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That’s a Wrap!

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  When I left off yesterday we had arrived back in the boat, having finished our final bike ride.  The ship departed at 1:30, headed for Amsterdam.  It felt great to sit back and relax and watch the world go by.  We got in a few good card games to pass the afternoon.  We arrived into Amsterdam at 4:00 pm, it was a beautiful afternoon.  Some people took the opportunity to start checking out Amsterdam.  We were parked near the cruise docks so we felt pretty dwarfed next to the giant ships. At 6:30 we were served an amazing 4 course farewell dinner.  There were a few short speeches from the staff.  At 9:00 our captain, Jano , came with a canal boat and took us on a 2 hour canal tour through the city.  It was lovely but we were all very tired by the time we returned to the boat. This morning we had one final breakfast and then said our goodbyes to the QV and staff.  We left at 9:00 and walked down the street to the Movenpick hotel. ...

Our Final Day

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  We got up early today to take advantage of an amazing opportunity. We left on our bikes at 6:30 to cycle 5 km to the Holland Flower auction building. It was an experience that is difficult to describe. This building is over a km long. We got to walk on an upper level catwalk and look down to the warehouse floor to watch the workers coming and going on forklifts with palettes of fresh flowers. Everyday millions of fresh flowers are brought    in to be auctioned off to buyers via the internet. Then they are immediately shipped out on trucks or flown to other parts of the world. Many of our flowers at home come from here. We had an hour to watch the process, a once in a lifetime experience! We cycled back to find that our boat was not at the dock but sitting off shore!    Excuse me???    We were relieved when they came back over to the dock to pick us up! We had our breakfast and at 9:30 we left Kudelstaart for our final bike ride! It was a sunny but co...