Ode to Holland

Oh Holland I will miss you
And your siropwaffles too
With your lovely canals
I don't think I'm anal
If I want to come back for a few!

We have been here for ages. But are finally departing today... on a week long road trip to Budapest, Hungary. In the last week we went to Leiden and stayed on a beautiful lake complete with a nudist area and went rowing and cycling to our hearts delight. We also spent 5 nights in Amsterdam, again on a lake called Gaasperplas which is just southeast of the city. We met up with Alex & Jess who visited the city for a couple of days. We visited some coffeeshops and also walked for miles around the city and stayed in an absolutely huge campsite that felt like a festival ground, there were just hundreds of students and travellers dotted around in tents.

Leiden is a highly beautiful city full of old 15th and 16th century buildings and obviously canals and windmills too. Rembrandt went to school there and we saw the building. Talking of art we also went to the Mauristhaus Museum in the Hague to see Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and lots of other amazing old paintings. I would go to Leiden again in an instant, it is very peaceful and friendly with winding little cobbled streets to cycle down.

We are back in the Hague for one night, which was last night, and so later this morning we are going to hit the road and head to Germany. We need to find somewhere cheap, we went a bit over budget in Amsterdam going eating nice Wok to Walk food and so on. I am certainly going to miss all of the Dutch bakery treats, but it will probably do me good to have a break from syrupy sugary goodness for a while.

Holland Update!

Well, further to my previous blog entry I have to say that we left our friends Katy & Jans, went a few kilometres up the road to a place called Duinhorst at the edge of the city for two days... then we came back! They invited us back for Sunday night and also Nick is getting a gas alarm posted here, it should arrive today so we are hanging around until it does. We broke the past one we had in the van by accidentely shorting out the electrics, so had to get a replacement. I'm not particularly worried about these so called 'gas attacks' you hear about but we do have a gas fridge, cooker and boiler in the van so we do need some kind of alarm if we have a leak.

The van is so lovely, I haven't really described it. The bed is at the front above the drivers seat and it is on a big hinge so folds down and up again when you want to drive off in the morning. It means no faffing around with cushions, you can just push it out of sight. There is a shower room down one side with a pretty decent strength shower cubicle in it, plus a toilet and oval sink, and there is lots of handy cupboard space for all out bits.

Opposite the shower room on the other side, running down the side of the camper is the kitchen with 3 ring gas hob, oven with grill & rotisserie and proper fridge with freezer section. There is a two bowl sink, pull out bin and cupboards above, plus an extractor fan, window and light right above the sink and hob.

So you walk down the corridor between the kitchen and the shower to the end where there is a table with U shaped sofa all around it. We tend to have a side of it each and there is plenty of room. Down at the end there are windows on all three sides plus a skylight above, and we have the entertainments! Ie a pull out flatscreen TV that Nick fitted, the sky+ box and PS3. I also have my bookshelf which is in a drawer and behind the sofa are tucked the games: mastermind, scrabble and upwords! I did want to get a big

So now you can imagine my new home. We are definitely off to Leiden today, followed by Harleem then finally Amsterdam in a weeks time. Katy & Jan are off to Edinburgh festival this afty so we really can't stay in their hosue any longer! They've been such amazing hosts, as anyone who knows them will appreciate. We went back to the beach yesterday for a drink while Jan surfed then came back in on the tram and Katy cooked a mean risotto.

Still in Den Haag...

We are still in the beautiful Hague but are off this afternoon to Leiden where we intend to spend the weekend, before driving to Amsterdam for a few days.

It's been a brilliant week, we've made a great holiday video of the city for a friend back in the UK who is poorly to entice her to come and visit once she's better. We've cycled everywhere, been to the sand dunes and the beach, played lots of games of 'what is my thought like' with Katy & Jan and generally had a lovely old time. I will try and put a link up of the vid once we have finished editing it. It will probably go on Nick's facebook.

I am just finishing a big pile of washing as I took advantage of our friends machine. Who knows when we will next have this opportunity to be clean...

By the way if anyone is in Holland they have to try the "Old Amsterdam'' cheese, it is truly AMAZING.

In Den Haag

Wow we are finally in Europe, staying with Katy & Jan in the beautiful city of the Hague. We arrived in Dunkerque last Wednesday, drove up the coast a bit to Bray Dunes for a few days which is just on the Belgium border. We swam in the sea loads and free camped at the side of the road. We had one panic in that we lost a bit of our campervan, an important plastic cap off the side but we managed to retrace our steps and found it which was incredibly lucky.

After that we drove through Belgium into Holland and stopped over at a campsite just outside of Breda for 2 nights where we did some repairs to the van and generally relaxed. The water pump was playing up so Nick took it apart and fixed it.

So now we're here in the Hague, the van is parked outside their apartment and we have been cycling around, which is what everyone does here. The city is wonderful with cycle paths everywhere and very beautiful typically Dutch architecture, plus there is a wonderful long sandy beach with cool cafes all the way along it where the surfers go. The cafes have massive outdoor beanbags and hammock chairs, they are brilliant. Today it seems the sun is out and its going to be a scorcher so after Nick is out of the shower I'm going to hop in and get ready for a nice day out.

PS Catherine, no! Not pregnant. That would be funny, a baby on the travels!