This is a in-depth look at the first two stops on the Viking Grand European River Cruise (or last two if you started in Budapest).
We start with a short walking tour led by a Viking Guide. After that, it’s time for lunch followed by a canal tour of the city. That essentially takes care of Amsterdam and it’s off for an overnight sail to Kinderdijk. As with Amsterdam, there is a short walking tour to the Windmill museum. We finish with an explanation of the Kinderdijk legend. That wraps it up and it’s overnight to Köln (Cologne), Germany which will be the next video.
Equipment used:
DJI Mini 3 Pro (have since upgraded to a Mini 4 Pro) https://www.dji.com/mini-4-pro
Insta360 x3 (360° camera) – https://store.insta360.com/product/x3?c=2118&from=nav
Insta360 Go 3 – https://store.insta360.com/product/go-3?c=2798&from=nav
Music from Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com
Editing is done on a Mac Studio with Final Cut Pro
00:00 Introduction
00:14 Intro to Amsterdam
01:00 Walking Tour of Amsterdam
02:14 Stop for Lunch
02:53 Canal Cruise
09:16 Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum
10:02 Leave Amsterdam
10:24 Kinderdijk walking tour
12:36 Museum Mill
13:43 Legend of Kinderdijk
Hello and welcome and join us as we explore in Greater detail the Viking Grand European river cruise we start with Amsterdam and Kinder DIY We flew in from Chicago on the day the creu started arriving at 9:30 in the morning I really don’t recommend that because of jet lag and the fact there’s much more to see in Amsterdam than you can do in just one afternoon our ship was docked conveniently close to the
Main railway station which merits a visit all on its own if you have the time unfortunately we didn’t have time after we unpacked our bags we meant to a local guide and started walking tour of Amsterdam biggest coffee shop in the world biggest okay it’s enormous you can see
If you want guys it has two the well we didn’t have time to visit the coffee shop which was also a marijuana dispensary so we continued walking down the narrow streets this turned out to be a very brief overview of the city we were left with the rest of the afternoon to
Explore the city on our Own now the there were three prominent things that kept occurring in the City Bicycles canals and Canal Barges so after our walking tour it was time for a little bite and we saw the stand and then looked at the pigeons on the roof and decided nope this isn’t for us so we found a hinin cafe right on the main drag across from the train
Station lunch was really super and we had a chance to sit and watch the bicycle traffic going up and down the main drag and it was incredible a word of warning if you’re walking around Amsterdam watch for the bikes and the bike lanes are exclusive
To the bike so don’t walk in the bike Lanes we had enough time to go back to the Lagoon in front of the train station where there were a number of barge tour companies and we we jumped on our own bars and headed out the weather was warm
But overcast and we chose to take an open air boat so that our photographs and views would not be obstructed by the curved Windows of the other barges the area in front of the Railway Station looks like open sea but it’s not it’s a lake that was closed off 9 years
Ago by a 32 km long Dam so we leave the lake and enter the old town and on the left side of the boat was this building called the shipping house which was built right around 1900 or so and is now used as a hotel now most of the old town was built
In the 17th century and it was at the peak of Amsterdam’s influence in the world as it was considered the richest city in the world due to its Trading because of the trade large ships sailed all over the world and brought back the goods to main warehouses in the
Harbor and then they were moved to smaller warehouses in town you can see how narrow the houses are and it was virtually impossible to get furniture up the narrow staircases so there are beams sticking out of the top of each house that you can use ropes and pulleys to pull your
Furniture up to the upper floors or nowadays you can get an electric Cliff to help you do that this is an old lookout tower that was part of the defensive walls around the city but those walls were taken down and the tower remains but is not
Used there are 2,500 house boats on the canals of Amsterdam many of them started as real boats some were converted and some were built just as house Boats the house boats first started showing up in the’ 60s and they were cheap but very primitive with no running water and no electricity things improved in the 80s and they got toilets but they flushed them and it went into the canal well that wasn’t very sanitary so
They finally connected the boats to the sewer system and now they say that the canals are clean enough that you can swim in them there are also numerous locks throughout the canal system where the doors can be closed to control floods many of the bridges have tables
From cafes nearby and you can sit and relax and watch the boats go by some of the canals are quite narrow almost like oneway streets but here are a couple house boats that have been built for the canals and you can see a little Garden on top of this
One in addition to narrow canals there are also some very low bridges it’s probably a good idea not to stand up going underneath these now supposedly rembrand lived in this neighborhood and painted the night watch here when they went to move it to City Hall it wouldn’t fit so they had a
Simple solution just trim some of the sides there are also a lot of these quaint little draw Bridges throughout the city and you will see a typical sight of bicycles chained to the railing of the bridge if you’re so inclined there’s some very nice restaurants along the
Waterfront that you can stop and have a bitee to eat notice there are no railings so it’s easy to go for a swim so now we have turned on the river Amstel which is a natural River old Amsterdam is essentially built on water and each of the houses have pilings that
Are driven into the mud far below now you may notice some of them are tilting and that’s because the pilings have settled and they’re in the process of replacing the wooden pilings with concrete pilings as we were heading back we came across this Gathering of students in front of their student house according
To our guide this is supposedly the oldest Park in Amsterdam and according to our guide if you don’t have a balcony or you don’t have a garden you come here This is a seaf fairing Museum which was once a place where Sailors came to buy supplies for their boats and was part of the East India Company next to the museum there’s a three master that you can visit and go up onto and it’s probably part of the East India Company Fleet This little green building is a bridge Tower which used to be staffed 24/7 there are 28 in the city that they don’t use anymore and have turned them into little hotels if you will and speaking of hotels this is the booking.com World Headquarters and I use booking.com a lot for my
Travels well we’re nearing the end of our little barge tour and the guide pointed out these very modern buildings next to us and he said the people in Old Town aren’t very happy with these now as I mentioned we got in the same day as the cruise left and we
Didn’t have time to visit other things and we should have in a previous trip we actually went to the reiches museum with which is the Masterpiece of Dutch art it contains many famous paintings by the Dutch Masters including rbrand and Vermier in addition to the reiches museum there’s also the van go Museum and if you have time you should go take a look at it because it contains a treasure Trove of all of Vanos paintings and drawings and that was it for our All Too Short
Tour of Amsterdam and it was back to the ship to relax a little bit before dinner and then after dinner we set sail for Kinder dye which was an overnight trip and we didn’t really see much of the countryside on the way so we sailed through the night and
Arrived the next day in Kinder diye which is a UNESCO world heritage site that highlights 300y old windmills our ship was docked very close to the windmills and we had a choice of three tours a walking tour a bicycle tour or Tour by vintage barge we chose the
Walking tour the land here is below sea level and 300 years ago 17 windmills were constructed to pump the water out of the peak box and into the river Le the windmills are quite capable of pumping water but today primarily if it is the diesel powered pumping stations that keep the boulder
Dry so on a very quiet morning we started our walking tour and remember I said there are a lot of bikes and you stay off the bike path in this case the bike path is larger than the foot path there are two rows of windmills one is
Made of thatch and on the other side they’re made of brick and we’re going to cross the bridge and go over and look at the Museum windmill which is made of brick a number of the windmills are still inhabited by families and there is one family that has lived here for 10
Generations and the people still live in the mill here’s a quick look at this inhabited windmill with its garden and outdoor areas as we Pan the Drone around you can get a good look at how extensive the water system is around the windmills and how hard they must have worked to keep
The water out of the peak box and again note that the windmills on the opposite side are thatch and on this side brick after a while the wind started pick up and they put the sails on the blades and some of the windmills were actually working while we were
There here is a close look at the exit Channel where the water was dumped as the windmill pumped it out of the land you can see how close the blades are to the front door so if they were turned you didn’t necessarily want to run out
The front door as we look up we see the date on this Mill is 1736 one of the Mills on the nater vard side is designated as a museum Mill and you can actually go inside and I chuckled as I read the sign that said imagine living here with 10
Children the windmills themselves had examples of what you would find in the typical windmill including wooden shoes which were perfect for the wetlands and they were cheap and easy to repair As you can see there are pretty tight quarters in the living areas and the bed was actually in the wall and the kitchen itself was small with a very very small oven as I mentioned the windmills have been around for a number of centuries but when the wind blows they need to be
Anchored and there are heavy chains that are used to Anchor the window needless to say there’s a lot of water foul in the area as well and we started walking back to the ship and we’re delighted to see the windmills actually in motion as we headed Back well how did Kinder Dy get its name Kinder Dy means children’s Dyke and in 1421 1 there was a massive flood many people perished and after the flood waters receded they came out and found a cradle bobbing up and down on the water with a baby in it and a cat balancing
The Cradle so that the Cradle would not tip over and the baby would survive well it was a fairly short visit and it was time to get back to the ship and on the way back we saw one of the Vintage barges which was on the alternate tour
We settled back into the ship for a little refreshment and then came dinner we had a few minutes of daylight to enjoy the scenery before beginning our overnight sale to clone and then we retired to our cabin for our little scenic view of the cabin thanks very much for watching and
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