Rhine River Cruise: Amsterdam

Our second morning in Amsterdam dawned warm and bright, perfect weather for tooling around this gorgeous city. Check-in for our river cruise wasn't until 3 p.m., so we essentially had all morning to wander around. At first we thought we might try to go back to the Rijksmuseum - having toured it in 2016 - but tickets for the day were all sold out. Despite this, we walked over to the Museum Quarter anyway, stopping in adorable shops along the way and checking out a lot of antique Delft pottery (I'm so upset I never stopped to purchase a Christmas ornament!). When we found ourself at the museum, we took a seat in the garden and did a lot of people watching. There was a really neat fountain that quite a number of people found themselves getting wet by. At this time of year, the garden was in full bloom and just really pretty.

Once our feet were rested, we continued wandering and found ourselves at Moco Museum. I'm not generally a fan of modern art, but they had a few interesting exhibitions going so we decided to stop in and check it out. Again, most of the art wasn't necessarily to my personal taste, but it was definitely interesting and thought provoking. For example, when we went there was an exhibit from Robbie Williams titled "Confessions of a Crowded Mind" that deals with depression and the fragility of the human mind.

After the museum, we walked around and did some shopping and stopped for lunch and a cocktail before heading back to the hotel to check out and make our way to the docks to board our cruise.

Upon boarding, we checked into our cabin and then wandered the boat to see if anyone we knew from the wine club had boarded. We ran into Brad and his husband Danny, at which time we learned that despite having shipped cases upon cases of wine months before, it never made it on board! Well, that certainly explained the really unfortunate rose and chardonnay that was being poured in the bar. 😒😕😞 It was obvious Brad was worried - after all, he's the featured winemaker on this journey, and for those on board who weren't part of the wine club already, it could be a really negative reflection on him. I felt soooooo bad for him, and frankly, a little bit bad for us too.

We'd sailed with AmaWaterways back in 2015 for a Christmas market cruise down the Danube, and I'd been a bit "meh" on the wine back then (despite having thoroughly enjoyed the experience otherwise). For the price the company charges, and this being a wine cruise, I would have hoped that when it became obvious they didn't have any of Brad's wine on board they would have gone out of their way to replace it with something that was at least drinkable, but this was straight up swill. Suffice it to say, this did not bode well for our expectations, and we went to bed that night wondering what else might prove to be underwhelming.