Getting off the damn boat

We didn’t get to see anything of Dover or France going through the English Channel because we took so long to get out of Southampton, but we did get a good last dinner on the boat, because it was actually the first dinner for the majority of the passengers who all got on in Southampton.  We had to get up early because even though we wouldn’t be allowed off the boat in Imjuidin until about 11:15am, they wanted us out of our rooms by 8am so that they could clean them.  What?!?!?!  On our other cruises, they’ve always asked us to stay in our cabins until our group is called to depart the boat, which is much better than this ridiculousness that has us sitting out in a lounge for 

 hours…we were smart enough to get not only breakfast, but snacks and stuff for lunch because we would be leaving the boat and trying to get all the way into Middelburg and who knows when we would have a chance for lunch.

They did let us go a little early, but then promptly lost one of our bags and several or our friends’ bags, so we’re all standing around and waiting for the next wave of luggage to come off the boat, which might be an hour and a half away according to one lady.  I thought that I couldn’t hate this cruise line more, but they could 

have given less than one shit that they had required us to check our bags and then promptly lost them without any kind of apology or offer to help us get into town, etc.  We decide to use the wifi while we wait, but luckily the bag came off in the next 20 minutes and we were able to get out of dodge.  We did find the bus stop that comes 200 yards from the terminal and we were able to catch the bus that we should have ridden all the way here, back to Amsterdam.  We saw a train station on the way and I told John that if that was the other Amsterdam stop, we were getting off and we were able to get to the ticket window, grab tickets for Middelburg on a train leaving in 20 minutes and get some drinks.  The whole thing worked like clockwork and bless the Netherlands, wifi on the train, but nowhere to actually plug in the device.  We were in Middelburg by 2:30pm or so and got the key, got some late lunch at the Greek place that held the key for us.  Walking into town, everything was closed.  I mean the place was like a ghost town even in market square, but there were people at every ATM, so something had to be going on somewhere.