Found a free internet connection

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so decided to continue where I left off.

Meant to say before that Barga has big connections with the north of England and Scotland. It has a kind of hall of fame showing photos of Italians from Barga outside their restaurants in the Uk - the Nardinis and Luccas, the Gabrellis from Linlithgow and Bruccianis in Morceambe - I guess they moved to Preston later.

Enough diversion - back to Holland. We tried to get into the fantastic Kasteel Bloemendaal in Vaals near the German border: we stayed there before on a late-booking special internet deal. It's a chateau and as a hotel must be about 6 star: it's the kind of place that we 'normally would just drool over and drive past - but we got into it once ona late special at a stupidly low rate and loved it.

Inevitably, it was full, so we drove on to Valkenburg about 15 miles outside Maastricht, of treaty fame, which is an old spa town and has zillions of hotels. We once also got a reallly good late deal on a posh hotel here, so tried again - unfortunately I was practising my appaling Dutch and misheard the rate he quoted, so it was an expensive-ish night.... Nice hotel though - and they threw in breakfast, which was buffet style, so we appropriated rolls, butter, cheese, gingerbread and fruit bread for lunch, which made it much better value for money!

We set off this morning for Haarlem, which we picked cos it's a nice town and it's easy to get out to either the coast or into the big city of Amsterdam by train. It's also only 10miles or so from Ijmuiden where we catch the ferry back and the old car (I've grown kind of fond of her (definitely become a her) and we've hammered her quite hard from motorway to mountains and most things in between (and occassionally beyond eg Gorges de Vedon). We've now driven about 2,500 miles in all. Lot of driving which I've enjoyed most of the time - incredible mountain roads and coming round corners to these breathtaking views down these almost alpine (in fact French alpine valleys with the trees beginning to turn. Barga should be tuly spectecular in early October.
Forgot to mention that the i-pod has run out of charge and we've been unable to re-charge it. We've not been able to get radio reception much of the time, so we've been without music in the car (wendy forced to listen to my monologues (we all have our cross to bear). Willy has apparently had songs playing in his head the whole journey - does that remind you of anyone? Perhaps it's genetic and it will come upon all the Grahams once they hit a certain age!

Got a hotel in Haarlem centre and have got the car safely parked and will not drive till we leave on Sunday. Checked out the big department store, which has a sale starting 8am tomorrow, so may go and buy a few things at rock bottom prices, before either going to the beach or the dunes at Zandvoort for a walk - we stayed there years ago with Cara when she was maybe 12 and it's got a really nice sandy beach a bit like Southport or Formby with mature sandunes behind it - again a bit like Formby, but no red squirrels.

If it rains, we'll go to Amsterdam and do something cultural!!

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