First clue that you are in the Netherlands.
Last year at this time, we had just returned from a wine-tasting river cruise from Amsterdam to Paris with Amawaterways. We had never been to Europe, never been on a river cruise and never made friends while traveling that we would actually keep as friends once we returned home.
We stopped in Montreal, Quebec for a few days on our way to break up the flights and fell in love with old Montreal, then added time in Amsterdam and Paris as well so it was a good, long, quite fabulous and incomparable trip. We absolutely fell in love with river cruising and recommend it highly. You can actually listen to a radio interview I did about the cruise here, if you are so inclined.
I wrote thousands and thousands of words about the trip, most of which disappeared into the cobwebbed and inaccessible Interweb basement when the travel company I was working for deleted the blog. A few posts survived that we quickly saved and those I wrote in print were also saved but the rest…are gone. It’s sort of heart-breaking because it was so much work and so many memories. At least we have all our thousands of photos to help us reminisce. This is one of the posts that I managed to save that I thought you might enjoy because seriously? Who does not like cheese? I may add others as I find them, call up the memories as I sort through pictures, and find things I think you might like.
We stepped out of one of the ubiquitous Amsterdam canal boats onto the cobblestone path which ran beside the scenic canal. Many-leveled warehouses with big, shuttered windows which had been converted to homes and apartments overlooked the canal and hundreds of bikes – the transportation of choice in Amsterdam – lined the streets. But we didn’t pay much attention to these uniquely Amsterdam sights because we were on a mission. A cheese-tasting mission.
