As Celebrity Silhouette started its departure from Amsterdam on our last day aboard I was still up top, having elected to take photos around the ship while my wife headed back to our room for some quality not freezing to death or being bored to tears following her husband around while he took photos of the ship time.
When we’d arrived in Amsterdam the day before, the Holland America Line cruise ship Nieuw Statendam had already been docked and we’d needed to slip past her and come alongside at the port, butt-to-butt (or aft-to-aft in nautical speak). The HAL ship had already left prior to our departure but its position had been replaced by the Viking Jupiter. Those ships had both been facing roughly west which meant they could simply cruise away from Amsterdam without any issue but our ship was facing roughly east with the bulk of the city on our starboard side and Java-eiland to the port. I’ve no doubt that the captain of Silhouette and/or the pilot could have negotiated the entire length of the canal and passage through the locks backwards but you usually have to pay extra for a Showing Off cruise and they don’t tend to include those sorts of manoeuvres on 3-nighters. Getting out, therefore, involved moving away from the dock, reversing back past Viking Jupiter until Java-eiland was cleared, then moving forward, putting Java-eiland now on our starboard side until the width of the waterway was sufficient for Celebrity Silhouette to perform a 180 degree turn.
Viking Jupiter
We happen to live just ten minutes walking distance from Portsmouth Port. What we’re really hoping is that more cruise lines start to use Portsmouth as a turnaround port rather than just a cruise stop to increase our opportunities to experience new cruise lines from a fabulous location for us. Sure, there’s the challenge of trailing cases through the edges of Buckland while waving a nail-studded club around threateningly to ward off the local youth but the convenience of being able to leave the car outside the home (or somebody else’s home in whichever street we managed to find a parking space in the night before travelling) would be worth it.
Why am I talking about Portsmouth Port? Well, very shortly before we took this taster cruise there was a new visitor to our local port, that being Viking Jupiter. Our local port can only take ships of a certain size and while there are plans for some expansion this will still leave it on the short side for our preferences. We’re Goldilocks cruisers, looking for something not too big and not too small, a not too young and not too old demographic, not too basic and not too pampered. Viking Jupiter is probably a little on the small side for us and perhaps a little too luxurious for us (read: expensive; we’re not tight-arses but we do like to get value for money) but it was nice to see her gleaming in the port and it was a pleasant surprise to then discover she’d followed us to the Dutch capital during our departure. She’s a new ship in the Viking fleet and a very attractive one too.
Leaving Amsterdam
Passing Viking Jupiter left us with views of the main part of Amsterdam with its canals and church towers prominent and also a large number of riverboats. Some people call them ships, some call them boats, some call them barges with ideas above their stations; whatever you call them, there were a lot of them and we saw examples from Viking river cruises, Amadeus, and Scenic, among others. We still can’t get excited about river cruising despite the obvious push from various lines in the early part of this year to promote them with TV advertising and appearances plus freebie trips handed out to influencers. The sea is in our blood; rivers are in the countryside. We want waves. We want uninterrupted views to the horizon under cloudless skies at night. I’m sure river cruising is just lovely but it would have to be a spectacular price in a spectacular location to tempt us and right now the former looks exceedingly unlikely and the latter is limited to Russia, India, and China.
On the opposite side of the ship (starboard if you’re keeping track) we passed the A’DAM Tower and the Eye Film Museum, both wonderful buildings from an architectural perspective and both places we’ve not yet visited on our two trips to Amsterdam. Should we return – the Dutch government seem to be going out of their way to reduce tourism to the city so that’s not a given – then there’s a good chance we’ll take advantage of the ferry that transfers passengers across the water to check both locations out.
Maritime Quarter
By the time I’d taken a few more photos around the ship and returned to our room to rejoin my wife, the ship was coming up on the Maritime Quarter of Amsterdam. My wife had shown no signs of having missed my company nor any remorse at failing to express joy upon my return when I mentioned it and so I felt justified in stepping straight out onto the balcony to grab some more photos of the ship’s passage along the North Sea Canal.
Not quite the first thing that caught my eye in this part of the city’s outskirts was a graffiti-daubed submarine in the water. My first thought was that this was most likely a floating museum but some research after the cruise has determined that this vessel is one of the last of the Soviet navy’s Zulu-class attack submarines, designated 4711 B-80, moved into its current position by owners who wanted to transform it into a party boat, said plan abandoned when it was realised that the risk of drunk people getting launched from torpedo tubes was something insurers were unwilling to cover.
The actual first thing that caught my eye in the Maritime Quarter was Botel, a floating hotel with views to the submarine just across the water from it. Its bright white exterior and fantastically funky font advertising its name and hinting at its functionality are pretty hard to miss. For people who like being on the water this could be an interesting option as a location to stay if visiting Amsterdam for a few days and the area has a regular ferry service running to the main part of the city.
Beyond the Botel was the marina. I love being on or by the water but yachting leaves me cold.
A lot of this area was formerly shipyards and some of that work still goes on to this day. Alongside the marina were a number of dry docks, some of them with vessels in being worked on.
The most interesting ship for me was the MS Deutschland, quite obviously a small cruise ship but one with a fascinating dual role these days and a history that is probably only generally known to German people (understandably, given its name). For part of the year the ship is named World Odyssey and is used for educational purposes taking students abroad to study, and sponsored academically by Colorado State University. For the remainder of the year the ship is chartered by the German company Phoenix Reisen, given the name MS Deutschland, and undertakes more traditional cruising. Until 2015, the ship was the primary filming location for a long-running German series, Das Traumschiff, and if you want to catch glimpses of MS Deutschland visiting exotic locations around the world, blatant product placement, and some horrible disregarding of international cruising regulations then YouTube is your friend.
The appearance of the small piece of green land, Keerkringpark, marked the point at which I decided most of the interesting landmarks along the northern side of the North Sea Canal were at an end, plus there was trivia about to start so I took a break from documenting our departure from Amsterdam and returned to the room to gee my wife into action. We did horribly in the trivia but we still had that victory the day before to cling onto.
IJmuiden
I’ve written about IJmuiden before (on the approach to the Netherlands and departing from the Netherlands on P&O’s Azura in 2017). Now, when IJmuiden thinks of IJmuiden and wants other people to think of IJmuiden it probably thinks of IJmuiden in the sense of a port city with a beach and plenty of history and lots of places for tourists to come and spend their money. But when I think of IJmuiden I picture the complex to its north. I picture the beautiful, belching, brutal buildings of that industrial complex and it makes me feel warm inside. Is this because I grew up on a diet of science fiction TV and VHS movies in the 1980s predominately set in places like this and it happens to trigger pangs of nostalgia? I’d like to think so, but I’ll also take “It’s because you’re fricking weird, Mark” as I consider that a compliment every time it’s uttered.
Here’s some video of Celebrity Silhouette passing through the locks at IJmuiden in case you’re one of the nine people currently alive on the planet who’s ever wondered just what that’s like.
Something I’d not spotted before when we’d passed through the locks at IJmuiden was SHIP, a place to experience the construction of the new sea lock, the port area, port professions, and even hit the restaurant to watch vessels passing by. Something to bear in mind as a point of interest if you’re ever cruising to Amsterdam on a line that has decided not to pay the Dutch capital’s increased charges so that it can pass on the inconvenience to its customers and dock 45 minutes away instead. No names mentioned. Not even a pair of letters separated by an ampersand mentioned.
That concluded our time in the Netherlands aboard Celebrity Silhouette. There will be one more post covering our time on this ship which will go through the evening’s entertainment and dining and terrifying amounts of drinking. Was there dancing? Yes, there was dancing too, but you’re in luck because the only bits caught on camera were done by other people.