Our ship - Emerald Sky

 This afternoon, we board our ship and leave Amsterdam.

Mandatory life jacket drill. The life jackets have gotten smaller than we are used to. No, it isn’t because we are bigger than before. 🧐 There is no back to them. A few passengers need help figuring out how to put them on. One person even inflated his.😂 There were some rowdy people on this cruise.

The bridge as we left Amsterdam. The bridges were all different and interesting.

Afternoon tea is wonderful. Mini sandwiches and pastries along with your tea. Dinner isn’t served until around  7pm so you need a little something to tied you over until dinner is served. 😉 

Warning - calories rich desserts can add weight!

I don’t see any sandwiches on this plate. 🧐😁 

I have opted for the chocolate flavors instead. 😂

We arrived at our first lock. There are 4 locks in the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal that connects the port to the Rhine River. This man-made canal is the world’s busiest. I believe there are at least 10 more locks to pass through before we reach Basel, Switzerland. I have seen a lock before but never been in one before. Everyone it seems was out videoing or taking pictures. 

This is the ship in front of us and I thought we would follow in right behind it but oh no. No, no, no. This ship went all the way up front and then moved all the way to the right. We came in and slid right next to it on the left. We were side by side. I could very easily touch the wall on one side and step onto the ship on the other side. Two more ships came in behind us - four in total in this lock. 

Then, the back gate came down and it was time to raise the water level. So cool! It looks like there are actually 2 locks side by side at this spot but maybe the right side was a holding area for the water that was pumped into the left side to raise out ship up to the next level of the river. I am not sure where the water comes from. I read that there are holding tanks somewhere. 

The locks are 24 meters wide and the ships sailing on these rivers are no more than 11.45 meters wide. That’s how two ships can sit side by side in the locks with 1.1 meters extra. That’s is 1.2 feet between the ships and 1.2 feet between each ship and the canal wall!!!

Here, we are approaching the lock.

Here, we are looking behind us to the back of the lock and the gate going down.

I didn’t take a picture of the top deck of the ship while we were navigating the lock, but we did wonder why all the chairs were laying down. Well - there isn’t much room to squeeze under the gate so everything on the top of the ship is made as low as possible. That means the wheel house (where the captain navigates the ship) is also lowered. Locks are not a recent invention for river navigation but it sure is interesting to see the mechanical improvements of this system. 

Leaving the lock. Yes, you can get a little wet from the drips off the gate.☔️