There’s Always One Disappointment On A Trip, And This Was Ours

I was pretty pumped for our next activity.  I had found the “Boaty” website, which is a place you can rent your own electric canal boat and cruise (slowly) through the canals of Amsterdam.  

It is a three hour rental, so I eagerly signed up for an afternoon of captaining my own (little) boat and checking out the sights from the canals as admiring pedestrian tourists looked on and wished they were as cool as we were at that moment.

Carol had her doubts.  (Editor: Another evergreen tweet).  But she also had doubts about snowmobiling in Taos (which went great) and hydrospeeding in Chamonix, France (which went great for the our daughters, but not so well for us, so her doubts were well-founded), parasailing in Chamonix, France (which she loved), first time snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef (which went great).  

While a 75% hit rate is pretty good for me, I’m sure I’ve blocked a few out in which Carol’s skepticism was on point.  Anyhow, I think her concerns about this activity were that I would run into another boat, or we would be PT 109'd by a larger boat, or that somehow I’d go so fast I’d flip the boat and we’d be swimming in the canals of Amsterdam with people on shore laughing at us.  Given that the top speed of the boat is just 5 kph (yes, walking speed), I wasn’t too worried.

Nope, the stuff that made it a disappointment was none of that.  And it wasn’t a complete disaster or anything.  It was more a letdown, and a stressful letdown at times.

The first canal, when I still

knew where I was going.

One of the jobs of a boat captain is

to be able to point in a confident, 

even commanding, way.  Nailed it!

All in all, I'd have rather been

at the Amstel Riverside canal.

When you look at Carol's face above the

forced smile, you realize she's

second guessing my plan.  She

was right, as it turns out.

The two biggest problems was that we could not see the sights very well, although some of the houses right by the Amstel River and the canals were neat.  That wasn’t the big deal.  The stressful part is that the map was unreadable and there were times we had no idea where we were supposed to turn.

They don’t put the canal names or the bridge names on the canals and bridges.  So you are rarely sure of where you are.

There is no such thing as a short place name in Amsterdam, other than the Amstel River (which is how we got back to where we belonged).  The map was crowded with too much information, and we were winging it, using Carol’s GPS and my sense of direction (which is usually pretty good, but not so much on the canals). 

Once we decided not to follow the map route, it got better, because the Amstel River route is something we had already been on.

It was fun at points, and not that expensive, but all-in-all, the renting of the electric canal boat didn’t meet expectations.

Some of the views were pretty cool.

The shield of Amsterdam.

At this point we were 

almost back, so

it was all good-ish.

If I were to provide hints to other Americans traveling to Amsterdam, I’d suggest to spring for the Canalboat tour as part of a larger boat, where you could order drinks and maybe even a light snack.  Let someone else worry about the other boats, and where to go.  Just enjoy the ride.