Day 13 Docking in Hoorn, Bidding ,Thousand Islands

Day 13 Docking in Hoorn, Bidding in Broek op Langedijk, Realm of the Thousand Islands

We work up docked in Hoorn and the wind and rain was terribly strong.  Several of the girls rode the buses to Broek op Langedijk to attend a museum and vegetable auction.  They saw ladies dressed in traditional outfits for the area.  The visitors were given 50 cents each and then were able to bid on vegetables and fruits and actually left with the items they won.  Some people pooled their money and others didn’t. The girls had had to walk a long way to the buses in the pouring windy rain and were very wet and chilled.  The auction house itself was quite cool and damp since boats were pulled in with the items to be auctioned.  They also looked at a map of the ‘Thousand Islands’ and saw a demonstration of lots of tools used by the locals when farming.  They then went on a boat ride to see some of the ‘Thousand Islands. The boats were covered but because of the heavy rain on the outside and condensation on the island, the girls were not able to see much of anything. The islands were formed by the soil from dredging the canals and the islands are now rented out to people who raise fruits and vegetables on them.  Sue said the islands are smaller than the size of our riverboat.  There are windmills in this area of Holland that are used to signal births, deaths, and dangers such as German raids.  The ride back to the ship was sort of cool since everyone was wet and cold, but the long walk back from the bus to the ship was horrible.  The wind was brutal and everyone was very happy to be back on the ship.  I understand that several people got warm by taking hot showers once they were back on board.

Some of us decided to stay here and relax.  I had the reception lady call me a taxi and the taxi lady took me into town so that I could ship some heavy items home.  Holland no longer has post offices so the lady took me to a little convenience store and luckily they were not really busy.  The man had me put my items on the counter and we decided which boxes I needed to buy and then he had some bubble wrap from a shipment he had received yesterday and he used that to wrap the plates.  I had to have two boxes of different sizes so he taped them together and hopefully they will make it to Dalton without breaking. I also sent Frank’s three planes since they are quite heavy.  I shouldn’t have any trouble packing my clothing and souvenirs now, I hope.  The taxi lady waited on me so she brought me back to the ship.  Since I got a pretty good look at the city, I didn’t feel the need to go on the hour long walking tour in the afternoon.  I have spent the rest of the day mostly in the lounge working on photos, readying and knitting.

We had a Disembarkation Meeting where we were told everything about leaving the ship in a couple of days and tying up the loose ends.  Our group will have to have our large luggage outside our cabin doors by 6 a.m. Monday morning and we will have to be on the bus by 7 to leave to the airport.  Our flight leaves at 11 so we have lots of do before we board, mainly going through customs and taking care of the VAT tax.  Here, they charge a VAT tax of about 19% but when visitors fly out of the country they can get that back, IF they meet the requirements for that.  I hope to get back quite a bit from the purchase of my diamond necklace.  We already got that back at the Delft shop since we shipped those items home. 

There was a city walk of Hoorn but none of our group went on it.  People who did go on it described it as a ‘normal Dutch city’ with some nice old buildings.  I had seen some of it from the taxi and it looked pretty.  I spent the afternoon in the lounge working on photos, knitting, and talking.  It was a very nice afternoon.

We had a Captain’s Farewell Drink and Toast where they served us champagne or orange juice and the Captain gave a nice little speech.  The ship’s personnel were all quite dressed up and many of the passengers were.  I was dressed as always and glad to be comfortable.  Then we had the Captain’s Farewell Dinner which consisted of most everyone having filet mignon and farmer fries (which looked a lot like Lincoln Logs) and Baked Alaska.  The crew brought in the Baked Alaska lit with sparklers and it was nice to watch.

After the dinner we had a Crew Show which had a lot of little skits done by various crew members.  The skits were really cute, but my favorite was the one with the restaurant manager, David, acting as a waiter in an Italian restaurant and he did every thing wrong that was possible to do wrong to his customer!!  That was really a different side to David who is usually quite dour.  Another really good one was when about 10 of the crew did a little skit which involved individual sayings and actions where they barely avoided hitting each other as they performed.  The whole show was quite good and some people stayed after for dancing, but I left.

I was really tired.  All that hard work I did of sitting and knitting had really worn me out!!  Sue finally got warm again after her cold day out so we called it an early night for a change.