Villa Nova de something orather...

Villa Nova de Milfontes was the next stop on our trip. A couple of hours south of Lisbon, its a nice little village on the mouth of a large river. Supposedly there are a few surf spots around here but unfortunately there wasn't any swell while we were there.

I did take the opportunity to do a bit of 4WD exploration along sandy tracks around the area. It was very exciting to drive along sandy tracks and then see footprints leading towards the sea! I get out of the car, walk for about 400m through the sand dunes and........ nothing. Bloody flat.

Salamanca to Supertubos

We made the long drive from Salamanca in to Portugal and headed straight for the coast. We spent a night in Figuera de Foz and then headed south towards a small fishing town called Peniche. We followed the coast past many little coastal towns which all seem to come alive for the tourist season in August and then back to sleep for the rest of the year.

Peniche has a famous Portuguese beach break called 'Supertubos'. There is even signs to the beach on the way in to town! We set up camp and headed straight for the beach where I paddled out in to surf for the first time in 9 months (since I was in Australia). With a daily rate of around 9 euros per day for our accomodation, we stayed for 5 nights in Peniche.

Peniche

While we were there, we went for a drive to a small walled village called Obidos, which was once given by a King to his new wife as a wedding present. One night there was a huge wind storm which lashed the coast with torrential rain which resulted in me standing in the pouring rain at 5am digging a rain trench around the tent. The next morning there were plenty of sleeping bag and broken tents laying out to dry around the camp ground! I scored some good waves and Melinda was sporting a new tan by the time we left. But finally we decided to leave and head further south for more waves and somewhere new.

Melinda in Obidos

Adam on the walls of Obidos

Rain, wind and no surf in Spain

The wet and cool weather continued for the next 3 days while we waited around in Zarutz for the weather and waves to improve. So after taking a couple of drives in the Wagen, checking our emails and generally sitting around for 3 days, we decided that we should move 20 or 30km along the coast to another village.

When I went in to the camp ground office to pay, I noticed a 7 day forecast printed out sitting on the desk. 7 days of poor weather and according to the bloke at the desk, equally poor surf. 'If you go 200km south, you will find good weather' he says to me. Right, thats it.

Out to the car where Melinda is waiting and I tell her 'we're going south 200km or until we hit good weather'. After a quick look at the map, we plot a course to Salamanca and our planned 30km drive turns in to around 350km.

And sure enough, the further south we went, the better the weather got. By the time we got to Salamanca late in the day, it was blue skies and warm weather.

3 nights across France

The theory for the first part of our trip was that the further south we went, the better the weather should be. However it seems that the further south we went, the cooler it got until finally as we drove in to Spain, it was raining!

The first night we spent in a little village not very far away from Calais where we got off the ferry. There was a small panic as we got to almost 9.30pm and thought that we couldn't find anywhere to eat! As a last thought before conceding defeat, I turned on my new GPS to see if it knew where there was any food. As it turned out we were walking around the wrong end of town!

Another days driving and we camped at a place called Tours a bit west of Paris. Third day on the road and we found ourselves on the coast west of Bordeaux camping at the base of Dune Du Pyla. At over 100m high, it is the highest sand dune in Europe. Much to Melinda's disgust, I made her walk up to the top. However once at the top there were superb views of the Atlantic, with storm clouds in the sunset making for a nice vista.

On the fourth day we spent some time stuck in traffic in Biarritz and we finally made it to a chilly and wet Spanish border. Like most of the borders we have been through in Europe so far, it was pretty lack lustre with a small sign telling you, you are in Espana. We finally set up camp a couple of hours later in a village called Zarutz about 40km west of the Border.

And we're away!!!

Day 1 of trip to Europe in the Wagen:

Aim - get off the British Isles and get to France

Method - Ferry, train or otherwise which results in Adam, Melinda and car complete with surfboards arriving in France.

Results - Success! After deciding not to bother booking ahead for a ferry place, we turned up to Dover and bought a ticket on the next ferry which was leaving in 30 mins!! We got in to France and the next main point to concentrate on was remaining on the right hand side of the road in my right hand drive vehicle.

We plotted a course towards Biarritz in southern France on my new talking GPS (the old one really did infuriate me that much!) and drove until dusk where we found a campsite and pulled in for the night.

Conclusion - Objectives of day 1 have been completed.

Back to London for a couple of days

Following our quick trip to Strasbourg, I took Melinda to the airport and she went back to London. I finished off my job in Germany a week later and went back to London myself. The plane was crowded on the way home and as you would expect they put me (who has broad shoulders) next to another fellow of similar size on a small plane. I was quite amused when I saw him typing in an email in to his Blackberry to (I assume) his secretary to get a complaint form for him.

I got home and spent about 45 mins inside before going straight to my mates house for a party. I think that I have got used to nice clean chemical free German beer because despite only indulging in about 4 cans of Red Stripe I awoke the next day with a cracking hangover. Fortunately another mate had a hangover so we went to the pub together for the afternoon for some hair of the dog and watched Australia lose rugby.

Only one day was left to get our gear ready for our surfing holiday!!

Back to civilisation!

After spending the last month or so in deepest darkest Portugal and Europe - we are back! So I start updating this blog very soon with our latest stuff...

A meat from my childhood...

Just completed a quick overnight trip to Strasbourg. I have always wanted to go there as I have had plenty of Stras and sauce sandwiches as a kid!

The city itself was quite nice and it looked like the sort of place where you could spend a bit of time sitting around drinking beer or coffee (depending on the time of day), eating croissants and watching the water flow past in the canals.

I was dissapointed however to be unable to find any stras and sauce or stras and cheese sandwiches for sale in the cafes.

Adam in Strasbourg

Canal Houses in Strasbourg

Strasbourg Cathedral

An island and an ancient Spa town

Following our (eventually) successful mission to Liechtenstein, we then headed back North in to Germany where I can read/guess the street signs a bit better than in Austria and Liechtenstein. As it was a little bit sunny I thought we should go to a small town on Lake Constance/Bodensee (seems to have different names) and have a swim. The lake contains borders of Switzerland, Austria and Germany somewhere in the middle of it.

We went to Lindau where a lot of their hotels are on a small island about 150m offshore (over a bridge). So we had a small island getaway for the night. I think that most of the water in the lake (which is also the Rhine river) has come off the glaciers in the Alps because it was freezing! Plus there wasn't really any beach to speak of either.

View out the window of our hotel in Lindau

Boat harbour at Lindau

Lindau

Melinda relaxing on a paddle boat

The next day we headed to Baden-Baden. A small spa town in the Black Forest and its where the English Football (soccer) team stayed during the world cup. (It was hard not to know all about it living in London during the world cup). There are a couple of places where you can go swimming in the thermal springs there and get healed by their healing properties (according to all the pamphlets). Apparently the Romans turned up a few years ago and decided to build some baths their and since then, King and Queens and footballers wives have been coming to rejuvenate themselves!

A mad dash for Liechtenstein

1300 hrs Thursday - Left work
1330 hrs - Collect Melinda
1600 hrs - Somewhere in France, completely pissed off with my GPS (I think I may have missed a turn in torrential rain)
1730 hrs - Still somewhere in France convinced that Melinda has set the GPS mode to send Adam completely mad (she is trying not to snigger every time my GPS tells me to turn right 30m after the street we were meant to go down. 1st opportunity to get off the wrong autobahn - in 7.6km)
1750 hrs - Melinda: 'Lets follow those signs to Strasbourg and get a hotel'. Adam: 'I think you are right, and when we get there I'm looking for a shop to buy a new GPS and I'm going to sell this piece of shit on ebay'
1800 hrs - Adam has calmed down. Adam: 'I want to have one more crack at getting to Liechtenstein'. Melinda sighs and says 'ok then, if you think we should'. If you have ever been anywhere with me in the car or hiking, I am absolutely determined to get to my target destination.
1845 hrs - Back on track where we should have been at 1530 hrs
2330 hrs - Liechtenstein Border - yee haa!!
0030 hrs - Only hotel we can find in the capital of Lichtenstein (Vaduz) is 390 Swiss Franks a night, but since its late she gives it to me for 300 swiss franks. I ask how much is that in Euros? Its 200 euro. Shizer... (finally I know some useful German).
0045 hrs - Melinda is delighted with the 5 star accomodation and Adam is passed out on the bed.

We wake up the next morning to a spectacular view out the window across the Rhine valley and enjoy a very nice breakfast with some people who look like they are slumming it in this place. There was some serious money here!

The view from left to right from our balcony

We checked out at the latest possible time to make the most of it and then got back in the car and headed for somewhere more in our tax bracket...

Photos back on and plans for a new weekend

Well I have figured out the photo problem, I think I was trying to upload photos too big for the blogger system. Anyway, the photos are now there for our river weekend and from Luxembourg.

It looks as though our time in Germany may only have a couple of weeks left, so we are going to try and do a mission to Lichtenstein this weekend. Its south of Germany and actually surrounded by Switzerland. We'll let you know how it goes!

I have a problem...

Sorry for the lack of photos lately, I have been having problems with my account and it wont let me upload any photos at the moment!! I'll get some pics up real soon.

Adam

A chance meeting with an old soldier

We went for a walk around Monschau last night and went up the hill to the ruins of an old castle. As has been typical for the last month in Germany it soon started pouring rain. We got talking to a nice German fellow who later informed us that he is 80 years old. We got chatting initially about what we were doing in Monschau and he was interested in my (Adam's) work because he is an engineer too. He then mentioned something about when he was in the war (WWII that is).

He told us that he had been initially put in to the army at the age of 16 and he and his school mates formed an anti aircraft artillery unit. Apparently they would be in class and then if the air raid siren went off, the teacher would put on his steel helmet and they all had to go outside and man their guns. He even said that at times they were happy for an air raid to come to get them out of class! Following this time, he eventually served in Denmark and then back to Germany where at the end of the war they surrendered to the Americans. For the next two years he was a prisoner of war in France and Belgium where it sounds like they spent a lot of their time cleaning up from the war.

He also mentioned one interesting point was that at one stage they were with an American unit which was comprised of all coloured soldiers with a couple of white officers. He said that this was a better time for them because the Officers seemed to like the Germans more than their own men because they were white. The soldiers seemed to like the Germans more because they felt like they were prisoners themselves to an extent as they weren't allowed to mix with white people. He also said that many of the Germans served as translators as not too many of the Americans could speak anything other than English. So they knew what was going on most of the time since they were the ones translating!

So after talking for about an hour, he had to go back to his little holiday shack. It was pouring rain like a tropical downpour so we didn't want to let him walk home in the rain. So we let him use one of our umbrellas and we walked back to his place. He invited us in to have a couple of glasses of red wine and we left with the invitation to come back another time for some more wine!

Back in Monschau with the dogs and flies

We are back in Monschau this week as Aachen is totally booked out (unless you want to pay 200 - 400 euros a night for a hotel!) as they have a world championship show jumping event on for the next 2 weeks. So its a change from a busy little city to a small village full of Germans on romantic weekends away, and oldies on busses getting shipped in for some schnitzel and a small glass of beer followed by purchasing some small ceramic mugs that say Monschau and then shipped out again. Oh yeh, and accompanied by their dog which normally range in sizes from handbag size to 'is it really a dog or a horse' size.

Actually that reminds me to mention a couple of other things which are different to that which we are used to in Australia:

- Dogs can go everwhere including restaurants
- People seem to have no concept that flies carry disease. If you go in to a bakery on a warm day, there are flies buzzing around the pre-made salad rolls. So choose one that doesnt have any flies on it and pretend that the flies haven't been on your roll!

A weekend in the Gibraltar of the North! (Luxembourg!!)

Another weekend, another trip to a new city (and country!). This time we went to Luxembourg for a couple of days and it was pretty good! We took off from where we have been staying in Aachen on Friday morning and headed down through Belgium to Luxembourg. We had booked a hotel on the net to stay for the weekend, so with that programmed in to the GPS we headed straight there. After driving round in a few circles around the city we finally made it. It seems that my GPS didn't know that there was a circus perched right in the middle of the road we wanted to go down.

It is quite a nice city, which was once dubbed the Gibraltar of the North because it was basically one massive fortress. But then in the late 1800's, they declared their neutrality and in return dismantled about 90% of their walls. There are still some small sections there and also some underground tunnels carved in to the rock that the city is perched on.

There are plenty of shops and shopping to be done and Melinda is now sporting a new pair of expensive sunglasses - mission accomplished for her for the weekend!



Looking out from one of the tunnels underneath the original castle


Luxembourg Flags on a remaining portion of the original wall

Raw meat

Well I just thought that I (Adam) would share something that I experienced for the first time ever today. I ate raw mince.

It was the birthday of one of the German guys at work so he brought in a heap of food to have for morning tea/breakfast, and amongst the rolls and cheese and exotic looking meats was a tupperware bowl of raw meat. I wasn't going near it (I could hear my mothers voice somewhere in my head telling me not to touch it) but the Germans all went straight for it! So being cultural and all, I tried it. It wasn't too bad actually! However as I was half way through my raw pork mince roll, one of the Germans decided to tell me that last time someone brought this in that people were off sick for a week!

Maybe I should have listened to my mother...

The Rhine and Moselle rivers and a heap of castles

Well we just had a top weekend driving beside the Rhine and Moselle rivers in Germany and saw a heap of Castles that are alongside both rivers. We started off mid mornig on Friday from the little village where I am working straight down to Koblenz. A quick stop for lunch beside the river and then we pressed on down the Rhine. The river is usually about 100m wide with steep banks on both sides covered in grape vines. Every 2 or 3 km there is a little village and it seems like nearly all of them have either a working or ruined castle perched over it! As there aren't so many bridges over the Rhine, we had to cross the river on a little car ferry which was cool. We stayed the first night in a little walled village called Bacharach.


In the main street of Bacharach


Castle on a hill overlooking the Rhine


Ruins of an old castle along the Rhine

The next day we cruised on over to the Moselle (yep, the wine!) River and spent the afternoon riding bicycles along the river, followed by dinner with a bottle of red! Life certainly is tough here in Germany.

View as you cycle along the Moselle


Moselle River vineyards

Finally on the Sunday we went to a castle called Burg Eltz. Construction started in around 1157 and unlike most of the other castles around there, it has hardly seen any military action and as such is in top condition. It is privately owned, and I imagine privately funded. It therefore had an appropriately high entry price, combined with appropriately disinterested staff (although the tour guide was very good) and appropriately overpriced souveniers! Having said all that, it was quite impressive and it gave me some ideas about building myself a house on a big rock somewhere with nice views..


Burg Eltz


Inspiration for our first house??


Melinda ready to check out Burg Eltz!

Dykes, Becks Beer and 1200km in 3 days

We took a 3 day weekend to go and see some of Germany in the last weekend. We left Aachen (where we have been staying) on Friday morning and drove up to Nordeich on the North West coast of Germany not too far from the Dutch border. There are dykes (seawalls) along the coast as far as the eye can see protecting Germany from getting washed away or becoming a swamp. The beaches werent really that nice at all (if you could call them a beach) but it was nice to see the ocean again. Not far off the coast are the Friesian Islands and apparently at low tide you can actually walk to some of them! It was fairly windy when we were there and the number of wind powered generators around the place seems to indicate that it is windy all the time.

Adam in relaxation mode in Nordeich after a hard days driving...

The next day we drove to Bremen, the home of Becks (the beer not the English footballer). After a few wrong turns and a terrifying 30 seconds going the wrong way down a one way street, (I have now realised that it is no coincidence that thousands of streets in Germany are called 'einbahnstrasse' which means one way street) we finally made it to a hotel. We didnt have time to do a tour of the Beck brewery though which is a shame.

Melinda in Bremen

The next day went went to the site of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is a large memorial site now as all the buildings were burnt down by the British when they liberated the camp to try and stop disease spreading.

After that it was a long drive back to Aachen via Hameln - where the pied piper comes from!

3 countries, the Summit of Holland and a 900 year old beer

Melinda at the borders of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium

Yesterday we went to the intersection of the borders of Germany, Belgium and Holland which was cool. There is a marker on the ground to show it. Then about 50 metres away, there is a marker which shows the highest point in Holland. So I have now summitted 2 of the highest peaks in countries around the world (Mt Kosziousco in Australia 2228m and whatever it was called in the Netherlands at the dizzying height of 322.5m). I am such a top mountaineer, I wont even bother with Everest, its such a fad thing to do at the moment. Maybe I'll go for something extreme like the highest point in Tokelau which is 5m above sea level.

Extreme mountaineering on the summit of Netherlands - 322.5m

Then we went out for tea in Liege (Belgium). That was really a bit of a waste of time as Leige is a dirty industrial/port city. But the food was excellent and the beer even better. They started making it (the beer) in a Monastery in 1128 according to the label (fortunately the one that I had was from a later batch...) It was so good that I was annoyed that I had to drive back to Germany to the hotel and had to stop at two!

Sent to Germany!!

Well lucky me (Adam) I have been sent to Germany for work. Looks like I will be here for at least 2 weeks, maybe more...

The first week has been great. I spent the first 4 days by myself until Melinda came staying in a little village near the Belgian border called Monschau. A nice little old village with houses and buildings dating back to the 1400's. There are nice little uneven coblestone streets everywhere and I know this because I twisted my ankle going for a walk up to an old castle on the hill overlooking the village. Never mind, you get that on the big jobs! I just dont think that walking around in thongs (flip flops, jandles or whatever else people want to call them) is necessarily the best choice of footwear around.

Monschau with Castle over looking the village

The first pub Adam went to in Germany

Creek running through Monschau

On the Thursday I took off from work at lunchtime to go and pick up Melinda from Dusseldorf. It was her first experience on a German autobahn (no speed limits!!!) and I think she enjoyed me whizzing her back to the hotel at 180km/h down the autobahn! (I would have gone for more but the car is governed and wont go any faster). Stories I have heard from people in the past are true; here I am, full concentration, hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel doing 180km/h and a Porsche or Mercedes comes flying past you!

We spent the weekend checking out the former West German capital Bonn and stayed in Cologne on the weekend. We were lucky enough to turn up in town on the night of a big fireworks display along the Rheine! They had a funny band that was playing with a singer who looked, dressed and acted like Bob Downe (an Australian comedian), but I think he was serious. Also a few other band members sporting dodgy moustaches and singing songs that you would have expected to hear on 'Hey Hey its Saturday' (a variety show that used to be on for 20 odd years in Australia). Good wholesome family entertainment...

View of Cologne from the top of the Cathedral

Inside Dom Köln - the 'Mt Everest' of cathedrals

A quick trip to Oman

Lucky me (Adam ) I managed to land a business trip to Muscat, the capital of Oman for 3 days! The trip started off well with me getting upgraded to business class as I walked on to the plane. It has really put travelling in economy in to a whole new light (now that I have something to compare it to). I'm not sure I can ever travel economy ever again...

I wasnt there long enough to see a whole lot but what I did was nice. There seem to be plenty of buildings around and not a whole lot of people about. Perhaps they were all inside in the aircon. At 40 degrees with plenty of humidity, there was about 10 or 15 seconds before you break in to a full sweat outside! I went to the beach near my hotel a couple of times and there must have been about 10 or 12 soccer games in a row up and down the beach (all being played by men of course). I found it quite interesting to see a bloke running down the beach in nothing but a pair of shorts running past a woman in neck to ankle robes complete with head scarf. Not quite like your average beach at home.


Soccer games on the beach in Muscat

WW1 battlefields, Belgian Chocolate and Champagne

On the last weekend in May, we did a 5 day trip to France and Belgium. We caught the Eurostar (train) from London to Calais where we hired a car. It was pouring with rain when we got there and continued to rain for nearly the whole day. So this made driving on the right hand side of the road all the more interesting!

We headed over to Dunkirk for a look around and then called in the French version of a Fish and Chip shop - a baguette and frites shop! While we were trying to order, there was a French woman who was trying to help us translating to the chip shop lady. Then would you believe it - she invited us (Melinda and Adam and our friends Damien and Sarah) back to her place to eat!

So after that we headed off to Ypres in Belgium where we crossed our first ever land border. However if we weren't paying attention to the signs on the freeway, we would have totally missed it!

Once in Ypres we checked in to the hotel and checked out the city. We saw a parade of British Army guys at the Menin Gate in the evening where they played the last post and have done every night since 11th of November 1929 'every night and in all weathers'. The only break was when the Germans invaded in the second world war and it was not allowed. However the day that they left, it started again and continues to this day.


British Army marching to the Menin Gate in Ypres

The next day we went on a tour of some battlefields and memorials as well as a few cemeteries. There are many cemeteries dotted all around the Ypres Salient, all neatly maintained. That afternoon we headed back in to France thinking that we would be able to find accommodation wherever we felt like it. Not so! Anyway a few hours later we finally checked in to a hotel in Amiens.

The next day we did some of our own touring around the Somme. It was good to see these areas that you have heard about for years like Villers-Bretonneux where Australian soldiers liberated the town from the Germans. The school there (called L'Ecole Victoria) has a memorial on the wall of the school and it is located in Rue de Melbourne which is just off Rue de Victoria.



The next day we took a drive down to Rheims - the main city in the Champagne region. Plenty of bottles of Veuve-Cliquot, Moet & Chandon and other normally really expensive bottles of champagne on the shelf at the bargain price of €28. We did a tour of the Mumm winery and had some tastings at the end. With neither of us being big champagne fans, it was hard to get excited by the tour guide saying that they had suitable bottle of champagne for all times of the day and for everyoccasionn.

Adam, Melinda, Sarah and Damien at the Mumm Winery

After that we headed back to Calais in the car and then on the train back to London!

Weekend in Ireland

A couple of weeks after the Turkey trip, we made another trip away for a weekend in Ireland. We flew in to Shannon airport (near Limerick) to stay at a mates house in a little village called Adare (I asked but Red doesnt live there...).

Melinda & Adam at Adare Manor

It was the weekend of the final of the rugby union European Cup and since Munster (local team) were playing against the French team Biarritz, Limerick was absolutely chockers with something like 10,000 people watching the game in the main street! So we avoided Limerick and watched the game in the local pub. The home team won which made everyone happy and in the mood to party.

Melinda, Mette, Dale and Adam in Adare

On the Sunday we went for a little drive to see a few places including the famous cliffs of Mohr, which appears in most Irish tourism ads. A top weekend all round and certainly looking forward to checking out Ireland again sometime.

Cliffs on the west coast of Ireland

Turkey and Anzac Day

On the Wednesday after Easter we set off to Turkey for a 13 day trip. The first 8 days were booked through a tour company, as we needed to have a tour booking to get to Anzac cove on Anzac day.

Blue Mosque in Istanbul

We started off with a couple of days in Istanbul getting haggled by all the carpet salesman in the Grand bazaar. Of course we bought a couple of over priced, useless souvenirs, but it was fun none the less. Then it was a long days travel towards the South West of Turkey. Its an exciting city, and very cool how you drive from Europe to Asia by crossing a bridge over the Bosporus (probably wrong spelling).

Bridge between Europe and Asia

We went to the ancient ruins of Ephesus, on the Aegean coast of Turkey,

Ruins of Ephesus

Then to Pergemum and Troy (I was excited since I had seen a movie about the place)

Then over the Dardenelles on a large ferry crossing back from Asia to Europe on to the Gallipoli Peninsula. We spent a day touring around Anzac cove, Lone Pine (Australian Memorial), Chunnnk Bair (New Zealand Memorial) and looking at places we had all heard about like the Nek, the Sphinx and so on. Then it was a cold night on the grass in our sleeping bags waiting for the dawn service. It was a dawn service pretty much the same as those in Australia except the Governer General was there. If anyone was thinking of going to Gallipoli, I would recommend that if it isn't important to you to go there on Anzac day in particular (noting that there isn't anything extra in the services), that maybe you should think about going at another time. That way it would be a lot quieter and you could wander round a lot more. However it was good to experience it all.

Back to Istanbul for a day wandering about, buying more expensive souvenirs and booking some more tripping around Turkey. We caught an overnight bus to Urgup - in Cappadocia in the centre of Turkey. There were loads of cave houses that look exactly like Bedrock - the town in the Flintstones! Then we caught another overnight bus to Antalya, for a couple of days in the Mediterranean sun. It was fun but there must be mainly German tourists there because everybody kept asking if we were German - in German. About the only German I know is 'nein' which didn't get me too far.

After that it was a couple of flights back to London and ready for our next trip!

Rugby tour to Croatia

Over the Easter weekend I (Adam) went on tour with my Rugby club to the capital of Croatia - Zagreb! Without going in to too much detail, we :
- Arrived at Luton Airport complete in Little Britain costume (a British TV show)
- played 2 games
- won 2 games (apparently not the done thing on tour!)
- saw quite a bit of the Zagreb nightlife
- nearly missed our plane after the hotel staff refused to give everyone back their passports because of some supposed broken items which they failed to produce...

But that's all I can say about that.

A weekend in Amsterdam

Well I know its been a long time since I have updated this blog but here goes with an update for our weekend in Amsterdam

A brief summary of our weekend in Amsterdam is:

- Van Gogh museum
- Walking around the centre of town followed by a peek in to the red light district!
- A ride in a boat around the canals - very cool and recommended
- Heineken Factory!!!!!!!! Excellent
- Anne Frank house, this was good to see the house since we have read the book
- Souvenir shopping

It's a nice city to go and visit and one you can do in a weekend quite easily. Oh yeh - and the beer is good!