Wednesday, December 11th, 2024

One thing we learned about The Netherlands is that they don’t do big Christmas markets. Also the markets don’t start until December 12th and most are only for 2 days. So no Christmas markets for our time in the Netherlands. Today we visited Dordrecht. We did the included walking tour and had another great guide. One thing we are noticing about our guides is that lately they are almost never locals. Most are from another country and are now living in the area they are tour guides for. Almost like religious converts who are much more fanatical than the locals. Our guide for Dordrecht was a retired nurse originally from Scotland. The weather was overcast and the temperature was in the low 30s. The walk took you along the water way and into the center of town. It is a very nice town and again lots of canals and lots of old wooden boats lining the canals.

Unlike Amsterdam people do not live on these boats but they are all well maintained.

We passed by several shops but very few were open. Our guide said that the shops are hit or miss. They almost never follow the hours if posted on the window and if they do open they open around 11 or 12 and close at 3 or 4. We passed several areas of town that had lots of shops and nothing was open even though it was after 11. Very strange.

This store was open but we did not go in. We thought the dog in the window was very cute and maybe even magical!

Beautiful streets and our guide explained that some of the buildings are intentionally leaning in towards the street so that when it rains the water drips down and does not run down into the mortar of the bricks which eventually erodes it.

More city views

We are unsure if this was a Christmas decoration or if the tree was being carted home.

One of the old city gates

The walking tour was about 3 hours long and then we were free to wander around town but we had to be back on the boat by 1pm. We did find the one and only windmill in Dordrecht and it was right by the boat. It is 300 years old and about 100 feet high. It was completely renovated in 1999 and is still a working mill.

The boat sailed at 1:45 pm after grabbing some supplies from another Viking river boat in town. A lot of people were relieved that the afternoon was a sailing afternoon since many are still recovering from jet lag.

At 4:30 we had a briefing on our next port, Cologne, Germany where there are 7 Christmas markets. They all have different themes and are within walking distance of the boat. Our program manager, Morgan gave us his strategy on how to do Christmas market shopping. He said if you see something that you like buy it then, don’t think you will come back because it may be gone or you wont’t find the right place. His analogy was that if you find the perfect santa riding a squirrel buy it because you may not see it again. He is probably right about that but we all got a good laugh. He also recommends that you go out, get a load and then bring it back to the ship and head out again. Lots of people on board are already talking about “shipping” stuff home. Morgan also recommended that we do our shopping during the day and sight seeing at night since it will be much more crowded at night. We do not arrive in Cologne until 2pm and we are docked until 10:30pm. Not sure how much we will see to buy but excited to see the markets and experience them at night.

We had a nice dinner and then back to the cabin to watch TV. We can stay up late knowing that we can sleep in tomorrow.