Oslo to Amsterdam
August 30 to September 18, 2025
Mike and Judy Henderson
I'll leave this map up for reference. We're coming to the end of our cruise, which is just one segment of the Regent Grand Arctic Cruise. I think the whole cruise is about 160 nights and runs from New York to Barcelona. The description of the whole cruise is no longer available on the Regent website.
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9/17/2025 (Wednesday) We docked about 7am at the Port of Tyne, which is the entry port for the city of Newcastle. We'll visit the Durham Cathedral. Newcastle once had a lot of coal mines and that's why we have the saying "Taking coals to Newcastle" to mean doing something meaningless or superfluous.
Just a side note. There's an unusual pedestrian bridge across the River Tyne in Newcastle, called the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. The interesting thing about it is how it "opens" to allow river traffic.
Here's the bridge in it's normal "down" position.
And "raised" to allow river traffic.
Unfortunately, the bridge is some distance from where we're docked, and they didn't take us to see it.
Our excursion today is to Durham Cathedral. There was a light rain as we boarded the bus at 8:20.
On the way to the cathedral we drove by the Angel of the North. I couldn't get a good picture from the bus, but here's one from the Internet. You can follow the link for a description of the sculpture. Looks a lot like an airplane.
When we got to the area of the cathedral, we had to walk along the River Wear to a bridge, where we crossed over the river to the town. There were a number of weirs on the river to control the flow. While they may control the river flow, they block any boating on the river. Here we are, walking in the rain, the River Wear, the weirs, the bridge we're going to cross, and the top of the Cathedral. It looks so far away.
We had to climb some stairs to get up on the bridge. Here's a view from the bridge looking into the town.
A view from the bridge, looking downstream, showing the weirs.
The streets led upward and were wet, but our footing was fine. It was not slippery.
We came to the town square.
And continued on to the cathedral. You can read quite a bit about the cathedral at this UNESCO website.
The cathedral contains the Shrine of St. Cuthbert. Pilgrims coming to the shrine generated significant wealth for the cathedral.
The entrance to the cathedral.
The sanctuary knocker on the door.
One of the stained glass windows. It probably represents St. Cuthbert.
A view toward the altar, looking down the nave.
A bit closer view of the altar.
The stained glass window behind the altar.
A sarcophagus just to the side of the altar area. Whenever I see one of these, I'm reminded of the Robert Browning poem "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church". Incidentally, if you like that poem, read "My Last Duchess" also by Browning.
This clock was in the right side of the transept (facing the altar).
I have many more pictures but these give you the flavor of the Cathedral. It was impressive. Its library has one of the original copies of the Magna Carta. Going to the exit we passed the cloister.
Judy did a little shopping in the gift shop and found some earrings that were just what she had been looking for. Then we went to the cafe and had a cup of coffee until it was time to meet our group for the walk to the bus.
We gathered in the town square at this statue of Charles William Vane Stewart.
There was one other statue, of Neptune, in the square. The plaque identified it as having been given to the town in 1729.
We also met Leda, who is about two years old. In this picture, she's looking for a treat.
We walked back the way we came, and boarded the bus back to the ship.
This afternoon at 5:30 is the Krew Kapers, where the crew puts on a show for the guests. While the guests were arriving at the theater, they played a video of events and people during the cruise. Judy and I got a 3 second cameo. One of the waiters was walking in front of us just as we came on the screen.
Here's the opening act - energetic dancing.
This is a traditional dance of the Philippines, where the guys holding the bamboo poles clack the poles together and the dancers jump into the area between the poles and then outside the poles, always avoiding getting their feet hit by the poles.
This gal sang "My Heart will Go On". She gave it a good shot, but Celine Dion is not worried.
Another dance group.
The last act was a solo performer singing "The Impossible Dream".
As he finishes, they open the curtains and many of the ship's staff are on stage.
Each group is recognized, and as they are recognized, they file off the stage. One act they didn't do, which the audience always loves, is Y.M.C.A. Since the song is associated with the Gay community, the management may have decided not to risk it.
We went to dinner with Eva and Richard and then to bed. The end of another day.
Tomorrow we arrive at Amsterdam, and after one overnight on board, the end of the cruise.
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9/18/2025 (Thursday) To get to the main part of Amsterdam, we had to sail through a long canal. It was about 1pm when we docked, pretty much in the center of Amsterdam.
Since the excursions can't begin until the afternoon, Trivia was moved to the morning at 10:30. Then at 11 we were able to redeem our Regent points for Regent merchandise. We had 191 points which we redeemed for two Regent baseball caps, three shirts, and a coffee mug. There was one unused point.
As we entered the Amsterdam harbor, the ship had to go through a lock. Amsterdam wants to maintain the water level in the port at a constant level. The locks prevent tides from affecting the water level in the port. We saw the use of locks for a port on an earlier cruise along the coast of France and Spain.
The central part of Amsterdam is interlaced with 165 named canals. Here's a map showing the canals. I put an arrow to show where the ship was docked.
With all those canals, there are a lot of bridges, approximately 1,200 to 1,500, depending on what you count as a bridge. [Note: Hamburg has more bridges, about 2,500. Venice has only about 435.]
The cruise port terminal is quite modern and convenient. They have an "air bridge" type connector to the ship. Very convenient.
The terminal itself is huge. Here's a picture looking at about half the terminal.
And a look at the opposite side of the room.
We had a city tour at 2pm. The bus took us into the city and the tour guide talked to us as we walked through some of the city.
The first place she took us was to the Jewish area. There's a very large synagogue in the area, the Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga), but we did not visit it.
After the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940, the Dutch did not protect their Jewish citizens. In 1940 there were about 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands, about 79,000 of those in Amsterdam. In 1942 the Nazis began shipping the Jews to extermination camps. About 107,000 were deported. Only about 5,000 ever made it back to the Netherlands. The Danes did a lot more to protect their Jewish citizens.
The Anne Frank house was not too far from where we were, but we didn't go to see it. Here's a link about Anne Frank.
We did go to the Waterlooplein Square, where small merchants set up stands to sell a wide variety of things.
As we were crossing the street to Waterlooplein Square, another excursion group came behind us, and our Trivia friends, Julie and Bruce, were in that group.
Here's a small part of the square. You can see the small stands that are selling all kind of things. Several were selling leather jackets.
We walked the bridge over the Zwanenburgwal canal. Note how low the boats are. The clearance on the bridges are quite low and only those low boats can get through. I suspect when the canals and bridges were built, the only boats were cargo-carrying and were not very high.
One of the guests on the excursion asked about the Red Light District (De Wallen) in Amsterdam. Although we were fairly close to De Wallen, our guide told us that she is prohibited from taking tourists into the area. She said she'd tell us where it is located, but we'd have to go on our own. The prohibition is part of Amsterdam's reaction to over-tourism.
Amsterdam has legalized marijuana, and some coffee shops sell coffee and "reefers". The term "reefer" is really old. Perhaps some of you may remember the movie "Reefer Madness", made in 1936. During the 60s, people would get stoned and then watch the movie.
Next we walked by the Zuiderkerk but didn't go in. It was completed in 1614.
Judy pointed out this furniture store to me. It's called "Wonder Wood". I'm a woodworker and when I don't know the species of a wood, I call it "wonder wood" - I wonder what it is:-)
We continued on and crossed Damrak Avenue, which is a major thoroughfare in Amsterdam. This picture only shows one side of the avenue. The other side if beyond that barrier on the right side of the picture.
This arch has the date 1574 at the top. We entered through the archway.
This was the entrance to the Begijnhof, one of the oldest courtyards in Amsterdam. For more, click on the link.
The interior of a small church off the courtyard.
There was a bust of Pietro Locatelli, an Italian Baroque composer who worked in Amsterdam. He is buried in or near the church.
Next we went to the Singel canal where we caught a GreyLine tourist boat which will take us back to the ship.
We passed the famous Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge) over the Amstel River, perhaps the most famous bridge in Amsterdam. The bridge was originally built in 1691, but the reproduction you see here was built in 1934.
Here's a better picture - on a bright sunny day - from the web. Until 1994 the bridge was operated by hand. Now, it is opened automatically with motors. Tour boats can go under it without opening.
From here we continued to our ship. We passed the Netherlands Maritime Museum which has the replica of an East Indiaman ship, the "Amsterdam" moored at their dockage. The boat we were on came too close to the ship for us to get a picture of the whole ship but here's one from the web.
The tour boat then took us directly to the Mariner. Our next excursion was an evening boat tour that began about 8pm. When we started the tour there was still some light, but it soon got dark.
Unfortunately, there was a group of five or six people in the rear of the boat who spent the whole excursion talking between themselves, making it difficult for the rest of us to hear what the tour guide was saying. Very rude. Perhaps they thought it was not a narrated cruise when they signed up for it.
Here's the Amsterdam train station at night.
We passed the Eye Film Institute.
Here's the Magere Brug at night.
A bit further on, we came upon the Walter Süskind Bridge. It looks somewhat like the Magere Brug, and probably operates the same way, but the bridge is much shorter. It was originally built sometime before 1662 (where it was first mentioned).
That ended our evening excursion. We got back to the ship by 9:30, in time to put our suitcases out before 10pm.
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9/1892025 (Friday) We depart the ship today. We were out of our cabin by 8am and by 8:30 were on the bus to Schiphol airport (AMS). We checked in with KLM, wondering if we'd ever see our bags again.
Then through security and passport control and to the KLM lounge. Our flight departs at 12:45 so we had some time to wait. The KLM lounge is huge, as is the airport.
We left the lounge about 11:45 and had quite a walk to the gate. But when we got there we found that the aircraft was late. We eventually boarded about 12:15 and things went well after that.
We're on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a nice airplane.
The flight was a bit over 10 hours. Judy and I were able to get a bit of sleep, and I watched a few movies. One that was pretty decent was "Berlin", a 2023 Indian film.
We arrived at LAX about 3pm local time. I think we landed at one of the remote terminals because it was a LONG walk to passport control. We flew through with Global Entry and our baggage showed up (eventually). Our limo driver was waiting for us and we loaded up and headed out into rush hour traffic. It took a while to get home.
Our girls were excited to see us, barking and spinning around, although this picture does not show it.
And that was the end of another trip. We went to bed early and woke up early. But soon we'll be back to a normal schedule.
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