Little trip over to the ‘Dam!

Last weekend saw the 7th annual River cruise convention help in Amsterdam , which would entail 1 night in Amsterdam followed by an evening onboard a river cruise ship and tours of 3 more river liners , it was to be a quick but informative view on river cruising.

I will break this into 2 installments, the 2nd will feature information about the river ship visits.

I have to mention the flight out fro Birmingham, this had to be the smallest aircraft I have ever flown on!

So, Amsterdam, I have visited briefly before on a cruise for the day and if i am totally honest its not my favorite city by far! We arrived around 6.30pm and checked into the Doubletree by Hilton Amsterdam Centraal, which is a great hotel! They provide you with a fresh warm cookie on check in, lost of sparkly Christmas lights in reception, bright spacious rooms, justa  short walk from Amsterdam ad the main station, it really did tick all the boxes and I would thoroughly recommend and happily stay in this property again!

After dropping our bags into the room we headed of to explore Amsterdam for the few hours we had, first on the agenda was food! I have to say there arent many ‘appealing’ looking restaurants ad bars to choose from, I found everywhere looked very dark , busy and pretty unwelcoming! We settled on the best we happened to come across called The Grasshopper steakhouse, food was good, pricey but good!

Some of our group hadn’t visited the city before so a walk around the , dare I say it , red light district was on the cards which was hugely busy gangs of groups everywhere.

We found a little side street and a bar that was small but quiet enough or us to have a quick glass of wine before heading back to the hotel. A few photos en route to of course!

The following morning we headed down for breakfast which again was fantastic, truly a hotel you cannot fault, masses of everything you could wish for! With less than an hour spare we decided to head out in the cold for a few photo opportunity before heading to the conference held in the Movenpick hotel, this would update us on all things river and we even had a surprise visit from Aled Jones who is a frequent river cruiser himself!

Once the conference finished we were to head off to the river cruise port to board our ship for the evening, look out for my 2nd installment with my views of the ships we got to briefly visit and my evening onboard also.