Washing day! It took us a while to figure out that a Laundromat is called a “Laverie” but we eventually made the connection. The Laverie would not be a bad idea for a second income if you live in the area. It was all coin operated, with a mobile phone number on the wall if anything went wrong. Yet another warm, sunny day in Alsace. According to our mate Paul, it was raining back home, which is wonderful for our garden. After our entertaining morning of clothes washing, we took a drive to the Ballon D’Alsace, which is the second highest peak in the Vosges mountain range. We went to the Ballon, via the town of Thann. Wonderful views from the top of the peak and a lovely statue of Joan of Arc looking toward Lorraine ... read more

Had breakfast at the hotel, breads, croissants, jam, coffee, orange juice. Then we drove to Colmar. The scenery was spectacular, vineyards as far as the eye can see, mountains and wonderful medieval villages. Colmar was interesting, a bustling town full of tourists. Like Amsterdam, it has no high rise buildings and lots of quaint streets. We parked in a parking station and had trouble finding our way to the street. A guy in his mid fifties, who we presumed was French, pointed us to the exit. We wandered about, and then grabbed a coffee near the cathedral. We spotted the guy from the car park with his wife and gave them a wave. I invited them to join us for coffee in my best French and then found out they are from Kent in England! We ... read more

Back in Tilburg we needed a day to recover from our visit to Waganingen. Bianca can be a bit “busy” so it was good to have some peace! We spent the day repacking our bags and trying to work out how to fit the gifts that we had been given to take back to family in Australia. For some reason we had umpteen video tapes of some Dutch daytime soapy to take back to Moeder, 6 tubs of some special shaving soap that Pa loves, plus some bottles of a particular brand of eggnog that we just had to take back with us ! With that done we wrote some emails and relaxed. Then realised we did not leave for another two days! 31st August 2004 - we drove to Eindhoven to get our rail tickets. ... read more

We toured the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Hoges Voleuw National Park. It has an amazing collection of Van Gough and Picasso paintings, plus some incredible sculptures displayed around its very large grounds. From there we visited the Openlucht Museum, which housed displays of Dutch country life throughout the ages. Then we went driving through the Posbank National Park just on sunset. Again it was mostly reclaimed land that has been converted to heath land. It had a soft, pinkish look to the landscape as the sunset. ... read more

19th to 22nd August 2004 - Amsterdam Our route took us from Sydney to Bangkok, then onto Heathrow and a bus to Gatwick, and finally a flight to Amsterdam. The reason for the round-a-bout journey was that the only flights we could get from Heathrow to Amsterdam meant we would be waiting at Heathrow for five hours (something we did not want to do). So, we opted for the bus transfer to Gatwick instead, which at least kept us moving. Waiting for the Gatwick bus we got talking to some Kenyans who were on their way home to continue their studies. They were interesting young people and suggested we visit their country sometime to see the wildlife. We continued our talk once we got to Gatwick and helped them get their suitcases from the luggage hold ... read more