Blue Square Hotel Amsterdam

So, for the first time in our lives we can say in complete truth and honesty that we have travelled to (or through) four countries in less than 24 hours. We left England really early on Saturday morning with our tour - a big tour too, 51 people and mostly Aussie's - and headed down to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais in France. I have never seen so many queues of trucks, cars and buses to get onto the various ferries and the boats themselves were big in numbers, I think there were at least ...

We flew into Amsterdam quite late on a Sunday night and went straight to our hotel. The following morning we decided to take the advice of friends who had recommended 'Mike's Bike tours'. We took a 5 hour tour of Amsterdam city which involved cycling for the majority of the time with a 1 hour break for a canal ride through the city for a different point of view. Amsterdam was built on a big swamp area and the buildings were built on the swampy areas with the canals created to drain the water ...

OK so the White Cliffs of Dover were a bit disappointing! Don't know what I expected but the 'ferry' was way more impressive! more like a cruise liner and the trip didn't feel that much longer than the Manly ferry. :)

Anyways, the bus was still fairly quiet cos people were still shy with each other. It is a full bus of almost 50 people too so it makes it hard to remember everyones name etc. The shyness didn't last long once we got to Amsterdam in the arvo and went on a cruise through a...

We met our contiki people in London and headed towards Dover to get the car ferry across the English channel to France, nothing gets checked, except your passports, kinda weird but that's okay by us! The ferry ride only took just over an hour, really nice weather, a bit cold though! Once in France we drove up to the Netherlands through Belgium, it all looks the same and there are no border crossings anymore, pretty weird that you can just drive through with no checking etc! We got to the hote...

17th Had free breakfast at the hotel then got dropped at Anne Frank's house. It's set up really well, everything is still what was originally there, there are quotes from her diary all over the walls so you get an understanding of what she went through as you walk through. Where they actually hid was small and dark and for 3 years it would have been really hard. It's a pretty sad place, especially because she was killed a month before Hitler fell from power. Amsterdam is clearly a very accept...