Holland

Ijmuiden, the Netherlands – June 18

We have just spent a day in The Netherlands, land of the orange shirts, streamers and other decorations in support of their World Cup football (soccer to most of us) team.  Soccer is very important here and tonight they play against Australia. 

We boarded our ship, the MSC Opera yesterday and are thoroughly enjoying our first cruise experience.  The boat rocked a little last night but we slept well.  There are 4 or 5 lounges on board, each featuring a different style of music.  So far, the evening entertainment in the theatre is quite classical, although I would like to attend the classical flamenco performance tonight.  We will NOT be hungry on this voyage!!!!  Nor will we be thirsty!!!  Be prepared to see a couple of porkers when we get home – although we are trying to keep our portions small, taking just a small amount of each food we would like to try.

Today the rest of our group took a guided tour into Amsterdam but we caught a local bus into Haarlem, a city between the port and Amsterdam.   It is a beautiful old city with many buildings from the middle ages, many canals and many, many people on bicycles – just like every city in Holland.   A good day made better by an afternoon snack of pofferties (sp), very small pancakes served with butter and icing sugar!

We are now sitting on our balcony on the ship, waiting for our dinner seating at 6 pm, the same time as the ship will depart for the next leg of our journey.  We booked this cruise with 5 other couples from Vernon – some close friends plus some soon to be good friends, people we will get to know  much better over the next week or so.  We will be at sea the next two days en route to Estonia.

Haarlem

largest pipe organ in world? over 5000 pipes

Ostafew cousins

Uncle Morris filling his bird feeder with Les

biking in Holland