Day 8 - Let The Adventure Begin

On board the Ama Lucia

Hi everyone. Kara starting off again today. We had, as our British friends would say, a good lay-in this morning and allowed ourselves to sleep in until about 8:30am this morning. The only thing on our agenda today was to check out of the hotel, have a nice brunch or lunch, and head to the ship. More on how that could have gone differently a bit later.

Breakfast

We showered, dressed, and finished packing and took our bags down to the bell stand by 11am. I checked us out of the hotel while Gayle dealt with the bags. Then we headed around the corner to Pat’s Poffertjes Nieuwendijk. We saw this yesterday evening on our way to the grocery store and Gayle suggested it as our brunch stop.

The shop is tiny - there is a counter where they take your order and then also make and dispense your order. Gayle grabbed one of the tiny tables behind the order area while I ordered and got the food. Poffertjes are miniature Dutch pancakes. They are pillowy in the center and every so slightly crunchy on the very edges. These are topped with all manner of things. I thought I would do caramel sauce, but when I noticed fresh strawberries were available, I opted for Nutella with strawberries. Always on the lookout to get more fruit and vegetables in Gayle’s diet, I added bananas to her order of Nutella only. She was fine with my decision. 

The little pancakes were hot, topped with powdered sugar, and layered with delicious warm Nutella and fresh fruit slices. YUMMY!!! I’m not one for sweet all the time but I’ve been very happy with all the sweet options here in Amsterdam. 

Gayle: They were lovely and quite tasty. However, even for me they weren’t “done enough” in the middle.

To The Ship

Kara: After enjoying our Poffertjes we headed back to the hotel. While I dealt with getting the bags back, Gayle arranged our Uber. We waited about 10 minutes until our van arrived to take us to the port. On the map, this looked walkable. In reality, especially dealing with big bags over all the different textures of brick, stone, and dodging people & bikes in Amsterdam streets, I’d say that walking this is only for the most adventurous amongst us. I’m grateful for the van. Our van driver also noted that the address we’d been given was directing him to the front of the passenger terminal but river cruises board on the back side as they pull right up to the dock. He dropped us off at the door of our ship!

We were met by one of the ship’s crew who immediately took our bags inside. We stopped at the reception desk and got checked in (which meant they checked our passports and took our photo for their internal security processes), and then we headed into the lounge. We got on board right around 1:00pm and our rooms would be ready at around 3pm. We settled in and read/scrolled for a bit.

Here’s where I’ll say that today could have been different. We had a couple of different times we found/were given as to when to be on board and what happened when. As we do, we took the most conservative option. That meant we sat around for 2 hours with little to do. Could we have booked something or gone back out and explored? Yes, we certainly could have. On future river cruises (assuming we do another one) that is an option we’ll understand better. That said, I’m very happy with the day we had yesterday and I’ll never be sad to have reading time. 

Our Stateroom

Our rooms were ready early - right around 2:50pm. We headed up to our stateroom - 328 - and our bags were already in our room (minus my small one). We spent some time acclimating ourselves to the room and getting unpacked. We ALWAYS unpack first thing on an ocean cruise. On a river cruise you really don’t have a choice as there is no room in the stateroom otherwise. However, there is ample storage space and we settled in easily.

Gayle: Space on any cruise is always a question. As I often share, Disney Cruise Line has some of the largest staterooms at sea. When we sail in a Verandah, those rooms are 246 sq ft. For this river cruise, we are in a French Balcony stateroom that is 170 sq ft. It’s a very good thing that we have sailed together so much in knowing how and where we need to store things, as well as doing a seamless “dance” to move around the furniture and each other.

The Nearly Two Hour Day One Lecture

We were asked to be back in the lounge at 5:30pm for the welcome and safety briefing. Oh.My.Goodness. This was bad. We were in the lounge for nearly two hours of nothing but listening to people talk at us. I respect that they tried to make it interesting, but there MUST BE A BETTER WAY. People, including us, were respectful and sat politely and listened and weren’t doing much scrolling on their phones - but it was not the way to start a vacation. 

Gayle: As two professional educators, this was bad pedagogy! If you wonder what all was included, settle in for intro by the Cruise Manager, intros by each of the five Adventure Guides, a (rude) intro by the Hotel Manager and five of his staff, and a rambling intro by the Captain and his staff along with walking us through every detail of the safety instructions (that we’d already watched and marked complete on our stateroom TVs). During this time we also learned some guests were on ABD #17 or 18, as well as the fact that this sold out sailing consisted of only Americans.

Kara: At 7:15pm we were released to go down to the dining room for dinner. As we exited the lounge we were given our first custom pin of the trip. Because this is the inaugural ABD Holland and Belgium Tulip Time River Cruise, we get some pins that will not be given out to anyone else! 

Pin 1

Dinner

We went to the back of the dining room right next to the “Captain’s Table”, which is where Chef Hank eats every night. He may invite guests to dine with him or some nights, like tonight, members of his crew will eat with him. We were at a table with just the two of us next to a group of three women who had obviously enjoyed a bit too much of the included wine already. 

Gayle: As a core introvert, we had discussed our table strategy, as there are very few two-tops. As Kara pulled up to a larger table, I took an extra moment to spy a bit further to grab a coveted two-top. We know this won’t be the case for most meals.

Kara: We had discussed that the dinner menus might not be our cup of tea and that we may end up eating from the kids menu or the standard options that are available every night. However, tonight looked pretty good and started off well with a crusted coconut shrimp cake that was tasty enough. 

Our entree was a pan-seared sea bass, which I can best give a grade of D+. The fish was properly cooked and was nicely plated with a medley of vegetable (mostly root veggies, but with a piece of broccoli thrown in). The fish had a tomato salsa on it and there was some sort of white cream sauce on one end of the plate. The fish had no flavor at all. I even added a bit of salt and that didn’t help. While I understand that sea bass is a light tasting fish, it has always had a nice flavor - typically I assume from how it is prepared. This had no taste. The pieces I ate with the tomato “salsa” were tasty because of the tomato, but otherwise, the vegetables had more flavor than the fish did.

We ordered strawberry ice cream for dessert which was fine. 

Taking care of details and a little sun deck tour

After dinner, we headed back to the lounge to meet up with one of the Adventure Guides (Mikaela) to go over the schedule of events as everyone was supposed to have received a printed copy in their rooms and we didn’t get ours. We did make one change to our plans because of a docking change. We were going to ride the coach into Middleburg with the group and then go off on our own for a bit before meeting back up with them to take the coach back to the ship. However, we won’t be docking in Middleburg now - a town we’d planned to just explore on our own.

I wanted to go take a few photos from the sun deck so we headed up there to grab a few pics before we decided to settle in for the night. We will be sailing out at 3:45am so we could go party in the red light district if we wanted to do so …but that’s absolutely not who we are so we’re going to tuck in and write you this blog instead!

Gayle: Funny that I noted a little challenge getting to sleep around 11pm, because we were still docked. I’m used to drifting off in a sailing ship!

P.S. Disney Differences

In initially considering this trip, we were reviewing the standard AmaWaterwaysTM Tulip Time cruise. However, this is an Adventures by Disney® (ABD) Tulip Time cruise via AmaWaterways TM. So in fairness to the know & expected differences, at the end of each day’s post I will list our experiences that were specifically “Disney”. For today that includes:

• Five Adventure Guides

• Day 1 Custom Pin

• Joining the Adventure Guides’ WhatsApp group

• Lanyards with name badges (that hardly anyone is wearing)

• ABD signage (welcome mat, reception desk)

Next up… A field of flowers

On that note… Disclaimer: I (Gayle) am a travel agent with Authorized Disney Travel Planner agency - Off to Neverland Travel. Contact me today for a no-obligation quote!

As to Disney artwork, logos, and properties: ©Disney | Ship Registry: The Bahamas | CST# 2090317-40 / Fla. Seller of Travel Ref. No. ST37203