Amsterdam

Greetings from Crystal Symphony.

We wanted to digress for a moment.  During our Beatles Tour in Liverpool, we saw white feathers in different location such as at the Cemetery near where John met Paul.  Our tour guide said in some cases people leave them because according to John Lennon’s son Julian his father John Lennon said the following.  He said to Julian that should he pass away, if there was any way of letting me know he was going to be ok the message would come to him in the form of a white feather. While we were walking the Crystal Symphony Promenade Deck while docked in Dover, we saw two different white feathers.  Maybe he was sending us a message that he is OK.  
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Crystal Symphony has always had a terrific Fitness Center and even better as the overall maximum passenger capacity has been reduced. It has a great variety of equipment.  It is also nice that you can see the entire length of the center without obstructed views.  One of the things we like is that the Crystal Fitness Centers are open 7x24 so you can workout on your own whenever you want. Group classes are also offered. For a fee you can sign up for personal training.

Dinner menu from Waterside from last evening.

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Last evening we dined at the Osteria Italian Specialty Restaurant with Daniele Puma and below is the dinner menu.

Last evening, we dined at the Osteria Italian Specialty Restaurant with Future Cruise and Loyalty Manager Daniele Puma. We have known Daniele since 2007 when he worked at the front desk.  Since then, we watched him move into other positions, Concierge and Chief Concierge, Assistant to the Hotel Director, Future Cruise Sales Consultant and to his current position. 

Dinner at Osteria was terrific between the great conversation, outstanding service, delicious cuisine, and the beautiful dining venue.  When we arrived, we were warmly greeted by the waitstaff team, and the feel is you are dining at a restaurant in a small village of Italy.  
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Osteria Menu.
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Sad news when we got back to our room.  We had to turn the clocks forward by one hour.  The good news is later in the cruise we will get the hour back when we turn the clocks backward.  Such challenges.  LOL.
 

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T​oday's Daily Reflections Program.

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Today we arrived at our first port of call for this cruise which is in Ijmuiden. This port is the gateway for Amsterdam.
 
There was a bit of a mix up for today’s private tour. Originally, it was going to be a Jewish tour including time in the morning to visit the Anne Frank House/Museum.  Unfortunately, tickets were booked for late afternoon rather than morning.  The good news is we have plans to return to Amsterdam next year so we changed out the program. Today focused on highlights of Amsterdam and next year we will focus on Jewish Highlights, including visiting the Anne Frank House/Museum. We were driven from the port to the city where we met up with our tour guide Kaleigh.

With that said we did see some Jewish sites including Synagogue and we made it to the outside of the Anne Frank house/museum.
 

We will let the photos do the talking except to say that Amsterdam has lots of beauty and things to do so we just got a small flavor of it today as there are lots of old castles, museums, courtyards, cobbled streets, canals, and lots more to enjoy. Like any city you could spend days, weeks and months here and not see or experience it all.

We will post a more information about the tour tomorrow.

Cheers,

​Anne Marie & Keith