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Farewell from Netherlands!
Jelly Baby sucking on a Beer Bong. Well I've finally found half an hour with nothing better to do, so here's the next instalment of the holiday that was.
24/5/08 - Amsterdam to London - End of the Tour 😞
After a HUGE night out in Amsterdam, It was nothing less than pure cruelty that on our last morning of the tour, we were to be up, ready and bags to coach by 7am. Another frantic morning of last minute jamming of the clothes into the bag, a 5 minute breakfast and a quick clean of the chops and we were ready to head back to the UK.
A few people chose to finish their tour in Amsterdam, so it was a sad morning as we said goodbye to Matt, Jon, Christelle, Yvonne, Carey, Jen and Tracy who huddled around in what seemed to be some sort of circle of unity as we drove off around the corner. Ahhhhh pull yourself together mate, you'll be fine! On go the sunnies. Sad times indeed.
The day was mostly travel, and as we left the Netherlands we were farewelled with an interesting statue. Now I know in Europe, there were no "Thankyou for visiting Netherlands -
London Pub
Ahhhhh...... :'( We wish you a happy journey ahead and hope you return soon" signs or anything similar, but Netherlands summed it up well with a monument that was nothing less than a Jelly Baby lying flat on his back sucking on a giant beer bong.
We expected nothing less. Well done crazy Dutch governors. And yes, I will be back thankyou very much.
Our first stop was just after the farewell from Netherlands monument, right on the Belgium border at a muchly needed Maccas (or if you were Canadian - Macky D's or Mc Dicks). Belgium was interesting, we didn't see much but was turned out to be much the same as the Netherlands countryside, full of flat green pastures and farmlands with giant bright red wind generators everywhere. For a good half an hour ahead, we swapped contact details and were given a questionnaire to complete which was basically rating the tour and any suggestions on how to improve, what we liked/didn't like etc. The tears started to flow as we passed our favourite final European roadstop - Autogrill. We headed back into France (YAYY) and straight to Calais where we cleared Customs - had a great customs
officer who had a chat and a joke around (unusual) and gave me a nice stamp finally, not like the bloke at Heathrow, and waited for about an hour or so until we boarded the ship back to England. Ahh the relief of being back in the UK - no more pay toilets again for quite some time now.
On the ship I caught up with Jimmy who highlighted my Euro map I bought back in Germany, outlining all the roads we travelled around Europe. It's funny - although we saw lots and lots and had the time of our lives, when you look at a map of Europe and where we actually went, we've barely even scraped the surface. Bugger, I'll just have to go back again. We exchanged all our remaining Swiss Franc and Euros back into the depressing exchange rate of the Pound and went for a quick look upstairs - where we all froze. By the time we had thawed out, we were back in Dover and ready to drive back to London.
We arrived back at the Royal National at 6pm, and settled back into our room - which was 2 doors down
Burger Vendors
How good is this. from the room we had when we stayed there before the tour. Pretty amazing considering this place had about 42,009 rooms. Well, what else was there to do but keep the Beaver Fever party going, so we all met back downstairs at the London Pub and kept the what seemed to be every night for three weeks tradition going. At midnight or so, Jimmy and Beaver came out with us and considering the majority of us left were Aussies, we decided to walk half-way across England to the Walkabout Pub (would have been quicker to catch a flight to Dublin and swim) - an Aussie bar/club that appeared to be shut on this particular night. Flamin' hell! we all exclaimed, Alf from Home and Away styles. Oh well, we headed down the road to some other popular joint that had a £5 cover charge, and about twenty thousand local Londoners going hard on a Saturday night. This place was of Aussie influence, cranking the Cold Chisel, John Farnham and Jimmy Barnes tunes that were familiar to all of us after the last three weeks. Even the Canadians knew them word for word. We were told to try a 'snakebite' -
Brussels
Capital of Belgium a beer with lemonade and a dash of what I think was red cordial. It wasn't a Munich Haupt, but it was damn good. Dancing along to You're the Voice, we said our last goodbyes to whoever was left and at about 3 we decided to call it quits and caught the famous black London Cabs back to the Royal National and crashed not too long after. No rest for the wicked.
25/5/08 - London.
After a well deserved sleep in, we awoke at roughly 9am to a rainy London morning where we decided to pack early because we had nothing better to do and decided to get it out of the way for our departure 😞 the next morning. Much the same as Europe, it seems the northern hemisphere has not taken well to the idea of Sunday trading, so we finally found breakfast at about 2pm - Subway. We walked back around Piccadilly Circus and ran into an internet cafe where we checked in online to our flights and picked our seats so that we could escape the dreaded Heathrow queues in the morning.
On our way back towards Russell Square, we ran into a
Last Autogrill!
Sad times. But our wallets were happy. few people from the tour and heard of a gathering that was planned for the afternoon at the Old Friends Pub not far from the Royal National. Why not. We called in to a few Souvenir shops on the way and filled up on London paraphernalia, including a traditional London Police Hat - which I decided to keep wearing for some reason until we had finished our gathering at the pub. When in London, do as the Law Enforcement Officers do apparently. Good on me.
After finishing up at the pub, we went back to the Royal National to book our shuttle to the Airport for the morning, and we're glad we did, because our original plans of catching the tube would have got us there 2 hours after our flight would have departed. That afternoon, we said our final goodbyes to London and decided to have an early night for our early morning flight.
That idea failed miserably.
Word spreads quick, and needless to say, it was another huge night ahead as the group met at the London Pub again for final farewell drinks...again! Someone has to do it, well it didn't take much convincing, put
Calais
Back in la France it that way. That day there was a soccer match on where Leeds were victorious, and the locals were out in all their full glory to celebrate. We ended up doing a bit of a pub crawl around Russell Square, where we came across a small pub where one of the tour members friends had been working. We grabbed some dinner and a drink or 6 and sat back listening to the stereotypical Londoners chanting their victory songs for their teams (couldn't understand a word they were saying), watching them all go nuts as the a fan of the opposition donning the loosing jersey (I forget who they were) walked in and consequently walked back out again in shame. They love their soccer over there, and the atmosphere was awesome to experience.
I think we ended up hitting the sack around 1am.
London was fantastic. Luckily while we were there, before and after the tour, we had near perfect weather that allowed us to see most of the popular sights, but I have no doubt you could spend 12 months there and still not see everything. Definitely in the plans for future travels.
Next it's back home
Calais Cops
Will take you down. via our unreal stopover in Dubai!
Cheerio!
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