Blogs from Netherlands, Europe - page 383

No News hello boys and girls. these feet are made for walking. pretty sad eh? to be continued...... read more

Sal, Mick and Ann made their way to mainland Europe by boat from Hull in England, to Rotterdam in Holland, incidently the biggest port city in the world (it really is massive). Prior to leaving England, we hired a right-hand drive car, as we rationalised that it would be less confusing than driving the left-handed equivalent. Upon disembarking from the ship, it soon became apparent that driving on the right-hand side of the road was a very, very strange experience, certainly one only to be undertaken by the confident driver. We made our way passed several million windmills before arriving in Amsterdam, a wonderful city of about 500,000 people. With Ann having served the entirety of her driving suspension earned in Scotland, we threw the keys to her and hoped for the best. Ann’s apparent mantra ... read more

The answer: Bust. The trip was doomed from the start: We'd been talking about a weekend trip to Berlin for our gang, but what should've been Eugene, Jen, Ross, Louise, Shruti and Brian whittled down to just Shruti and Brian buying last-minute train tickets to Berlin on Friday afternoon. Strike one. Of course, last minute tickets cost about 3 times as much as the 58 Euro tickets you can get if you plan ahead. Uh oh. Strike two, and we haven't even boarded a train. Being the cheerful non-cynical and optimistic people we are (no snickering here, please), we were undeterred in our goal of German adventure and boarded our train to Brussels right on time at 9:05 pm. All we had to do was make it to Brussels in time for the 11:40 night train ... read more

A night spent nursing a sick boy and cleaning up a bathroom without any rags has left me a little weary. The boys all slept until after 12 so I took the opportunity to do some laundry. The laundromat was next to the Norderkerk square on Market day. I was in my glory listening to all of the families and enjoying the sights and smells of a summer market day in Amsterdam. Wow. It is truly amazing what they can carry on their bikes while manouvering through traffic. On returning to the B&B the family was stll asleep. Waking them was not easy but if we ever hope to live on a normal timeframe we needed to. Troy was still not himself but beginning to recover. A trip to a toy store and then the park ... read more

We made it! After too many hours folded into our airplane stalls we arrived in Amsterdam. There was a power outage at the Schiphol airport and it resembled an episode from the twilight zone as all the tired travellers stood still waiting for their baggage to start rolling again. The trains were also not running so we stood in a long queue for a taxi. We arrived at the Bed and Breakfast in the Jordaan. We forced ourselves to stay awake as long as we could. Longer for Kurtis and Troy than the rest of us. Our B&B is within a short walking distance of most sites and we wandered around to get our bearings. Supper at a recommendation from our host was Chinese (Kam Wah) and just wonderful. Although they do not have 'no smoking ... read more