Day 3-Can we address the elephant in the room?
Smoke is still coming from Carla’s ears about her phone, so we head to the Apple Store. We took a long 2-hour wandering route and walked around several canals outside the first three where all the tourists seem to converge. We thought the architecture was fascinating and learned that Amsterdam puts Pisa to shame in the number of leaning buildings. Like Venice, the buildings are built on piles driven into the marshes. If you look closely, you can see how buildings have been anchored together to keep them vertical.
At the Apple Store the guy said he’s seen this problem a few times with tourists but couldn’t help because it’s a provider problem not a phone problem. Once we were home, we learned that it sometimes happens with the iPhone 15 if you’ve used an esim in another country, which we had last Fall. He deleted the old esim and said we should be good to go. Here’s hoping, because Hell hath no fury like a dataless wife if it happens in Belguim this Fall.
Carla is Facebook friends with several people from our RS tour in France from 2019. One of these is the better half of a retired couple from Oregon. It turns out Sheila and Jim were in Amsterdam today on their way to Germany for an RS tour followed up by a Viking river cruise. We arranged to meet for drinks in early afternoon. They were a sweet couple in 2019, and even a sweeter couple now, if I would have poked a hole in them, Stroopwafel juice would have leaked out. We chatted happily for about 15 minutes until Sheila blurted out “Can we talk about the elephant in the room?” My immediate reaction was to look down in case my fly was open, but then I realized we were about to talk politics. “We are so sorry” she said. “I’m perfectly happy not to discuss if you don’t want to” I lied. But they wanted to have a chat and said they’d considered telling people they were Canadian because they weren’t sure how Americans would be treated, but they also didn’t want to be dishonest. Since it’s topical, I’ll offer up other American stories later.
It was time to check into our cruise ship. First impressions were good. Very modern public spaces and cabins. I’d say our cabin was slightly larger than an ocean ships and our shower was probably triple the size. In this one I could turn around and bend over. And the “balcony” was a clever design with a two-piece floor to ceiling picture window that with the push of a button the top half would roll down giving you an outdoorsy balcony feel.
We were surprised to learn that there were more Canadians on board then any other nationality, then Aussies, followed by the Brits, a few Americans and 1 woman from New Zealand. Carla craves company and conversation and that was the highlight of this trip. We met two Aussie couples on the ship and friendships were made. Even now, several weeks after, we’re all still group-chatting. Aussie Couple #1 are Bruce and Deanne, and we had dinner with them the first night. We were joined by a newly retired American couple from California and halfway through our meal, the Americans, feeling sheepish brought up the political situation. They also said they’d considered telling people they were Canadian and felt a need to keep a low profile.
We never brought up politics, but people from the other Commonwealth countries were continually asking us how we felt about our neighbours, and it was a big story to them that the King was in Canada to deliver the throne speech in a subtle one-finger salute at the Americans. Because the friendship blossomed with our Aussie friends we rarely spoke with the other Canadians, but we saw them; while American logoed shirts and ballcaps were in short supply (except for two people) the Canadians were decked out with Maple Leaf ballcaps and pins. Quite frankly, we Canadians weren’t taking any chances about being seen as Americans.