Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Leersum - Amsterdam

Today's Route


Today is my lovely Mum's birthday - Happy Birthday Mum :)

Today is also the day we head to Amsterdam in preparation for Helen & Andrew arriving at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a 5 day stay! More guests - we have been pretty popular this trip, which has been rather marvelous.

Anyway, we left the sunny shiney spot on our nice campsite at a sensible time (well, before 12pm anyway) and headed back past the model sheep on the roundabout in Leersum, and on our way to Amsterdam.

Mostly we just went on the motorway - for ease - and it was pretty uneventful, although we did pass some interesting buildings and a couple of these funky looking structures - I guessed they were some kind of noise reduction barrier, just given the Netherlands style treatment. They have some truly amazing buildings here - and LOADS of sculptures and stuff just knocking about on roundabouts and things - very cool.

We were in the city in good time - enough time to find a carpark with some internet and get some blog updating done!

We also got to use our new time clock thing that you need when parking in all sorts of places on the continent - to show what time you arrived so they know when to start giving you a parking ticket! What fun, just like the locals :)

Some good comments on the blog - many thanks to P for reassuring me that Shandy Bass is still available - a weight off my mind I can tell you, and Will - jealousy is an ugly emotion :)

After that we went to check out a campsite over the other side of Amsterdam from the airport - the vague plan being that we would stay at a site right next to the airport tonight, for convenience, and then head over to this other site (nearer town) tomorrow. The idea of checking it out now was to avoid the problem we had after we picked Tom & Tish in Prague where we spent the best part of an hour arsing around trying to find the campsite we were looking for!

Anyway, campsite found - it was OK, although apparently there were quite a few "No Drugs" notices about, which is nice.

We headed back to our campsite and, after an interesting trip down the longest straightest road with the most speed humps in the world (Jon was well impressed I can tell you!) we found it.

The site is OK - a bit on the scummy side - but close to town and right on the edge of a bit of park, which we were quick to go and investigate on our bikes - blow the cobwebs away after a day of van work.

Nice park - lots of really good signs, lots of water - including this rowing lake - also we were 'chased' at one point by a pack of about 25 runners - which made me really wish I was running so I could join them - but no, I was on Top Bike - and got a good work out as it was :)

After that it was dinner and a relatively early night in preparation for our unusually early start tomorrow - complete with alarm clock setting and everything!! Unheard of!

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