A Holiday Within A Holiday

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Geo: 52.3718, 4.53025

Thankfully in Europe, all the countries are close together which makes it great for travelling, where as in Australia it takes hours just to get to another country. Holland was a perfect place for a "family" holiday and it was only about 5 hours by car from Northern France via Belgium (with it's hundreds of semi-trucks) before we reached our final destination of Centerparcs in Zandvoort.

Centerparcs is a well known holiday park in Europe which comprises of hundreds of houses which include a swimming pool that is free to use with the stay. It also has other activities such as Go Karting, Bowling and Squash etc at a small cost.
So we all hit the road in two cars to Zandvoort on the western coast.
We looked at visiting Gent in Belgium, but by the time we got there the weather was not the best so we decided to push on.
After arriving and setting up we went to the swimming pool where they had a few water-slides.

The next day was important for Anna as she was waiting for a reply for a job, so we wanted to keep ourselves available for the phone call. As Anna and I went for walk around the park, Anna got the call we were hoping for.
Afterwards we visited Haarlem, not the New York one, this one had an extra A.
Haarlem was very nice, a great town with nice streets, canals and even the token windmill.
We had a nice drink in a restaurant and then proceeded back to the park for a celebratory drink followed by a mini golf and jumping castle session.
The next day we went in to Amsterdam, the only clear blue skied day on the holiday and upon our return we all had a go at bowling in which everyone was the winner.

On our final full day at the park we went to the swimming pool for a dip and then in the afternoon, the young couples tried our hand at Squash. Anna and I loved playing it and immediately had the urge to want to take it up regularly.
The final evening saw everyone head to a really cool restaurant on the beach in Zandvoort.
Here, Corentin and I shouted the family dinner as a thank you for everything on the holiday.

We headed back to France the following morning, and tried to visit Gent again, but no one was in the mood, so we continued through some heavy rain.
It had been a great getaway and I really enjoyed Holland. Amsterdam was definitely a highlight, but the other places we went to were equally as nice. Although for some reason I noticed that in the evening, people liked to leave their curtains open in to their houses. Why is that?

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