Jeri Clausing
Although I've spent most of my life traveling, I've also spent a lot of it avoiding group travel and cruises.
Call it excursion aversion. I simply don't have the attention span to tolerate rigid schedules and what for me can feel like excruciatingly long historical and museum tours. I like to set my own pace, which is usually faster than everyone else. And when I'm distracted by the next shiny object, I like to be able to chase it.
It's unfortunate because I miss out on a lot of history. But that's OK for me, because my favorite part of traveling is just watching and meeting people.
Although for many years I avoided cruises because they can be so excursion heavy, I've discovered river cruises can be a great way to explore on my own, particularly now that many have added bicycles guests can check out individually, as well as more tour alternatives that allow for more intimate groups and more diverse options than the castle or museum of the day.
While some river lines offer guests the ability to book private tours onboard, agents can also help their clients book private outings through tour companies like Avanti Destinations. Although Avanti generally books pre and post-cruise stays with hotels and private tours as a package, they gave me a preview of their with a two-hour "Amsterdam like a local" private walking tour at the end of a recent sailing.
Some hotels also offer tours you won't likely find through the river cruise lines, like the "Up in Smoke" joint rolling experience I joined through The Sir, a boutique hotel where I spent my final night.
For the Avanti tour, I ended up inviting along a travel agent and her sister I had become friends with. And it turned out to be exactly our style. Our guide, Martin de Ruijter, picked us up from the ship and off we went. He had no set agenda, offering suggestions but leaving the final decisions to us. We told him we'd already been to the Red Light district and key museums, so he recommended visiting Dam Square for a look and SHORT history lesson, then a walk over to the Anne Frank House.
It truly was a locals tour, as it felt more like we had met up with a friend showing off his town than a tour guide. And since it was just the three of us, he could pick up on my ADD clues and move things along. The best part was just being able to have a conversation with him about life in Amsterdam, and ask about everything from how much rent is to the fact that there are more bikes than people.
We wandered around the Jordaan district, which is a bit off the normal tourist path, then capped it off with a stop at a local pub for beers and a favorite Dutch bar food, fried bitterballens.
Besides feeling like I had made a new friend, I got a good lesson for navigating the streets and train stations, which made my next day there on my own that much more enjoyable as I wandered a local street market then made my way to the "Up in Smoke" experience at the Number One Smart Shop, one of Amsterdam's original headshops founded by owners Gabriel and Carolyn Eaves's father in the 1970s.
Number One Smart Shop employee Emre Sungur demonstrates how to roll a perfect joint as part of the "Up In Smoke" experience offered by The Sir hotels in Amsterdam. Photo Credit: Jeri Clausing
Part of the experience was learning how to roll the perfect joint. But what I found most interesting was learning about the laws there for instance you can't buy marijuana at head shops, only at coffee shops -- and all the different products besides marijuana that can be sold.
In addition to the usual drug paraphernalia, the shop had shelves and shelves of herbal and natural medicines, powders, tablets and tinctures that claim to offer effects similar to everything from cocaine to Viagra. They also sell a long list of truffles that supposedly have the same hallucinogenic effects of psilocybin, or magic mushrooms.
But it's not all about getting high. The shop also had medicinal mushrooms that are based on ancient Chinese practices as well as a host of products with Cannabidiol, or CDB, which is legal there and in the most states and is used for everything from treating pain to ADD. Perhaps I should have bought some of that for the next time I'm stuck on a traditional excursion.