On the road again – or should I say the river

posted in: Travel | 3

TulipsWe’re back in Amsterdam recovering from jet lag before we catch a riverboat tomorrow for a cruise up the Rhine to Switzerland. It’s amazing, really. We’ve flown 16,200km to take a journey that’s less than 750km by car. But the river meanders, we take side trips and we stop a lot.

Long distance travel isn’t a picnic, ever. In this case it’s an eight hour plus flight to Singapore, a three hour wait, then twelve and a half hours from Singapore to Amsterdam. We got some sleep on the second leg, but even so, the body clock was a mess by the time we arrived. To try and get the body into some sort of sync we resisted sleeping and took a train trip to Leiden. The nearby Keukenhof gardens would have been nice, but we decided it was all going to be too much for us, so we restricted our flower viewing to the rows of tulips in the fields along the track. We did do a little canal tour of Leiden, though. That was fun. Some of the bridges there are very, very low.

Canal boat in Leiden
Canal boat in Leiden
The roof descends so the boat can fit under the lowest bridges
The roof descends so the boat can fit under the lowest bridges
Down the spiral staircase in th new leather jacket
Down the spiral staircase in th new leather jacket

3 Responses