Day 4: Amsterdam sightseeing then heading to Rhine Valley, Germany

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A free morning to enjoy the delights of Amsterdam before traveling on to St Goar to learn the history of German beer steins. From here a scenic drive along the Rhine Valley to our hotel.

Morning: Diamonds, Heineken experience and Amsterdam Tram

Beer Steins , Cuco Clock and Wine testing in WWII bunker

First night with Contiki was wild night as our discovery started with Amsterdam . Cruisisng through the famous red light district was included in itinerary , some or most of us spent some time in local coffee shops trying all exotic products .

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Most of us took the 1.30 am last shuttle service from Schiphol to our hotel . But may be few of us choose to explore Amsterdam's night life in greater detail .

Today we had a late start according to Contiki standards . Up at 6:15am, breakfast at 7:00am, on the bus at 7:45am.

Today Dave introduced us with the 'theme song' of our trip , it was ' Pump it ( louder )' by Black Eyed Peas . Dave played many nice numbers as well as some not so nice ones ( few really punk ones on Bobby's request ).

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Every morning when Jezza , our coach captain used to start his day on the wheels ; Dave used to play ' Pump it ( louder ) ' , ' Pump it ( Harder )' . Every day Dave plays the same song, the Day Song, so that we'll have a song to associate with our tour, forever and ever.

This morning, we got to hang around the more wholesome Amsterdam. I must say the sightseeing in Amsterdam is equally interesting as it's night life .

First, we went to Coster Diamonds to check out the diamond cutting demonstration. We were educated on what to look for in a diamond: Carat, Color, Clarity, and Cut. After the diamond cutting demonstration we have around 4-5 hours free time to explore the city itself .

Beer Steins of St Goar
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We first went to the Dam squire did some souvenir shopping , including a lolly made with Marijuana . From Dam square we could have gone to Anne Frank House as it was only 9.30 am and it's always preferable to go there early to avoid the crowd . But we choose to take a tram and visit the Heineken Brewerary instead .

The Heineken experience , a  museum dedicated to the second most transported liquid across the Atlantic after oil was amazing , you pay 10 euro and end up getting 3 beers at Heineken bars cleverly spaced throughout the museum and a glass . Not a bad price at all . Also it was interesting and we got to ride a ride. It was really cool, they put you on this stand and you watch this movie which shows the brewery through the eyes of a bottle. The floor moves and it was a cool idea .

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It was fun pretending to be a bottle of beer in a 3-minute simulated show taking us through the process of beer manufacture.

Since I'm doing sort of a "travel introspective", I would say that Amsterdam is quite an Eclectic city. Small city, but charged of history and sort of a city of "new social concept" due to all the world known DONT'S that are permitted here .

Now moving to the historic part of Amsterdam, you should visit the museums located in the Museum Plein, Rembrant's house, Anne Frankhuis and don't forget to stop by the Heineken old brewery (Heineken Experience). We took the tram to save some time but walking would have been a better option if I had few more hours to spend . Almost everything in the city is within the reach from any point of the city, the more you walk the more you sight see....watch out for those crazy bicyclists.

Evening: Wine testing in WWII bunker and roaming around St. Goar.

At the noon hour, we left Amsterdam for the Rhine Valley in Germany. The Rhine Valley was very scenic with a lot of nice trees, pretty farmland, and lavish land barons' castles too. We saw barges going on the Rhine. We stopped over in a small village called St. Goar and it was our night stop for the day .

St Goar is very small pretty village along the Rhine River. It's a town where Teddy Bear started off. At St Goar, I saw the world’s largest free-hanging cuckoo clock.

The bus trip on the way to St. Goar was extremely picturesque, we drove past vineyard after vineyard of vines with grapes ready to be harvested, I have never seen grapes that huge in a vineyard before, it was quite a sight!! I guess that region in known for their Riesling.

They grow grapes on the side of the mountains here, because of the slopes they rely on manual labor .

Germany is famous for Rhine wines, Munich Beer halls, carnivals such as Fasching and Oktoberfest – both in Munich – and the world-famous ballet in Stuttgart.

I found that beer in Germany was cheaper than (bottled) water.After we checked in it was dinner time followed by a wonderful wine testing session .

In a 17th century wine cellar, we tasted different white wines shouting “zum wohl!” (To your health!) in unison. The other German word for “Cheers” is, I learnt, “Prost”.

We tried samples from very dry to very sweet , almost 4-5 different varities of wine . I even tried some German ice wine, which is little expensieve than the normal one as only few seasons the grapes get affected by frost and then only there is some harvest to make this wonderful ice wines . I noticed that the German ice wine was fast flowing and not as thick as Canadian ice wine . German ice wine tasted pretty good . I liked the sweeter wines, though one of them was excessively sweet.

We kept the testing glass , it's a souvenir .

The wine tasting is only the calm before the storm. Tomorrow we are driving down to Munich! , The city famous for it's Beer halls.

After wine testing myself and Priya wondered around the small village of St Goar appreciating the beauty of Rhine river and it's surrounding valleys .

I did get to check my email at our little inn in St. Goar. Z and Y are switched on the keyboard, and the apostrophe and @ are really hard to find. Which is really rough after you've been to a wine tasting.