Hello Holland

Our trip to Den Haag was one adventure we could have lived without. Just the getting there part. The rest we loved. We set off from Brentwood complete with all our luggage and caught our train to London. Once there we had to change twice on the underground to get to St Pancras International. Every station has so many stairs to go up & down before arriving at the platform you need. A challenge but one we could cope with.

Catching the Eurostar is just like catching a plane and you have to take all your luggage through the scanners. Done this before, not a problem. That is until one security officer decided that Bill must have looked like a seedy character with his backpack and literally took every single item out piece by piece. Once satisfied that Bill, his laptop & Camera posed no threat he made Bill pack it all back in. Challenge no. 2. Still we smiled.

The trip to Brussels was just what we hoped for, fast and trouble free. Once there we changed trains and it was about then that someone up there must have thought we needed another challenge for the day. Our train was deemed to have technical problems and we had to change to another one which took us to Antwerp Central. Once there we found out what we had to catch next (after going up 3 levels & back down again to the same platform). Happily standing on that train (no seats in Peak hour) and speeding along to our final destination we are told again that the train has technical problems and we were all to get off at the next station and catch the next train. We were losing our sense of adventure by now. Our final train survived the journey and we finally arrived at Faye & Rems house 2 hours late. Tired but still laughing. By this time it was either laugh or cry and that wasn't an option. Challenge no 3 & 4 had taken the gloss off our journey but we had made it.

You think our challenges were over. So did Bill until he saw the stairs to our 3rd story bedroom. For all those people who thought our stairs in Northbridge were steep think again. And he had 2 suitcases to get to the top. Rem took one up, Bill is forever grateful. Still we had a wonderful time with Faye, Rem & Ethan and only wish we could have been there longer. And while I don't think I lost any weight climbing stairs, I'm sure all the Red wine I drank did no damage at all.

A good night's sleep saw us forget the drama's of the previous day and we were looking forward to getting our first sight of Holland in daytime. Rem & Ethan had taken the day off and after breakfast, together with Faye, we set off to Zaanse Schaan, a great little tourist village past Amsterdam. Here we had a glimpse of how things have been done in this part of the world for many years. There are working windmills, canals, cheese making & a cheese museum, clog making and clog museum where we had a demonstration of how clogs are made. Two amazing machines and about 10 mins and hey presto, it's a clog. A visit to the clock museum where we saw lots of very old clocks, some from the 16th century, completed the visit and then what else could we have for lunch but the Dutch Pancakes. Yum.

And of course dinner that night consisted of a range of cheese we had been unable to pass by. All in all, a great day was had and now all that was left was that climb up the stairs to bed and dream of what we might see tomorrow.

Until next time.........