And so the Baltic cruise ends where it started … in cosmopolitan, friendly Amsterdam.

The ship docked early, just after 6 a.m., because Celebrity had to offload 2,100 passengers … clean up a bit … and then load another 2,100 to head back out the same day at 4 p.m.

Those who appreciate logistics probably would love to know the details of what goes on during those 10 hours. Lots of stuff being off-loaded and on-loaded.

They keep the time as short as possible because a ship isn’t making money when no one is on it, and separating passengers from their money is a high priority for all cruise lines.

Which takes me to the burning issue (I was burned up about it) of … internet access at sea.

I have yet to find a cruise line that allows easy online access — in port, cruising near land, out on the high seas. Anywhere. At all.

Once upon a time, cruise lines complained of technical problems, but now I think it’s mostly about worrying too many passengers would spend time in their rooms checking on their favorite websites, or camped out in a lounge uploading photos to Facebook.

That would cut into time that could be spent in the casino or browsing through the on-ship boutique or attending a “seminar” that ends with someone trying to sell something.

Plus, they prefer to monetize internet access, which is so 20th century. Just to have enough time to make blog entries … we spent $100 on 240 minutes of web time. For crissakes. Otherwise, we would have been measuring it in minutes, not hours.

For some of us, a a “timeout” from the global media village can be a good thing, but when it leads to ignorance about basic events back home, or an unseemingly stretch of time trying to get a bit of band width in a shed on a dock somewhere … that’s gone too far.

Cruise ships need to get wired. They have to. The next generation is not going to accept being shut out of social media. My generation will barely accept it.

(This was a big issue, for the 12 days we were gone. A very big issue. I couldn’t keep track of my fantasy baseball team, for goodness sakes. It’s a serious problem. And I couldn’t look at wiki sites of places we were about to visit, either. As big as a cruise ship is, it’s the closest you come in the world to being “off the grid”.)

Anyway, due to Celebrity’s rush to get us off the Constellation, and a 10 p.m. flight  … we had nearly the whole of a day in Amsterdam.

We spent much of it at the zoo, specifically the Artis Royal Zoo, which is a very fine zoo, indeed. Fairly compact but quite complete, and most the big animals you want in a zoo — lions, bears, elephants, giraffes, gorillas, penguins.

It was warm, if not quite sunny, and it was nice to wander the grounds, which are lush and well-kempt. Lots of schoolkids were there, in matching vests or school shirts, running around, excited about whatever animal they had just discovered.

It was a quiet, sedate, tidy and very European sort of experience, which is exactly what we wanted on our last day.

After a stop at the flower market to pick up some bulbs to carry back to the UAE, we hauled our bags onto the train to Schipol, spent a couple of hours in the KLM lounge (wifi!) making a dent in 12 days of work email, and then up in the air, heading south and east, to Abu Dhabi.

Even after 4.5 years, it seems strange to leave Europe and fly east.