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Published: July 15th 2015
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Yay Europe! We're here, we're here!
But wait..before we get into it would you believe it or not I'm a jinx, as per the last blog I thought nothing interesting would happen on the way to the ferry. Well....driving along and our muffler, that big long piece of metal under the Wiz, falls off and starts dragging and sparking along the road. Like what the...?! We wouldn't have even noticed if it wasn't for a quick game of charades with the kind driver next to us on the highway. Anyways after thinking we were indeed f@*ked (pardon my censored french) I was wondering what we would do, the ferry wasn't cheap and had already been booked and paid for. Could we please have some luck on our side? Sort of...indeed it was inconvenient but turns out that a muffler is over rated in some respect. An amazing cable tie and tie wire job by genius, amazing, wonderful boyfriend means there was no stopping us. We now have a seriously loud machine of a motorhome but at this stage it was the least of our worries - phew, we can get on the ferry, and we do 😊 I also thought it
would be the best time to do my blog but turns out computer says no and is in the cupboard until some time where we can get it fixed. Makes blog life a little more difficult but moving right along.
We arrive in Holland the same day as departing and it's only an hour or so to Amsterdam. We park up and think how crazy it is we are in Europe and how much are out of our English speaking comfort zone. So naturally on our first day in Holland we find ourselves asking everyone if they spoke English before ordering or buying tickets etc. It was only when a bar maid laughed at our question we suspected it was a stupid thing to ask. Here we thought we were being polite, turns out we are just retarded and the guy at the laundromat confirmed it "everyone in Holland speaks English!" Right, well that makes things easier.
So what's not easy - driving on the right side of the road, well the wrong side, but you know what I mean. Yep, we are in that territory...no accidents yet but a couple of beeps as a result of old
habits...pretty happy Eamon's doing 97% of driving.
So back to Amsterdam. It' such a cool place, and has a very impressive bicycle network. We took out the bicycles as soon as we parked that first night to go check out town, how hard can cycling be when there are bike lanes everywhere? Well it only took around 5 minutes to confuse the hell out of us, driving on the right (wrong) was one thing but riding was worse, im sure it's super well organised but it felt like a constant intersection when the traffic lights are out, people seem to just do whatever they like. Lucky our park up for the next couple of nights was closely located to the free ferry running straight to Centraal, I love free stuff so much. The great thing about Amsterdam is that everying is walking distance so nights out were made possible and easy. Now without going into too much detail the summary of our stay...sex shows, beer, brownies, pretty colours, Eawom Mean (Rastafarian pronounced), red light windows, giggles and boobs! And for those that know that I struggle to party hard there is also an array of attractions to see, Anne
Frank house, Heineken Experience, Amsterdam Dungeon and purely getting lost and confused in the canal system they have going on, all well worth doing and making Amsterdam a great all round city and was the best part of Holland. It nearly got off to a bad start when I went to get Subway, apparently I ordered at a bad time, they were about to close, and for whatever reason was told to f@*k off (again pardon le french).
We left our darling Amsterdam, taking the standard tourist route heading north briefly to check out the clogs, the windwills and the cheese. Since being in Holland I had also developed a love of Delft, the blue and white hand painted ceramics, so a trip to the Delft museum had to be done, minus Eamon. I'm thinking now for sure that I'm a 60 year old trapped in a 30 year old body, I bought a lace pouch for pot pourrie oh and the crochet is coming along nicely...poor Eawom, when we get home our house is going to be littered with these nanna treasures! We should probably go to Belgium before I internally age more...
Belgium is lots of
things, for our memories it's very much war, beer and waffles. Speaking of, I could really go a waffle right now but moving right along. We started with Bruges which was similar to Brussels, both are beautiful but aside from walking around, eating the waffles smothered in chocolate, caramel, strawberries and cream and soaking in the atmosphere of the architecture there isn't too much to do here. Ypres, East Belgium, was a real war highlight with numerous cemeteries, monuments, museums and sites all relating to WW1 and very particular to Australia. It was very cool to see how the Aussies played their part and there is alot of gratitude, everynight at 8pm they play the last post with a ceremony, it's very sweet and gets super packed which is astonishing because the town is tiny!
Now the beer...we went to the Westvleteren brewery, outside Ypres, where you can only find their global award winning (supposed 'best beer in the world') trappist beer, well for a decent price at least. We stumbled across the particular beer in Brussels selling for 18 Euro a bottle, 4 times more expensive than the brewery. It was well worth the trip economically but we
nearly didn't make it. For whatever reason we thought it was in East Belgium, heading that way we had to make a time costly u-turn thanks to a favoured flip for head or tails. It was the best choice the coin could make except for the spew and hangover...I only had 5 beers, but I'm justifying my spew by the 10.2% alc vol of each of those beers. I'm also never drinking again...
Now as we make our way toward France we pass through Waterloo. Not knowing much about the French or war and especially not the French war there was a lot of information to take in. I might need to google stuff later but I'll probably forget. So bye bye to Holland and Belgium, concluding the last 10 days and hello to France! Before I head, just a quick shout out to all the pickled goodness we found, especially to my a massive supply of gherkins and sour crout.
Au revoir folks!
TL:DR
- Stuff falls off the Wiz
- Amsterdam! Fun times and Kylie turns nanna
- Clogs, windmills, cheese and Delft - Holland!
- War, beer, war, waffles, war - Belgium!
- Headed
for France
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