From Amsterdam

   We had a couple of pretty full days and so finding time to update the blog was not easy. Our time in Enkhuizen was fun. We arrived and boarded buses for Hoorn. This was a wealthy seaport in the Golden Age of the Netherlands during which the Netherlands became very wealthy thanks to the Dutch East Indies Company. Cape Horn in Africa takes its name from a Dutch trader. Hoorn is another charming old Dutch city and we were quite glad that we took this excursion. After our time in Rotterdam, it was nice to experience old Dutch charm. There was no rain for us in Hoorn, but the wind was cold and necessitated bundling up against the elements. We ate with some Canadians at dinner, and even they found Hoorn cold. We opted out of our afternoon tulips and windmills excursion. We must not have been thinking when we booked the excursion. There are no tulips to see at this time of the year, and we already had a windmill excursion. We will be more careful when we book our Vietnam and Cambodia excursions. We walked in to Enkhuizen and strolled through the city, another charmer. Patti was interested and buying some warm socks and succeeded in Enkhuizen with the help of a very sweet sales girl.

  Yesterday we arrived in Amsterdam and started the day with a canal cruise. There was information overload for me and Patti because you almost need to have your head on a swivel and it is just about impossible to retain all the information the guide shares. That said, a canal cruise is a good way to get a feel for Amsterdam. After lunch we had an excursion to Edam and to a dairy farm to work on our cheese making skills. Edam was another city with which we became enamored thanks to the canals and the charm. We stopped in a cheese shop and tasted some really excellent delicious cheeses and then boarded our bus for the dairy farm, The farm is a small family run business. One of the things that impressed us about the dairy is that they go in to Amsterdam daily and pick up some handicapped people who work doing tasks that their handicaps and challenges, whether physical or mental, allow them to do. What a wonderful thing to do. Our cheese making was great fun. The owner of the dairy farm dropped a bit of a starter into each rectangular tub that contained the curds and whey, and then he added an enzyme and we stirred the mixture for a bit and then went to have tea or coffee while the mixture settled. When we returned to our mixtures, they had become a bit like custard and so we stirred to separate the curds from the whey and to break up the curds. This was followed by removing  as much whey as we could and then stirring some more to keep reducing the curds and prevent the curds from lumping together, and then drawing off the rest of the whey. We were almost finished. We just needed to break up any clumps of curds with our hands and then transfer the curds into small plastic bowls and cover them with cheesecloth and set them aside. In a week to two weeks, our creations will be Gouda cheese. We took back to the boat with us cheeses that had been made by prior Viking tour passengers. We gave ours to our cabin attendant and our favorite waitress. It would not be a wise idea to try to bring our cheeses back to the States since they were not pasteurized.

  It is now Thursday morning. Yesterday we disembarked and were taken to the Pestana Riverside Hotel right on the Amstel River. It is a beautiful hotel. We had a walking tour of Amsterdam that wound us through and open air market and neighborhoods and ended at the Ruksmuseum. The weather turn in our favor and it was actually a bit warm on our walk. We returned to our hotel and were able to get into our room prior to our flavors of Amsterdam excursion, a Metro and walking tour that ended in Dam Square. Along the way we stopped and ate some cheeses, bitterballaen (sp?), deep fried meatballs that are filled with stewed beef, and mild Dutch salami. We ended at a Dutch pancake house where we sampled some small pancakes with various toppings as well as stoopwaffel. We parted ways with our guide close to our hotel and went to a Greek restaurant where we had a light dinner before returning to the our hotel and calling it a day.

  Today we have tickets to the Anne Frank house and would like to go to the Dutch Resistance Museum which is well worth the visit according to some of our fellow passengers. We plan to do a lot of walking. Tomorrow our flight is at 9:50 so we will check with the Viking rep in the lobby to find out what time we need to be ready to go. We have reached that point where we don't care what the inside of our suitcases look like, just as long as we can close them. It has been a really good trip and we look forward to our last day in Amsterdam.