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.