Day 5 Tuesday 25 September 2007 Riding the River Wake Up Call: 6am Bags: 6:30am Breaky: 7am bus: 7:30am Leave 7:45am Most of us had a snoozy drive our of Holland today. It was raining quite heavily and made good dozing weather. We stopped at the border for 20 minutes - toilet €0.50. Back on the bus and on the way to Koln (Cologne). We only had a quick half an hour stop to see the Cathedral. There was about to be a holy service so we were hurried through. The cathedral was amazing. The sheer size and detail was extrodinary. [View Full Entry]

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Day 4 Monday 24 September 2007 Clogs, Canals and Red Lights. Wake up : 6:15am Bags and Breaky : 7am Leave 7:45am We had a lovely breakfast today. The best croissants with Nutella. There were doughnuts and waffles. The coffee was way too strong for me. We drove for about 2 hours and stopped at the Autogrill for ½ an hour. Clean toilets for €0.30 Rob had a nice smoothie. Back on the road. We crossed the Dutch frontier and began to see canals. Gary pointed out the houseboats and how they were higher than us. At one point, we drove [View Full Entry]

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Day Three: Bring on the Waffles! Sunday 23 September 2007 Wake up call: 4:15am Bags and Breaky Box 4:45am Lobby 5:50am Leave 5:45am It was a very early start. Breakfast box was a ham and cheese roll, croissant, yoghurt, apple, juice and water bottle. There were about 4 tour groups leaving so it was a little hectic. We met Gary, our tour director, who directed us down to the bus. As we drove through London in the dark, he explained a few things about the tour and how it would work. It took us around 2 hours to reach Dover. [View Full Entry]

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Day Three: Nice Surprises Saturday 22nd September 2007 The day started off restlessly at 3:30am. I got up and wrote some postcards and went back to sleep till after 6am! Off to breakfast downstairs. It ws nice, but I couldn't eat much. We set off for the walk to Harrods through Hyde Park. There were a few squirrels running around. When we got to Harrods at about 9am, we found that it didn't open till 10am. We walked around it, reading the great window stories, then went for a walk through Kensington. (VERY rich houses at about £4 00 000!! [View Full Entry]

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London Day One Friday 21 September 2007 Driving out of the airport, I was still a little deaf. It looked just like Sydney,till we hit the houses. Every single house was quaint with shingled rooves and chimmnies everywhere. The lights here go amber before they go green. We got to our hotel The Thistle Marble Arch at about 7:30am. LUCKILY a room was ready! Quite nice. We can see Oxford Street.We freshened up and walked down to Park Lane to get our Original Sightseeing bus tickets. I had left my wallet in the room - up there in the wind. There [View Full Entry]

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The Flight. Thursday September 20 2007 What an exciting day. To think we'd been counting down for 18 months! We dropped the kids off at school and I must admit I got very teary and nervy.I spent a bit of time pacing the house. Biggest trauma was I couldn't find my socks. Turned out Rob was wearing them. Great start. Colin came to pick us up and we arrived at the airport at 10:30am for our 1.55pm flight. Packing was okay! Our suitcases weighed in at 14.5 kg and 13.5 kg!Once we've thrown out some stuff there'll be plenty of room [View Full Entry]

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