Amsterdam

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After our tasty lunch in The Hague we pressed on to Amsterdam - our home for the next two nights!



We arrived at our campsite safely (Lucy drove very well), rather relieved that the Environment Zone the satnav had told us about en route never materialised... We pitched the driveaway awning for the first time (which was lucky as it rained both nights!) and then took the bikes to the shop to buy shampoo and conditioner; we left these at Lucy's mum's house, along with the Nando's sauce, Massaman curry paste, wine, Prosecco and the rabbit. The latter was the only intentional deposit...
With shopping successfully acquired we made our dinner and cracked open the beersshh.



The next day we hooked the GoPro up to Lucy's bike and headed into the centre for some sightseeing. The cycle took a little longer than intended as we got lost (nothing to do with Liz being at the front for the majority of the journey). Also, the cyclists in Amsterdam are crazy so it was quite a stressful journey! We booked ourselves on to a boat tour of the canals and were lucky enough to be the only punters and so had a private tour of the city, which was great! Next we headed to the Heineken Experience (a brewery tour) and spent most of the rest of the day there! It was an interesting tour and there were a few opportunities to drink the beersshh along the way (Liz won an extra one at one of the interactive stations).



After the tour we headed for an obligatory uninteractive and slightly-wary tour of the Red Light District before we cycled back to the campsite; or this would have been the plan if Lucy's bike chain hadn't snapped. After Liz initially didn't believe that there was a big problem, she remembered back to Emma's words as she handed over her bike some weeks earlier "...it's great but you probably need to buy a new chain...". One very oily failed attempt at fixing the chain later, it went into the nearest bin and there began the bike saga that would accompany us to the next three cities; namely, Liz towing Lucy along using a bike lock (see upcoming video if you fancy a laugh). We (finally) arrived back at the campsite where we cooked dinner and cracked open the beersshh. We also finally found some time to do some Herman maintenance - Liz re-fitted the sink waste so that we could use the tap inside Herman (and found a novel way of cleaning her hands afterwards...)



After a restful night and a relaxing morning we were promptly ejected from the campsite at checking out time and headed on our very long drive to Hamburg.

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Windmill Count: 24
Liz's guess - 17; Lucy's guess - 23
Lucy 1 Liz 0

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**** Jobs that should have been done before we left ****


• Re-attach sink waste pipe
• Fit new blower motor switch
• Re-attach steering column cowling
• Adjust bike rack
• Adjust awning fixings - cut to length
• Re-fit front speaker
• Attach bungee storage
• Clean steering wheel and sun visors
• Screw down sliding door threshold



**** Jobs that have materialised since we left ****


• Buy new bike chain and get fitted
• Find out what the clicking noise behind the speedo when you drive is (any ideas??)

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Photos

DIY
Liz fixing the waste pipe with Plumber's Putty

DIY
Liz, having fixed the waste pipe with Plumber's Putty, wiping the excess Plumber's Putty on to a stale roll...