we're going to the zoo zoo zoo, how about you you you....

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Wednesday saw us heading to Amsterdam, an epically long journey of....seventeen km. Fortunately having been to the citizen m before we knew exactly where to go. Well,kind of. About three metres away Ash decide that we should bring some British motoring law to the Netherlands and decided to erm well,try out the other side of the road despite my, erm, screamings he kept going, only changing direction to go down the tramlines! after a bit of cloth touching we did get on the right side of the road, landed outside the hotel, parked up and headed into the hotel to get a tram ticket.

Weed been three times before,we had decided to do something a bit different in Amsterdam. First stop was the zoo. Eventually. Travelling on an unfamiliar tramline we couldnt work out how to get off the different kind of trams ( they have one entrance and several exits but there are barriers at the exits that look like you shouldnt go through them) so we missed the stop and had to get off one tram and back on another to go back. And it is a good zoo. A lot of the enclosures are 'open' to the point of having lemurs running around your feet and birds overhead. Its very clean, well run and very calm. Tearing ourselves away from the baby chimps and gorillas was hardest but the baby mountain goats came a close second. Persuading Ash not to make llama faces and noises was MY hardest challenge..... time came to head back and check in at our hotel.the citizen m is a very unusual hotel in thswt the rooms are more like pods with a toilet enclosure and a shower enclosure right there in the room. These are not rooms for business colleagues or families but the hotel is fantastic. We had the usual hour, ash broke the free movies ( and free porn) on the telly again ( we came in February and he did the same then) and we found s place for food, again deciding not to just go to where we had been before. TripAdvisor found us a this restaurant called Kinnaree, out in the Jordaan area. We managed to just sneak in before it got full and it was so worth it. The food was amazing and the service fantastic. having decided to walk back to the main areas, we wandered through some absolutely lovely areas, such a lovely walk with no tourists, no noise, just canals and quiet streets, a few bars and several cheese shops. We walked past a toothbrush shop and it suddenly dawned on me that this was THE toothbrush shop of family legend that my mum and dad had visited 25 years ago and told us of.This shop that sold only toothbrushes of all kinds. This was it. I'm not entirely sure Ash understood my genuine excitement and the tear in my eye as I looked at the toothbrush wheel in the window! A wander through the red light district with significantly more very slow walking tourists and we decided to call it a night. A really lovely day.



Thursday we checked out, put some stuff in the van, had a whistle stop tour to get souvenirs and presents and then back to the hotel. I unlocked Jason, tried to open the back door and......nothing. ALL our stuff in the back of this van and the door wouldn't unlock. All the others would but not this one. Deciding the ostrich approach was best we headed off regardless. The drive to Eindhoven to the Tongelreep fun pool looked easy. It was until about half a kilometre away. Then the roadworks of doom stepped in to add about an hour to our journey. Simon the rest nav cried, I had a bit of a breakdown, we re routed and still couldn't work out how to get to the road. We could see the road. We could see our hotel. We couldn't get to any of them. finally,breaking only one or two road rules and driving on a couple of pavements, we got to the hotel, deciding that walking to tongelreep would cause less problems. Opening the van I felt scared. The whole journey I had been working out if there was any way I coud get through into the back to rescue our stuff if the doors stayed locked. Whether green flag would come and fix locks or not. Whether we could take out a fornt seat or not. Typically, Ash pressed unlock and all was fine. Starting to think its me........Checking into the van den valk we felt a little out of place. Its massive and posh. We are not posh. the room had a a lovely view ( I will add pictures) but we decide we had to go Tongelreep after all the hassle. The woman on reception assured us that we just 'turn left out of the parking place and its on the road' so we set off. We walked. We saw signs, we followed signs. No 'swemcentrum'. After some time and an, admittedley very nice, walk we found a map. Turns out she meant left out of the hotel road. Had we done that the walk of maybe 45 minutes would have been about fifteen. Great. Turns out though my mum was right, everything does indeed happen for a reason. By not arriving till half three, the entrance cost was five Euros not eleven! Win!

We had forgotten that fun pools = kids. Screaming kids. Lots of screaming kids. But none the less enjoyed the wavepool,the kind of rapids, the bubble pool and the flumes. I say enjoyed.....the flume I enjoyed until the near drowning at the end and Ash still can't talk about the black level slide he went on without weeping and shaking.

The walk back took far less time and we collected food from the van to enjoy wine from the bottle, noodle pasta pot things and crisps as our slap up meal in this posh hotel. The casino right opposite our room had been beckoning since our arrival so we decided to throw caution to the wind and go in. It was brilliant. Not too serious, free food and drinks and a great way to spend a couple of hours and not too much cash. I have to be honest though me and slot machines are not in sync, I'm dead good at pressing buttons but no idea what they do,especially in Dutch! The roulette was good though and had instruction in English.



Things I learnt

Sometimes its good to be late

I have a bad effect on locking systems

I should never gamble for real

Non touristy places in Amsterdam are truly lovely

Pass out on a tram and throw your noodles on the floor in Amsterdam and no one seems too bothered just a bit offended

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