20240828 Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 27/27 - Amsterdam to Montreal to The Villages

Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 27/27 - The travel day getting home

Nothing starts your travel day better than waking up to this text: 

Your flight AC901 to Montreal is delayed because airport limitations on an earlier flight caused the scheduled aircraft to arrive late and will now depart at 13:25 from Gate E2. We apologize and are working to get you on your way.

Oh well, we have several hours at Montreal airport, so this shifts one of those hours to Amsterdam.

Getting off a river cruise is weird when you're used to ocean cruising. First, your bags don't have to be out until 45 minutes before your scheduled departure from the ship. Second, your bags are just placed by the exit and then taken to your transfer vehicle when you exit. Third, for us, we were again docked next to another Viking vessel so we had to walk through it to leave. Finally, we didn't have to scan our cards to leave. Very different, indeed.

In less than 30 minutes, we arrived at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

Lovely sunflowers outside the airport

Check-in went well as did immigration but security was another story. Both my backpack and carry-on caused alerts. The guard passed the backpack but needed to look in my carry-on. A power converter and a jewelry roll with some watches apparently was suspicious and had to be swiped and scanned for illicit materials. This resulted in essentially completely unpacking and repacking one side of my stuffed carry-on. Yea. With that behind us, we headed for the Aspire Lounge to kill the three hours before our flight. 

The lounge was roughly 675 miles from our gate. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but it was a hike. Just before we got there, we met up with fellow cruises from our flight who said not to bother. They were just there and there was a queue. How long? 105 people! On a Wednesday. At 10 A.M.! Yikes!

With our plan for the lounge effectively killed, we walked the 863 miles to gate G7 (they changed our gate from E2 to G7 right as we checked in) and found a place to sit and wait for our flight. Terminal G has absolutely nothing in it. No bars, no eateries, nothing. So far, not a fan of Schiphol Airport.

We boarded per the delayed schedule. Once again, we got a Boeing 787 Dreamliner with individual seat pods in Business Class.

Montreal was a zoo. We had to go through security again and all the security lines were stopped as US Customs, yes, we cleared US Customs in Canada, was falling behind. After a few minutes, they started up again with 20-year-old standards. Take laptops out of bags? Yup. Remove shoes? Check. The only thing we didn't have to do was take out our liquids. Did they have body scanners? Of course not so my hip set off metal detector. Still, I didn't have to unpack and repack my carry-on like in Amsterdam.

What did pay off was Global Entry. Everyone else turned into the long Customs line. We walked up to the camera, waited for the green light, and walked to an agent. He looked at us and said, "Arlona and Garry Kolb?" We nodded. "Welcome home." Less than a minute to clear Customs. Booyah.

We made our way to the Maple Leaf Lounge for the 2.5-hour wait until boarding for Orlando. Snacks and cocktails smoothed the wait.

Boarding started right on time and ended quickly. So quickly that the pilot requested a move-up in the schedule and got it. The flight was bumpy but we got in early and amazingly, our bags only took 20 minutes. This meant we got out of the airport more than 30 minutes earlier than planned. Woo!

The ride home was uneventful and traffic was light. Getting home shortly after 11:00 rather than the planned midnight was a bonus.

Always a pleasant sight when coming home from a trip

We were up at 6:30 A.M. and got off the ship at 8:30 A.M., Amsterdam time, so 2:30 A.M. EDT. That made for a nearly 21-hour travel Almost 24 hours without sleep.

So... a trip wrap-up.

Did we enjoy the trip? Absolutely.

Did Viking provide a great experience? Yes, indeed.

Are we glad we saw the places we saw? Most definitely.

Would we do another river cruise? Ehh...maybe.

Don't get me wrong, this has nothing to do with Viking. The service was stellar. Their reaction to hiccups was outstanding. Ok, the room was a postage stamp. A well-appointed postage stamp but still a postage stamp. Sure larger rooms are available, but at more than double the cost. That's a whole other trip! There is no flexibility in dining and limited menus. Did I mention that the room was small? The fact that the Sun Deck was closed for five days so we could fit under bridges didn't help either. 

If we find a river cruise with a compelling itinerary, we would consider another one, but for the moment, I think we're ocean cruise people.

We're taking a bus tour next month so we will see how we like that. It means we will live out of suitcases and we generally don't like that. If it works, then perhaps a train trek through Europe might be in the cards at some point.

For now, the trip is done and we're home...for a couple of weeks. The bus tour in the American West is up next. Well, sleep is next.  Until the next trip...

20240827 Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 26/27 - Kinderdijk, The Netherlands - Tilting at Windmills

Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 26/27 - Kinderdijk, The Netherlands - Windmill mania!

This morning was a cruising day as we transitioned from Germany to The Netherlands, still on the Rhine River. The Netherlands is famously home to windmills, and we saw a lot this morning. Most of them, however, were wind turbines. Wind energy seems to be huge both here and in Germany. Germany also had tons of solar farms along the river.

The first windmill Arlona saw today - not what she was expecting

But, these weren't the windmills we were seeking. We were looking for old-fashioned wooden Dutch windmills and we were not disappointed. After doing some preliminary packing, we took in the sights as we sailed this morning.

There is a windmill, off in the distance

There we go

Wow - another church

We saw cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and oddly enough, camels but I didn't get photos

After lunch, we approached and docked at Kinderdijk (pronounced KINDER dike). Kinderdijk literally translates to child dike.

A water pressure tower that was briefly used by the Nazis as a watchtower

Four of the 19 windmills  that are located here

The windmills pumped groundwater out of the boggy area into the canal where it was fed via a dike into the river

It is a UNESCO World Heritage site

20km of canals were dug out of the peat bog by hand in the 1200s

We saw some of the tools they used to maintain the windmills, including wooden shoes - the first safety shoe

The mechanism was simple overall but with a bunch of moving parts that were lubricated with lard

A sculpture showing the cat in the cradle - a Dutch fairytale that after a flood, a girl was found floating in a cradle with a cat bouncing back and forth to keep the cradle floating - this led in part to naming the place Kinderdijk

Willow trees that grow at the water's edge were used to make baskets and wooden shoes

The canals are eight feet below the river

The roof is thatched and the top rotates so the blades can face the wind

Per our guide, God created the world, but the Dutch created The Netherlands by reclaiming land with dikes and canals

Our guide liked to go Dutch - I drink, you pay

We got to tour one of the mills

The wind scale - the blades can be locked if the wind is too strong and would over-spin the blades - the canvas fabric on the blades was also adjustable to control how fast the blades spin in severe winds

The blades rotate anticlockwise

This wheel was used to rotate the top of the windmill clockwise to align the blades with the wind direction for best efficiency

The water outlet door was closed

The wind picked up and the mill started spinning - the water outlet door opened to expel the water the mill was pumping

The miller - the person running the windmill - lived in the mill

Wooden shoe boots

A small bed

The gears were spinning as the blades were turning in the brisk wind that had come up

This was the oak center axel that ran from the upper gears to the lower paddlewheel - it was huge and spinning

More living quarters

Millers and trainees working on a new blade arm

The center blade hub

With the tour over, Arlona got back to her Dutch roots. Her grandparents came to the United States from Texel - a Dutch island about 50 miles north of Amsterdam.

What is more Dutch than this?

After everyone returned to the ship, we sailed for Rotterdam. Some folks took an optional excursion and rejoined the ship there. As we were sailing, we passed something that made me wonder if there was a lot of rain in the forecast.

Do the Dutch know something we don't?

The speed at which river cruise ships can dock and sail continues to amaze us. We docked in Rotterdam, loaded passengers, cast off, and were sailing again in about 20 minutes. Tonight, Captain Matej had the traditional farewell toast to the guests before dinner.

We dined with several wonderful folks who we've dined with before and had a nice evening of conversation and laughter. We saw hot air balloons flying and caught a nice final sunset.

With that, we returned to the room for some final packing and to get some shuteye. We'll be up early so we can get breakfast and get our teeth brushed so we can get our bags out by 8:00 A.M. for the crew to grab. That is a nice thing with a river cruise - you don't have to have your bags out the night before you depart. We'll be off the ship by 8:45 and on the way to Amsterdam airport for the two flights home. I'll wrap up this trip tomorrow with a trip summary and our final thoughts on the river cruise experience.