Holland revisited August 10-2

Up at the crack of Eight O’ Clock to make sandwiches, rolls and so on in preparation for what promises to be a great day – Most of the prepping has been done by Aafke and her Mother. It’s happy birthday for Mr. Aafke and we are going boating!!! The Tall Ships are visiting Amsterdam and Mr Aafke has hired a boat and invited his friends to go for a tootle on the Amstel. There were 25 of us on a converted Norwegian oil-rig life-boat with enough food and drink on board to supply any major disaster. We chugged up the North-Sea canal and slowly as an impressive flotilla formed, we entered Amsterdam harbour. Soon enough the masts of the sailing ships started to rise above the general cityscape. It was a most amazing sight, all tied-up along the quay walls were a collection of the biggest tall-ships in the world, and we were bobbing around looking up at them. Meanwhile the flotilla was now a solid floating mass of all kinds of craft, boats shaped like Aubergines, Barrels of beer, old military craft, sleek cruisers, a floating raft with a brass band playing, the local dudes in a ‘borrowed’ speedboat…The atmosphere was great, there were on-board picnics, discos, people lounging around with Champagne. On the big ships, starched officers sipped gins while entertaining and on deck the sailors supervised bunkering from the barges tied up alongside. The captain of our craft ( ) said that we still had loads of time left so a vote was taken to enter in the Amsterdam canal system – this was the icing on the cake. How many times have you been in ‘The Dam’ and yearned to be on one of those boats cruising past, music on, beers poppin’ and in our case, Spanish Tapas for all. Well, that was us. We had a great tour of the canals and the traffic was something else. The Tour-Barges have right-of-way and those guys can turn one of those things on a Guilder. We started back down the North Sea canal and by this time the music was pure disco and everyone was bobbing away. A wonderful day.