We spent our first night on the Monarch Queen last night. Our cabin has a French window which can be opened and you can watch the world as you sail by. I opened it this morning and caught the early morning golden glow on the water between our boat and the one next to it.
We had an early breakfast as our guided tour of Amsterdam was due to start at 09:00. As we left the boat, tour buses were waiting for us. The tour consisted of a bus tour of Amsterdam, followed by a short walking tour and then a one hour boat tour through all the canals. Our guide for the morning was a Dutch lady called Mariska. She was very knowledgable and spoke very good English and although I've been to Amsterdam quite a few times, I learned a lot. The tour ended just in time for lunch. This was followed by a relaxed afternoon waiting for our departure time at 6:00 pm.
Just before 6 pm, we could feel the engines start, the ropes were cast off and within minutes we were backing out of our berth and on our way.
We are sailing along a canal which will take us to the Rhine River. It is a very busy waterway with many huge freight ships carting containers, liquid fuel and other materials up and down. We will be berthing in Mijmegen, a Dutch city on the border with Germany at 2:30 in the morning, while we are asleep. Tomorrow Mariska will be back to take us on a guided walking tour, before we continue on to Germany.
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