On the road again...

Well, as the title suggests we are once again on the road, this time quite literally as we are bringing our car and roadtripping it.

A couple of Thursdays ago we said a farewell to the George (well the real farewell was the Tuesday night-phew) and hit the road to Newcastle. We had headed off fairly early which was just as well as we didn't have a clue where the ferry terminal was and the one page missing out of our map was the one we needed! Good start.

We boarded the ferry OK although Adam got patted down, I think we still looked a bit seedy after Tuesday night. The next morning - Amsterdam! After coping with his doubts about driving on the wrong (right) side of the road we set off and made it to our first campsite, Camping Zeeburg with no major hiccups.

We spent three giggly nights in Amsterdam, checking out the canals, the red light district (oooher), the really pleasant Jordaan district and doing a lot of wandering about. The city was beautiful and great fun just to poke about in. We were really lucky staying at a campground which was only 10 minutes away from the centre by tram - so much cheaper than any other accommodation and so much fun too, even in the rain. Half the fun was walking past everybody elses' tents on the way to and from the amenities and just hearing muffled giggles coming out of every second tent followed by curious smoke signals.

On our last morning in Amsterdam we headed out early to an outlying area to catch the Aalsmeer flower market, the biggest in the world at 1 000 000 m² or the size of 200 football fields. We could walk over the market floor watching thousands of trolleys of flowers of every description be shunted about by hundreds of people as well as watch the auction rooms where the flowers are bought. It all felt a bit like a school excursion to the Coca Cola factory but was really interesting and colourful, quite different to the usual city centre sight seeing.

We hadn't planned anything from Amsterdam so we drifted towards the German border to see where that would lead us....

Photos: The first thing we hear and see in Amsterdam?!?, The market floor at Aalsmeer, A pretty canal.