Torenlicht Egmond aan Zee

... They offer a laundry service that I waited one day too long on. She picked up the stuff tonight, but we are out of socks, some of us are out of undies, Ben is out of pants...its pretty bad til our clothes come back tomorrow around noon. My aunt cleaned everything for us before we left her house, but since they don't have a dryer, she did it all Friday night. So mental note...our family cannot go 5 days with no laundry.

Arrived in Amsterdam exhausted from Paris, not expecting much from my last proper backpacking stop in Europe.. But I had a blast. I spent most nights in the bar at the hostel, meeting really cool fun people. My days were spent trawling museums (Anne Frank, Rembrant, Van Gough and even a houseboat museum), walking around the beautiful city admiring the autumnal colours and riding down the canals on boats. Oh, and eating lots of junk food ...

... the next minute you are in front of an incredible 15th century castle straight out of a fairy tale. To say it looks like Hogwarts does not even do it justice. Everything about the castle, from its 2 moats to the bridges and the gardens is stunningly beautiful. We were immediately gathered in the "dining hall" (which is set up more like an adorable European cafe), and were served lunch. Afterwards we were ...

... top of my head.. I was then taken to the other room to pick a pair of clogs to go with my outfit while they dressed Brian up.. OMG, when Brian stepped into the room with his outfit on, I couldn't help but laugh my head off.. It was totally hilarious!!! Think of one of those dressed up monkeys that you see in cartoons playing the cymbals, that was exactly what he looked like.. Anyway, we had a few photos taken and then headed out to check out ...

... the same feeling in pretty much every part of the city. You feel at home...things always feel familiar and the scenery doesn't change much. In Amsterdam, as soon as you walk four or five blocks in a different direction, everything looks different. For example, on our way to find the Central Station which is the hub for everything in the city, we walked through a central park type area where we were surrounded by tall buildings and businesses. It had a Chicago city type feel ...

... After securing a place to stay we set out acquiring the necessities of Dutch life... the first thing we did was buy used bikes. The flat topography of the Netherlands is ideal for biking and everyone here rides bikes. There are separate biking paths on almost every road and supposedly more bikes in Amsterdam than either cars or people! Ironically, the bikes here are not all that nice... most are old and ugly ...

I'm finally de stressed I spend the whole day at the beautyfarm. I've been often in an beautycentre, but it was never so good as here in Holland. A super team of friendly beauticians did a complete mind make-over. No stress, no clocks everything be arranged ...

WEDNESDAY, 26th July We found a bigger supermarket in Capsicum called Deans near the station at which we arrived. An even bigger range of products here. Several items caught our interest, one of which were the huge jars of apple sauce which is used like tomato sauce over her. There was only a very small section devoted to cereals, that is, if you can find it in the first place. At least there were cans of baked beans...even Mr Heinz variety. Packaged hamburgers ...

... and finally settled on a cross-Europe rail journey back to Calais. This involved leaving Holland and crossing Belgium to France. It only took about 5 hours. From Calais we had no trouble catching a boat back to Blighty and from Dover, we got a taxi home. On the end, the trip was a lot of fun and I'm glad we didn't fly and have to put all our possessions into check in. However, I don't think I'll chance Amsterdam a third time!

... for Shannon, Barb and I which took a bit of effort but was eventually done. There's actual live cats here. (??) Anyhow, Tom + I walked a bit more and then eventually took off for the airport. After running around with our bikes and shipping them off (which costs 240 guilders!!), I said bye to Tom, we departed + I took the train back to Am'Dam (which took a diff. route and ...