Busy busy busy on the river

We strolled around the town first thing and amazingly, for Sunday morning, found a bakery open and selling croissants, which went down very well with some members of the party. We were also intrigued by a former church which had been reinvented as a dental surgery:

There was art in one of the old canals, otherwise clogged with water lilies:

And as always we enjoyed the bells in the belfry, chiming the hours so much more interestingly than elsewhere:

Then we got ourselves sorted, extracted ourselves with care from our very tight berths, and headed downstream to Muiden. We had been warned that it could be busy, and it was.

We had hoped to be able to moor up to visit the castle, which is quite famous, apparently:

But there was very little space, and one snooty yacht club said that while they could accommodate Saskia, they drew the line at hire boats. So we moved on:

We decided we had seen as much of the castle as we were likely to see, and frankly Muiden was just too busy and congested, so we headed back up the river towards Weesp, seeing lots of people enjoying the sunshine, though most of the swimmers were children:

Then we headed west through Weesp …

… across the Rhine-Amsterdam canal, aiming to skirt Amsterdam to the south. It was busy busy around Weesp:

But we found a pleasant spot for lunch on the side of the canal:

And then pressed on to the village of Oudekerk on the Amstel river, where by luck we found a place to moor up side by side right in front of a bar, and enjoy a little refreshing Amstel beer and snacks

Later we moved the boats a little further along the quay as day boats visiting for lunch started to depart.