If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium - July 15, 2008

It's July 15th, and we were getting ready to leave for Amsterdam. Our cruise left in the morning and we were REALLY ready to board the ship. We had been planning this cruise for more than a year. We were going to visit German, Russia, Sweden, Copenhagen, Estonia and of course, Amsterdam.

Here we all are at Gard du Nord in Paris, waiting to board the Thalys train to Amsterdam. It's a 4 hour journey.

Here is Dan and Debbie on the Thalys train. We talked and joked all the way into Amsterdam. It was a very nice, fast train ride.

We arrived Amsterdam in some drizzly weather, so we checked into our hotel. The Movenpick... it was VERY nice. The ship would be just outside this very window in the morning. I have never stayed so close to the port and this was a GREAT place to board a ship!

After a week in Paris, all I wanted was a hamburger. Too cute! We all had some lunch at the Movenpick and then headed out for day 1 in Amsterdam. It was just a little after noon, and we had reservations for the Anne Frank house and then we were meeting up with more friends that flew in from Canada. John and Deanna will be sailing with us tomorrow... and we were meeting them in a few hours at the Vyne Bar. A VERY cool wine bar that I wish we had here.

We are in Amsterdam... It's not a very pretty day, but at least it has stopped raining. We walked all through the city center on our way to the Anne Frank House. We really expected to like Amsterdam more than we did. We found it to be quite dirty and seedy. We did enjoy our time there, don't get me wrong, but it's not on our list to get back to.

We met up with John and Deanna and quickly found our wine bar, Vyne. It was such a great night! It was fun catching up with them. We hadn't seen them in 2 years and it wasn't until the last minute that we knew for sure they were coming on the cruise. SO, we were very excited to meet up with them, and very happy they were joining us on all our touring yet to come.