Tuesday, 4 April, Antwerp to Amsterdam: changing boats in midstream

Written 31 May 2023

April 4 was both disembarkation day for "Holland and Belgium" on the Viking Freya and embarkation day for "Tulips and Windmills" on the Viking Einar, which explains why two back-to-back 10-day cruises add up to only 19 days. It also explains why this entry is so short and include relatively few photos—we had no excursions and my hands were tied up for most of the time wrestling luggage.

Because we weren't catching an early, or even a late, flight, we had time for a leisurely breakfast before vacating our cabins, as required, by 8 am and catching our 9 am taxi to the Antwerp train station. (David's watch stopped at 9 am, but I was wearing mine.) We got there at about 9:15 am, in plenty of time to buy tickets and catch our 9:44 am train to Amsterdam. Not a catastrophe if we missed it—they run frequently.

The other two couples who shared the taxi were going in different directions both from us and from each other (and they already had tickets—the second halves of the round trips they'd bought before coming), so we all waved goodby and David and I addressed ourselves to an electronic ticket kiosk. It took a long time to find the option that made it speak English, then, after we had gone through all the specs on the itinerary we wanted, it said, sorry, you can't do that here; that's an international trip, so you have to start over.

We couldn't figure out how to ask for international itineraries, so we gave up and went back to the main lobby (i.e., back up the short staircase we'd just had to carry our luggage down) to look for a staffed ticket window. There weren't any, but we did find a staff member standing between two kiosks helping travelers with problems. We stood in line while she helped two other parties, then, when it was our turn, she cheerfully tapped all the right buttons to line up our trip. Then the kiosk refused our credit card. Drat. Try again, she said; sometimes it's flaky. The second time, it accepted the card but wanted a PIN number. Of course, our credit card doesn't have a PIN number (by law according to our bank), so we got out our debit card. The machine then refused that. But on the second try, it accepted the card, and the PIN, and spat out our tickets.

The nice lady then showed us the QR code on the tickets that we must scan when we left the station at the other end and directed us back down the same stairs again to the elevators. Go down to floor -2, she said, to platform 22.

When we emerged from the elevator on floor -2, there we were, on platform 22, with almost 10 minutes to spare—we had to wait for the 9:38 to come and go before our train showed up, right on time. Wrestling with the luggage was a nuisance but we managed it. David put his suitcase on the overhead rack, and I managed to get my computer case up there, but it clearly wasn't going to work for my suitcase. The spaces for that kind of luggage were in a rack in the middle of the car, and the bag would be out of sight. I wasn't willing to do that, but luckily the guy across the aisle from us was sitting in the window seat and had put some things on the aisle seat. He let me slide my suitcase into that seat's leg space. Once he left the train at the second stop, I moved over to his row, so both David and I had plenty of space for the rest of the trip.

We rode in second class, which is perfectly adquate for these short trips of less than two hours. The ride was smooth and the train not crowded. At each stop, the PA warned of pickpockets on the train and in the station. We stopped someplace before we got out of Antwerp, then at Breda, Rotterdam, Schipol airport, and Amsterdam, which was the terminus. (The announcer said "skipol" for the airport and not "shipol" as some other locals said.)

In many trains I've ridden, the rows of seats are arranged in back-to-back pairs, with space between their backs for luggage. I much prefer that arrangement, not just for the near-at-hand luggage storage but because you can then put tables between each pair of facing rows. But in the rain we rode, half the car faced forward and the other half backward, so that only in the center did two rows face each other with a table between and the only bag storage was too far away for peace of mind.

Each seat did have a nice, ample, airline-style fold-down table, but the seat-back pockets were odd—they had no bottoms. If you tried to put a bottle of water in one, it fell straight through. I guess the elastic in the pockets was strong enough to hold, e.g., a magazine or wadded up jacket.

In the fields were a few dairy cattle and lots of grass, presumably pasture. We also passed sections of industrial type big-box metal buildings, one of which ws prominently labeled "mushrooms." I guess your hothouse can be solid metal if you're growing something that doesn't need light. All the trackside barriers, wind baffles, etc. have been heavily tagged, at least along the lower edges.

We also passed many modern pylon-type windmills along teh way, but not all were turning. Many have bright orange markings on them—bands around their pylons or blades or both. Maybe they indicate which company operates the windmill.

The farther we progessed, the more the the landscape looked like farming country. Back in the Netherlands, we again saw grassy polders with farm buildings in the background and orchards or vineyards with netting covers over them. A few sheep grazed on the dikes.

Grass meadows sometimes alternated with ploughed fields or patches of low glass greenhouses. A couple of fields were covered with stubble of some sort.

Near Rotterdam, we passed a square white building with a cental dome and towers on the sides, probably a mosque, but around here it could also be a restaurant. Then we plunged deep underground before emerging above ground again as we actually pulled in and stopped at Rotterdam station, under a big, bright, glass-roofed pavilion. The train that pulled in next to us had wifi symbols next to its doors, but I don't think we had wifi, and neither did the train on the other side. A train that just overtook us on the way out, on its way to the Hague, had wifi and wheelchair symbols on its door, plus some third symbol that I couldn't parse.

I was interested to see that Standard Oil gas stations around here are still labeled "Esso." Maybe Dutch has words with double xx's in them.

Between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, we passed taller glass houses, quite extensive areas of them, but the plants were planted in the bottom, not in hanging bags as I've seen tomatoes grown in France. Some of the polders are dotted with egrets. And of course, daffodils are everywhere.

A young woman sitting nearby was reading a novel in Flemish, but it included "Saffron Hall" in the title and was by Clare Marchant, so I'm guessing it was a translation from English. I've looked it up since, and it's called The Secrets of Saffron Hall, but the Tallahassee library doesn't have it.

We started to see more traditional windmills, including the wasp-waisted ones, as well as canals and polders (some with swans) that have recently been cleaned; piles of dirt lined the banks. Lines of high-tension towers stretched across the landscape, and we passed one big solar farm.

The airport train station really is underground, but as we had already seen, the one in Amsterdam is at ground level and right next to the docks. Passing through it with our luggage, I picked up some vocabulary: "treinkaartjes" is train tickets, "boven" is upstairs (like "above"), "op" is on, "niet roken" is no smoking (like the German "nicht rauchen").

We left the train and approached the turnstiles where we had to scan our tickets, only to find that the scanner wouldn't accept them. Off to find a person again. He glanced at the tickets, said we were fine, and opened the turnstiles for us.

So, yes, we knew right where we were, but where was the ship? We knew Viking used two different docking locations, so from the station, I called the ship and asked whether they were at the near one or the far one. The receptionist said the far one (where we had docked before), so we started walking. After trekking rather farther than we realized it was, we got there to find nothing. Drat. A limo driver was killing time on the dock, probably waiting for a tour to was supposed to drive, and he told us that the Einar (pronounced "EYE-ner," as it turns out) was at a third location, back beyond the train station. We must have wilted visibly at this news, because he offered to drive us there—it would only take a minute. He did, and he didn't even charge us for it!

So there was the Einar, barely 50 steps from the station but hidden by a boat of a different company (i.e., at the "farther" location compared to that boat). We were still in plenty of time for lunch.

Written 1 June 2023

Again, our rooms were ready when we arrived, so we had a chance to settle in before lunch. On the way, I spotted this room waiting to be made up and got a shot of those terrible lumpy mattress toppers. Each of those squares contains a double-fist-sized lump of something, wool maybe. We started right out by asking to have ours removed before bedtime.

The menu was the same as that for embarkation day on the Freya: small salad bar, green Thai chicken curry with carrots and zucchini, rice.

Quasi-Reuben sandwiches, pasta al pesto with diced potatoes and green beans in it.

But the desserts were more varied: fruit cups, wedges of glazed apple tart, jars of chocolate mousse, and a lovely big bowl of whole fruit.

The view, directly across the river from our mooring, was of this handsome building, the Palace of Justice. Modern architects seem very taken with the "Jenga" look.

A few things are different from the Freya, I think because this ship is a little newer. The shower has "café" doors, two small doors that swing either out or in, rather than a single door that swings or slides. The design of the bathroom wastebaskets is different—each sits in a special square cutout below the counter. The drinking water supplied in the rooms is the filtered stuff in reusable glass bottles, which I prefer. The room is supplied not just with more electrical outlets but with a higher precentage of American-style outlets. Finally, as in some hotels, your key card has to be inserted into a slot next to the door to turn on the lights. Fortunately, removing it doesn't shut off power to the outlets over the desk, so you can still leave something plugged in to charge when you leave the room, taking the card with you.

In midafternoon the bus arrived bringing the passengers who had already spent two days in a hotel in Amsterdam on the Viking "preextension," among them our friend Rachel Sinnett, who joined us for the rest of the cruise. After we went home, she stayed on for a two-day Viking postextension in the Hague.

During the afternoon, we had the opportunity to repeat the Amsterdam "orientation walk," but we'd done it 10 days earlier, and Rachel at the beginning of her time in the city, so we passed.

Except for the substitution of the regional-specialty crab cake for bitterballen, the dinner menu was also the same as for embarkation day on the Freya. David and I both both ordered the crab; I thought it was great, but David didn't care for it.

Somebody ordered the always-available Caesar salad, but I forget who.

The other appetizer option was white bean soup with crisp pancetta and basil pesto, and I ordered that, too.

For my main course, I ordered the seared sea bass with lemon, caper, and parsley sauce, having verified, when it appeared on the menu on the previous cruise and a table-mate ordered it, that it was in fact the European (and not the unsustainably harvested Chilean) sea bass. You can see a photo of it on the 26 March 2023 page. David had the traditional Dutch "haché," also pictured on that page.

Somebody else ordered the always-available ribeye, and interestingly, the "maître d'hôtel" butter on this ship is a completely different color. from that on the Freya, perhaps because we have a different maître d'hôtel.

I think everyone had New York cheesecake for dessert.