London to Amsterdam

Tuesday 22nd at 6am, we got a mini cab from Mick’s to Trafalgar Tours office near Victoria Station in London. At 7.30 (half an hour late) we were on our way. Our driver Antonio is Italian and speaks almost no English, our tour guide is a funny little English man called Dom. He has a big round head, wears dark rimmed thick glasses, has big ears and reminds me of Mr. Potato Head! There are 43 Aussies on the tour, 4 French speaking Canadians and 3 Kiwis. Fancy coming all this way to end up with a bunch of Aussies.

We drove out of London and down through Kent to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais in France. Kent was beautiful with its little villages, hops and traditional hop oasts and heaps of other fruit trees. The white cliffs of Dover looked spectacular as we moved away from the coast.

Arriving in France we had our first taste of driving on the right hand side-a bit freaky at first, but you quickly forget and let the driver do his job-and Antonio is a good driver. The small part of France we saw was flat, with lots of farming and beautiful farm houses.

We drove quickly through Belgium (more cows, horses beautiful farm houses and still flat). The herds of cows are tiny-the biggest we saw was about 50 head. They grow a lot of potatoes, maize, wheat and (of course) Brussell’s Sprouts. It amazed us to see heaps and heaps of caravans and a few caravan parks.

Our first night was spent in Amsterdam. We arrived at 5pm for a wonderful ride around the harbour and through the canals. There are more canals than in Venice and the houses along them can be very grand. It’s also interesting to see some of the 2500 house boats on them too. We got to the hotel at 7pm, checked in then went to dinner at 9pm. Dinner was a just Ok buffet, but we were all too tired to really care. The hotel was nice, but the shower took a bit of nutting out.

It was more flat land with some very big rivers and a few windmills-a couple of which were working!