Kerr Barging Blogs

We have spent a fair bit of time cruising in the South Pacific aboard our 33 years young 11.1metre yacht, Pastime of Sydney. We are now cruising through the canals and rivers of France on our old barge, "Anja", which was built in the North of the Netherlands in 1903. Anja was 110 years old in May 2013 and we celebrated with good French Champagne- but the boat did not get any! In 2014, for Anja's 111th, we took her back to where she was built in the North of the Netherlands.

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Amsterdam

Barging 2014

Penelope and David Kerr

Sunday, 20 July 2014

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We decided not to take Anja right into Amsterdam. The descriptions or routes and marinas was just too complicated to risk when we had little children to consider. At the most popular marina, we might be rafted three or four abreast, and have to move to allow others to manoeuvre. The town of Weesp was a much more congenial stopping place and the train took us into the centre of the city in 15mins.

Amsterdam of an earlier era- with boats like Anja

David and I bought museum cards which allow us access to many Amsterdam Museums and also the majority of small town museums.

Amsterdam and its canals

We visited several Museums: The Rijk with its beatifully presented art treasures, the Maritime Museum where we particularly enjoyed the display of old atlases; the van Gogh Museum with an excellent chronological presentation of his works and finally the Amsterdam Museum which gave a good history of the city. We also enjoyed a canal cruise to make up for the fact that we were not bringing Anja through the city. In fact most of the canals would have been inaccessible to us as the bridges are too low and many are not open to everyone.

Amsterdam seen from the canal

In Amsterdam English was widely spoken and displays were almost always offered in Dutch and English (as well as German and sometimes French). This was quite different from the other cities we had been too and it gave us a chance to understand better what we were seeing. We try to access information in the local language but we our electronic translators often let us down. Amsterdam itself was very busy and crowded with tourists whereas Weesp was a beautiful and calm spot to be. It also had n excellent and direct train conection toSchipol so that our daughter, son-in-law and grandaughters could easily travel to Schipol for their 'plane back to Australia.

Amsterdam Street