off all we wanted. The 1st stop was the town of Broek, which is like Amsterdam in miniature with wooden houses on canals. Our next stop was Marken which is an old fishing village. From there we took a 30 minute ferry ride to Volendam which is a busy local to...

We thought we would try to take it easy today since it was supposed to rain. We failed. We had a little mist this morning and then it became just cloudy with a little sun. We ended up walking another 10 miles to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. In case anyone is wondering, yes I did go into one of the Amsterdam "coffee shops". I walked in, looked around and walked out. Lets just say you could get high on just taking a few deep breaths. Bonnie stayed outsi...

We had a full day walking around Amsterdam (12 miles by the phone app) and I think we are both broken. We wanted to see the Anne Frank House and heard it was best to get to there early. It is fairly close to our hotel - we got there about 8:30 and we were in by 9:15. Good thing we got there early - by the time we got out the line was almost 3 blocks long. It was interesting and sad at the same time. They still do not know who exposed the family to the local gesta...

We arrived in Amsterdam early in the morning. We had breakfast with our new friends Craig and Carole and said our goodbyes. We got off the ship, did some walking around Amsterdam, then came back to the ship for lunch. They even said we could stay for dinner if we wanted since they do not leave until 11:30PM (we declined). The overall experience on Viking was the best we have had on any cruise. We caught a cab to the hotel. It is nice but the room is VERY small. T...

Last evening we went on our Brauhaus (AKA pub) tour. We went to 4 different Brauhauses that served the unique to Cologne, Kolsch beer. It is a light beer and very hoppy. Not our favorite but the experience was fun. We love to get out with the local people. Today we continued to cruise towards Amsterdam. We had a very heavy shower in the morning and thought we were in for rainy day. It cleared up just as we docked in Kinderjdijk. It is a well preserved area with s...