Chateau St Gerlach Valkenburg

... find that, not only did I speak those 2 languages, but also Dutch, but it was quite difficult, when my head was still moving away from the German of the previous week, to argue with a taxi driver in Spanish, while I spoke to another man on the phone in English and these men in Dutch about the appropriate fare for the trip to the Moroccan ferry! Once I finally got everything sorted for them, I hurried to the bus stop to find that the bus to Marbella had just left, and the next was ...

... from them over the years. Although they don't speak english and we are equally proficient at dutch, we were able to enjoy each others company and acknowledge our family connection. After heading home, we stayed up watching english movies!! with dutch subtitles of course.
After having a fantastic sleep, we had breakfast and went for a bike ride. Feeling quite dutch, we rode around the quiet streets of Boukoul and into neighbouring towns where we saw Grandma ...

During our stay in Spa we had the most scary, horrible, unpleasant experience ever in a restaurant.

The restaurant to avoid is "Le Bouchon Gourmand", the owner does not hesitate to insult customers, lock them into the restaurant if there is a dispute on the bill, and claim more money than is due.

See more on www.bouchon-gourmand.blogspot.com

... even though this seems too good to be true)

From the electric company (STAWAG) I got out my handy dandy map and notebook with addresses to the mattress companies (aunt lena, I use that little red notebook every day). I got on the bus a rode to the mattress company, it was right on a corner, couldn't miss it. I went in and the sales dude showed me a couple different mattresses, all around 100 euro. I saw on the webiste that I could ...

... They told us we were at the highest point in Belgium, which was somewhere in the Nature Park.

We decided to call it a day for the roadbook, and make a detour to just get into Luxembourg for fuel, and to make sure we 'did' all the countries.

Looking back that detour cost us some time, but did mean we visited Luxembourg, even if it was too dark to see it.

... on.

We stopped at one point, because the roadbook wasn't very clear, at which point Gaz and Charlotte came up behind us. They had been left behind by the V8s, as they were in a Series vehicle, so we said we'd stick with them.
At this point, Kieran noticed a strange noise from our engine, which was duly investigated by James. It was diagnosed as the fan belt tensioning pulley. But we didn't do anything about it at the time.

... the hill was a series of tunnels were Marlite stone was extracted. But moreso the tunnels provided the castle with supplies during entrapment, an escape route and hiding place, especially noted in the 2nd world war. American soldiers & Jews hid there and understood the strategic position of Valkenburg during this war. We visited the tunnels and the remains of the old castle. We wondered the old streets with many stone houses and castles. Walked ...

... girls resulted in my getting a little out of control.....good times were had by all. After the bars closed at 2, we did indeed head to the clubs, and danced until 5AM. At the club, I met some Dutch people leaning against the wall, analyzing the group of us dancing. They had decided that there were definatly americans in the group but they knew that not everyone was American. It is funny to see the difference in dancing styles between cultures, especially ...

... edge of the town centre there were a number of different animal statues set around the bottom of an old concrete enclosure. After coming across a dog-like creature with a striped back, we jokingly pronounced it to be a Tasmanian Tiger, looking up at us in recognition of spotting two of his own. Despite the uncanny resemblance we dismissed it as something more European, like a fox or a wolf or something, until with ...

Dit is de start van een nieuw leven! Een jaar lang weg uit de omgeving die voor mij gedurende 18 jaar zo bekend is geworden. Die bekende omgeving ga ik nu verlaten en ga nieuwe horizonten opzoeken. Spannend? Eng? Ik denk een beetje van beiden. Maar dat wil niet zeggen dat ik het niet meer zie zitten.

De laatste dagen zijn hier wel wat vreemd geweest, de dag komt ook zo dichtbij. Afscheidsfeestje is geweest voor vrienden en familie. Want ik ga ...